Dr Susanna
Personal website of Professor Wanjiru Susanna J Dodgson, publisher of MJoTA.org
Dr Susanna loves the countries and the peoples of Africa
The vision of Wangari Maathi lives
Since I learned that Wangari Maathi died, on September 25, 2011, I am sad that she is no longer around to fight battles. But I know she left her lieutenants and captains, and hopefully, generals, and I know that her love of Kenya and the earth and her vision will live forever.

In my 6 years of living in African communities inside and outside Africa, I am always looking for the leaders who will make change. I am thinking how Wangari Maathi disciplined and educated herself first. Her approach was to ask how she could be a servant to the earth and to future generations. She didn't run out and raise funds and demand loyalty and describe herself as the captain of the ship. Oh no. She described herself as a hummingbird, she saw a big fire and tried to put it out by dumping one drop of water at a time.



In Kenya, I remember water boiled and poured into insulated flasks and carried for later consumption. No sight of disposable plastic water bottles or sacks. I was told that was Wangari Maathi's doing; she would not permit her beloved Kenya to be trashed with plastic bottles. Trees planted, her doing. The beautiful open space that is Uhuru Park, she so objected to building an ugly massive development that the money folks pulled out. I remember in Nigeria reading her book and weeping over the stories of relatives forcibly conscripted to fight European wars, and never any official word of their fates. I am fighting for the right of every African to be healthy and educated because lives of women like her and Florence Nightingale tell me I must.


I was searching for data about food and health on Sunday night late, when news started trickly from my Kenyan friends that Wangari Maathi had died overnight in what had been before Independence, the white man's hospital, Nairobi Hospital. I wrote the following:


Dr Wangari Maathi died. I am so very sad. She was a scientist and a heroine. So much she did. Hard to recall anyone who influenced health and wealth and the environment as much as she. I met her son, he started at USP the same day I did, and when his mother won her Nobel prize, he had to nip off to Stockholm. Most men and women slip in and out of lives and no-one notices; 100 years, 200 years from now, we will be talking about Wangari Maathi. Thank you for living. You did well.