This is my experience visiting Kenya and meeting Wangari Maathai (RIP). She is an inspiration as a social innovator generating enormous social and environmental impact in her country Kenya.

1. SINGING IN KENYA
Anamaria Aristizabal
February 2005
Two for one
I wake up in a daze, and look around me. I am in a plane that I boarded in the Nairobi
airport, surrounded by my classmates. I realize that the plane has not left yet. I look at my
watch; we have been on the plane for five hours! This was only the beginning of an epic
return home that took 44 hours (as opposed to 24 hours on the way there). Every mode of
transportation that we took was delayed, including the train to New Haven from Newark
station. Full of exhaustion, jet lag, and the stress from getting back to all the work and
sclasses we missed, I was unable to tell the story of our trip. “How was Kenya?” People
asked “I heard you guys had a long return back”. “Yes, I was starting to believe I was on
a spaceship on one of those journeys that last for months.” Celebrating one of our
classmates’ birthdays on the plane made it more surreal. Someone came up with a cake,
and we had the whole plane singing happy birthday.
After recuperating from the everlasting return home, I can now sit back and tell the story
of our Kenya trip. The journey started last semester, when twenty six students signed up
for a class at the Yale Environment School called “International Environmental
Organizations: UNEP and Global Governance”. Maria Ivanova, a PhD student and head
of Yale’s Global Environmental Governance Center, was the instructor, along with
Gordon Geballe (Dean of Students) and Mohamad El Ashri (Visiting Fellow, ex-director
of the Global Environmental Facility). The purpose of the class was to assess the work of
the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), in the context of the current
environmental governance system.
“You are really going to take two classes” said Maria on the first day. “One class will aim
to read and discuss the theoretical framework of environmental governance and
international relations. The other class will focus on studying the structure and function
of UNEP, and produce reports that will be presented at the UNEP Governing Council
Meeting in Kenya.” She explained how we would be divided into groups, according to
UNEP’s main functions: information, capacity building, catalytic function and
coordination, as well as three cross cutting groups: governance, finance, and staffing.
As Maria was talking, one of the students pulled out two huge binders full of papers.
“What is that?” I asked her. She replied that it was the preliminary research she had done
to be in the class. She added that she had other four binders to accommodate her group
work, her research on the web, the theoretical material, and the interviews with UNEP
staff. Ok, I was totally freaked out. What kind of a class was this? This was my first
semester, and already I was shooting myself in the foot by taking this impossible class. I
reminded myself that just to be sitting there in the class, I had had to go through a
rigorous application process including writing a cover letter, submitting my resume, and
undergoing an interview. They had accepted me. That was worth something. If I had
gotten this far, I could not just bail out. The class was just beginning, and there I was, my
head and heart were already pounding from the stress.

2. “Your work will be well worth it,” said Maria, “as you will get to go to Kenya, all
expenses paid, you will attend UNEP’s governing council meeting, and also get to meet
Wangari Maathai, a prominent African environmental leader”. After much thought, I
decided that the most sensible thing was not to take a class like this on my first semester.
I had the choice not to take it, and it was going to be too much. But being sensible is
seldom what drives me, so in the end, in an impulse, I stayed on.
The colossal workload of this learning opportunity overtook most of my first semester.
Every week we had impressive guest speakers come talk to us about UNEP from the
point of view of organizations like the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the
UN Foundation — even the UNEP deputy director himself. A subgroup of us went to a
meeting in Washington DC organized by UNEP staff: the Civil Society Forum, in which
we contributed with ideas for civil society’s input to the upcoming governing council
meeting. My back started to hurt from carrying the heavy readings we had to do for each
week for the theoretical part of the course. As for the practical part of the class, I was
assigned to the capacity building group, whose goal was to evaluate UNEP’s
effectiveness in its capacity building projects. In one of our meetings, when we were
preparing the midterm presentation, which outlined our research methods and preliminary
hypotheses, I told my group, “Guys, I am spending way more time with you than with my
own boyfriend!”
It was impossible for me not to wonder what a bunch of youngsters like us were doing
analyzing a big, complex, and elusive organization like UNEP. But what we were doing
had never been done before, which was both exciting and daunting. Maria gave us lots of
encouragement, telling us, “You know more than you think you know”. Although we
didn’t believe her, we kept moving on in our tasks, out of curiosity and amazement that
the professors trusted we would come up with something decent. Close to the end of the
class, when we would have to present our final results, we had an adrenaline-powered
phone marathon. We called and interviewed dozens of people that could help us shed
light into UNEP’s functioning. Somehow, between these interviews, our guest speakers,
online research of UN documents, academic papers, and a survey to UNEP staff, we
managed to pull together a semi-coherent picture of the organization.
Yale at UNEP

