Greetings.
I arrive again with more tree content- the tree obsession continues. This tree content today centers around a book, like much of my life does (book-lovers rise!), Wangari Maathai, the Woman Who Planted Millions of Trees, by Franck Prévot. What’s it about? Oh, perhaps trees and Wangari Maathai?
Well, more specifically, it’s about Wangari’s journey to keep trees sprouting, keep fig trees rich with their fruit, and keep children’s faces glowing, rosy and beautiful. It’s about her fight for happiness, and for a lush and beautiful world. She planted tree after tree for love and life and millions of forests in the future.
Many people have planted trees, and don’t have a beautifully illustrated biography about them (in fact, just last week, a loony friend of mine took her peach pit and decided to dig a hole and drop it in, but she doesn’t have a biography about her, either). So what made Wangari, the woman of the leopards, special? Her dedication through adversity. The Kenyan government came down against Maathai and the Green Belt Movement (a movement she had created to go against the government’s decisions regarding the environment). The government opposed many of the movement’s positions regarding democratic rights and the deforestation that was threatening the food sources.
However, her efforts and dedication to building more rights, and a safer world to live in did indeed begin to bear fruit (pun intended) with the Green Belt Movement having planted more than 30 million trees, inspiring other countries to take a similar initiative, being appointed assistant minister of environment, natural resources, and wildlife, and also winning the Nobel Prize.
Trees play an important role in Wangari Maathai’s story because it was important to her to plant them- it enabled the earth to breathe and crops to continue growing. Trees also grew to become a symbol that it was possible to make a difference to our earth.
Wangari Maathai’s story conveys a message of hope- though it may seem gloomy and dark, and on the precipice of disaster, change is possible.
Readers (just like me) would learn about the importance of standing up and speaking for the world to change (in the right direction. You wouldn’t want to speak about how homicide is good), and also the importance of conserving our Earth.