YouSaid · the spoken record

Wangari Maathai

lines on the record: 32
first: 2007-07-01
most recent: 2007-07-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“You know, I was listening the other day to a video and I was amazed at how many times the Quran talks about the environment. So I think the Quran would be a good book so that I can see what do they say about the environment.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The last record is Ave Maria, and it is really beautiful sometimes to just listen to music that is spiritual, that is elevating, because in the final analysis, no matter how much material things we accumulate, no matter how much we worry, in the final analysis, we are pretty sure human beings, at least that's the way I perceive myself, that in the end all will come to an end, then we shall be part of the spirit, part of the energy out there.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think it's very, very important to be an insider. You definitely can make more changes. Being an insider, but you definitely are better off as a minister than an assistant minister.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the disappointments of being in the government, which I didn't know until I was in, was that there are two levels of So, being an assistant minister for me was very frustrating because you are not able to sit in the cabinet to persuade the government to pursue the policies that you believe are the best policies and which you have been working for all your life. Instead, another person who may not believe what you believe is the one who goes into the cabinet and eventually brings you decisions that have been made and which you either support, and if you don't support, then you appear like you are fighting the very government that you are part of.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm happy to have been part of that wave that eventually got rid of the previous administration, which as I said had been there for 24 years. And I was very excited to be for the first time part of the government and being inside rather than outside. And one of the activities that we've, in my ministry of environment that we introduced was to say that all the forests are out of bound for people who we are cultivating in the forest. And I'm very happy to say that that has given many mountains. Forested mountains, an opportunity to softly generate and to start to heal themselves.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The next record is Mooney River by Frank Snatra. Anyone who has ever been outside when the moon is standing there almost like it is standing still, and you wonder what happens there, what will happen in the future? And for me, moments like that I remember this song. It brings tears to my eyes because in many ways it is romantic but also in other ways it takes you into this huge vacuum of the possibilities and you realize how small you are, how insignificant you are in this cosmos.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're watching out for you. Yeah. And I owe my freedom to them. Probably if I had stayed much longer in jail, I would have been broken because there was so much torture in jail that I cannot say that if I had stayed there long enough, I would have survived”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The second thing is I had wonderful friends who were environmentalists, some of them in influential positions, so when they would inquire about me, the government was almost unable to keep me in jail because I had not broken any law.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let me say that I was always conscious of the fact that whatever I do I must not break the law. But when you have a dictatorship, you'll be arrested anyway, no matter what you do, even within the law, because dictators are the law. One time we were trying to stop the acquisition or the privatization of the Uhuru Pak, the open space in Nairobi. We are trying to say that Nairobi as a city needs a large green open space. And so we would demonstrate, we would try to ensure that the construction does not take place. So you get arrested for picketing almost. The minute you raise your voices, you would get arrested. But fortunate, I was very fortunate for two reasons. One, as I said, I always tried to work on the side of the law so that I could always say which law.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“President Moy cruised all the democratic space that we had, he reduced the country into a one party political system and he made it impossible to have any of the basic freedoms such as the freedom to meet, to assess, to assemble, the freedom to express oneself, the freedom to associate. And that was at the same time the time when I was trying to bring women together and discuss and learn about how the environment gets destroyed and what we can do.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that is definitively like a fourth child discussion with a country women is what triggered me because they were describing a situation that was completely different from what I had experienced as a child, and so I could see and I could experience from their descriptions that something very drastic was going wrong with our environment. Water was no longer clean as I knew it. The soil was disappearing, and so rivers were brown during the rainy season instead of rainwater being retained in the forest and coming to us slowly in form of rivers, now the water was rushing downstream because there were no vegetation to hold the water. So this descriptions gave me the inspiration where I told the women let us plant trees.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Miriam Makiba, as you know, is a South African artist who, especially during their pathed years, was singing freedom songs, encouraging us in Africa to continue struggling. She left her homeland and did a lot of campaign against Apathaid but through her songs. And this is one of those songs where she tells us, Keep your eyes on tomorrow, don't give up.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolute is so difficult, and you don't know what to do then to prove yourself. I felt like I was doing everything I could, ventured, of course, things fell apart. But looking back, really, sometimes fortunately we remained friends and we helped each other. And today, when I look back I say it was mostly pressure. It was mostly pressure.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm in a certificate. Sometimes what we women are required to do is just a miracle that we survive. If anything happens in that family, it's you, the woman. It's you who is not accommodating. It's you who is too ambitious. It's you who is trying to be too much inverted commerce white woman. I was trying to be too much of a white woman in black skin. And believe me it can be very difficult because look at me. I am as black as they come.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was completely unchattered. I was trying to be a professional, but at the same time I wanted a family and I wanted children and I wanted to raise those children with a man. I didn't want to raise children without a man. And at the same time, I knew that my man wanted to be a successful politician. And I knew that if he's not a successful politician, he'll probably not like the idea that I am successful, but he is not. So I was also trying to make sure that he succeeds so that he doesn't interfere with my own pursuits.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How difficult was that for you? That's very, very difficult, especially when you are also trying to be a professional woman and you have to do research, you have to study, you have to teach, and at the same time you have a young family and you have a young man partner who is also trying to be a successful politician. So it was very, very difficult for me. I almost had three jobs all at the same time.