Wangari Maathi. SJ Dodgson MJOTA 2011 v5n1 p0930

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.