A two-foot Meru oak
Retold by C.S. · ·
About Wangari Maathai · Kenya · 1 min read
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A steel gate stood at Karura Forest. It was about October 1998. About thirty helmeted riot police were there with rifles. A bus had come with twenty-eight older women. A pickup carried gardening tools and watering cans.
Wangari Maathai wore a long blue dress and a red-and-black polka-dot headscarf. She held a two-foot Meru oak. Clive Mutiso of TIME was on the road.
Karura was about 2,500 acres. More than a third had been sold. Fifty acres were cleared, less than half a mile from the United Nations Environment Programme.
They were not allowed into the forest.
She spoke to Chief Inspector Paul Muluma.
"Since you are illegally preventing us from planting trees in the forest and I do not want this one to die, I am going to plant it at the gates of the U.N. Environment Program. Do you think you can stop me?"
She planted the oak at the UNEP gate. Klaus Toepfer, the UNEP director, condemned the Karura clearing.
She had already been planting.
UNEP staff were to water the oak daily.