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that song every time I think about it, I can't avoid going back to the sixties and seeing the struggles of the black people in America, and that in many ways reflects the struggles of all the people in the world who feel oppressed, who feel marginalized, and I remember that when the Norwegian Nobel Committee sent this message in the year two thousand four, one of the issues that they raised was the fact that we must learn to allow diversity in our societies. We live now in an age of information, and we are not so ignorant, so let us learn that we are one.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now the next record is very significant for me because this is the song that was being sung by Martin Luther King and his colleagues during the civil strife in America in the 60s. It was everywhere we would hear it, we would sing it. And in singing this song, we shall overcome. There are many more things to sing about, not just color, not just discrimination, but also the way we deal with our environment.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is an experience that only people who have been marginalized and humiliated can understand. At a personal level you feel very bad, it makes you wonder what's wrong with you. So you begin to preoccupy yourself with who you are to try to understand why you are not acceptable. What is wrong with you? And so of course people will tell you point blank. It's because you are black and then what can you do about the cells beneath your skin?”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that I was in a very protected area, but it is very, very important to say that segregation was full swing in America in the 60s. And we have one experience where we were trying to get a drink and we were told we could drink outside but not in the cafe. So segregation in America was in fruit swing. And I know some of my colleagues who had very nasty experiences because they were black.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About 20. Well, I only knew about America from geography classes, so I knew where states were, I knew where New York was, but I had no idea what New York meant as a city. I'd never seen so many tall buildings. They seemed like they were touching the clouds. The elevators, the experience of these fast moving elevators, they were definitely moving faster than my stomach. And I would get to the bottom and hope I would never have to get onto another elevator again. So it was absolutely fascinating. Everything I was doing then was for the very first time.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The fourth record is by another lovely and wonderful friend Patir, thy lover because she brings in into my life the world of the music that sounds like soul music, and I loved soul music when I was in the United States. This is where I feel the African in the black Americans, how they are able to dig deep into their soul and bring out a certain heritage that they brought with them from Africa.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, indeed there has been an journey, and one of the journeys that I personally took was to redefine my name. And because I had changed my name so many times, the women who attended my mother called me Wangari, and that's my name. And so all the other names that I was given to become a fuss Protestant Christian, and then I was given another name to become a Catholic, I eventually decided that, you know what, I am who I was when I first came into this world. Everything else is an adjective I tell people. My name is Wangari. Wangari was one of the original names of the primordial parent of my community.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love Delaning and I think that is part of the reason why I was able to go on. I enjoyed learning and for me school was a joy.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that is the amazing thing is that that was the pattern of the colonial period. But for your parents and for yourself, we really believed that we were bettering ourselves. And we did not appreciate that some of the aspects that we were losing were detrimental to our own well-being.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was not normal for many girls to go to school at that time. It was assumed that girls did not really have a career, but my two brothers were going to school already. My older brother asked my mother whether I should not be going to school like them. He wanted to know, is there any reason why I don't go to school? My mother's decision to send me to school after my brother asked her that question was a life changing experience.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The third song is Malika. Malika is a Kiswahili word for angels. And what it is is a very popular song, it's a romantic song, it's a young man who laments that he has this girl that he loves, but unfortunately he's a poor boy and he is not able to pay the dowry and so he says if only I had the wealth that is required I would love to marry you my angel.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nature of understanding, there was no understanding. My people had come to appreciate the nature and appreciate the environment, but without a scientific base in terms of understanding that we cannot destroy this, that by destroying we shall destroy ourselves. But unfortunately, when they are confronted by scientifically based communities that tell them that you have been unwise, you need to exploit your environment, you need to harvest this environment so that you can make yourself wealthy, then they would believe that is the tragedy of indigenous communities. Anywhere, because at that time, all of us had very little understanding of the need to protect the environment. That's why we are now looking back and we are saying in hindsight all this development has done a lot of damage. to our environment.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember the bonfires they were literally huge bonfires in the Abadir Forest as the indigenous forest was burning. Of course I didn't think much about it, but those bonfires stayed with me.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that, again, going back to my childhood, I cannot think of my life, my experiences without seeing the trees around my home, and I lived very close to the forest, the Abadea forest, and when I went up to the ridge I could see Mount Kenya, and almost between the two mountains it was like one continuous forest, central highlands where an extremely well covered section of the country.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The second song is from a favorite artist Hariber Fonte. Now we go to America. We live Kenya, we go to America. And as said earlier that I spent some wonderful time in America and this was the time when Harry Barafonte was singing his Caribbean Calypso songs and the feeling of the freedom free and happy of the Caribbean region.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was, yes, that was so typical a row for the first child girl child that you almost became like the second woman in that house. We developed a lifelong bond, but not so with my father, because my father, I knew my father was there and I felt very protected and that is important for a child. But I didn't develop a very close relationship with my father.”
2007-07-01 · Desert Island Discs · Wangari Maathai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source