3. I realized I have been writing for almost two pages without even beginning to address the
topic I set out to write about (the trip to Kenya). I guess I had to give a bit of a
background about the class and the painful “birthing process” of the research that
justified the trip. So there we were, in Nairobi, Kenya, at the Headquarters of the
organization we had had contractions over, sitting in the main assembly room listening to
country intervention after country intervention. Yes, we were falling asleep. It must have
been the jetlag. Right...
The real action took place outside of these meetings: people devising projects together,
ministers writing joint declarations, securing of funds for projects, and so on. It was a
major networking opportunity. I was lucky to meet the delegation from my country,
Colombia, although the process was a bit embarrassing. First, I was looking for a woman
named “Sonia”, working for the World Conservation Union, whom I had corresponded
with by email, and who I knew would be there, but whom I had never met. Being in a
new country and with a bit of jet lag, some of my usual inhibitions were gone. To be
practical, I tried my chances with every woman who had a remotely Colombian face:
“Sonia?” I asked a series of women in turn. To which they replied, “no”, with a look of
confusion and a bit of pity, as one would show towards a truly insane person. However,
my technique did work. As I called out to yet another non-Sonia (a woman who turned
out to be Spanish), while sitting at the assembly room during break, the woman exactly in
front of me, with distinctly non-Colombian features, turned around and said, “I am
Sonia!” We had a good laugh with this, and became friends.
Similarly embarrassing was my meeting with a very important part of the Colombian
delegation. I was outside the assembly room looking for the bathroom, and asked a
woman who was walking in the corridor. She replied with a bit of an accent, so I asked
her where she was from, only to find out she was Colombian. “What a surprise!” I said,
“are you part of the delegation?” Impatiently, she responded, “Yes, I am the vice minister
of the environment.” Oops! We continued to chat, and I found out that she is the mother
of a friend of mine. With this, things became a little smoother, and we had an enjoyable
conversation. During the following days, we continued to chat and share thoughts about
environment, gender, culture, and poverty. (She thinks Barranquilla’s Carnival is
Colombia’s best attraction. Of course she is from Barranquilla. If you ask me, it’s
Bogotá’s theater festival. Yes, I am from Bogotá.) She introduced me to the Colombian
ambassador in Kenya, and other Colombians present at the meeting.

4. The day of our presentation arrived, and we were delighted to see that in spite of the early
call (7:30am) a surprising number of people did attend. The presentation ran smoothly —
how could it have been otherwise, considering we had rehearsed it a million times? A few
days before, I had attended a side event at the same venue, in which there were no
questions or interjections. Paranoid, I asked Maria, “What if nobody says anything after
the presentation? We must prepare some discussion questions for the audience!” None of
this was necessary. There were plenty of questions and comments, including a generous
speech by the Executive Director, Klaus Topfer, who not only said he appreciated the
constructive criticism, but that our resumes now had a “green mark,” privileging us for
future job opportunities at UNEP.
The title of our presentation was “A Fresh Look at UNEP”. After a few comments, a
Swedish delegate said, “This was a refreshing presentation, with real policy
recommendations that are practical, unlike many academic studies.” At that moment, we
looked at each other from across the room, and although we never pronounced it, our
looks said, “Yes! Mission accomplished!”
UNEP class is over
♫♪
UNEP Class is over
Hakuna Matata
Now we are in the forest
Hakuna Matata
The Green Belt will change Kenya
Hakuna Matata
♫♪
Wangari
Mother Nature
Anamaria and Sonia Anamaria, the Vice Minister and the Ambassador

5. You inspire us
Hakuna Matata ♫♪
We are now in a van, about to meet Wangari Maathai, and we are singing at the top of
our voices. Our driver is a great Kenyan guy who works with the Green Belt Movement,
the organization that Wangari founded thirty years ago, and for which she won the Noble
Peace Prize. The organization is dedicated to improving the quality of life of Kenyans,
through planting trees and empowering them for democracy. We are excited about our
day ahead: being guided by Professor Wangari Maathai to visit a non-native forest,
perform a symbolic planting of a native tree, and then visit a native forest to see the
contrast. The van I am in is quite exceptional: we represent South America, Asia, Africa,
and North America. We decided to call it the “UN Van”. As the van spirit was soaring,
we came up with the idea of singing a song to Wangari. Our van driver taught us the
famous Kenyan welcome song, which we adapted by adding our own words. We also
decided to add choreography to the song, in the style of the cheesiest a cappella groups.
In order to help carry out the performance plan, I had to drink more than my usual
amount of beer. Luckily, Wangari was pleased. During our little performance, I started
realizing how much music, as silly as it can be, is a powerful communicator. I felt this
even more so at the village.
The King
But before taking you to the village, I must tell you about the safari. We are in Africa
after all! Our second morning in Kenya, a group of us decided to skip the “exciting”
assembly meetings and go on a safari at the Nairobi National Park. The amazing thing
about this safari was that the park was so close to the city. I have a picture from it of a
herd of animals with Nairobi’s skyline in the background. Seeing the hyenas pursue
zebras, the giraffes strolling calmly, ostriches galumphing in trios, and the lioness
carefully planning her attack on a herd of impalas, reminded some of us why we were in
the environmental field. My van companions and I talked about UNEP’s location in
Kenya as strategic in the sense that one can see the circle of life and the beauty of nature
at an arm’s reach from the UNEP headquarters. However, we contrasted this view with
our research findings, which say that UNEP’s location in Kenya is counterproductive for
its coordination and catalytic functions, which would require it to be closer to funders and
other environmental and international organizations. We dispelled this challenge at the
sight of an enormous black buffalo.
Our safari driver gave us a powerful lesson on being in tune with nature. While looking at
the giraffes with the rest of the group, he said to us “the animals are behaving strangely,
the lion must be around.” We found it hard to believe that he could conclude this with
such limited evidence, but decided to trust him. Our car turned around from the direction
the rest of the group was going, and stopped at a place where there was absolutely
nothing to see. For several minutes we waited somewhat impatiently, envying the other
groups, who got to bond more deeply with the giraffes. We waited and waited…
Suddenly, the lion emerged from the bushes, about 100 feet from us. Majestic and
sensuous, the lion left us completely out of breath. This sight would have been enough,
but the lion was actually coming towards our van! He walked closer and closer, and our
cameras were out of control, the shutter clicking madly for shots that captured him better

6. and better. Finally he stopped around 5 feet from the van, posed elegantly, and then
turned around and left. WE HAD SEEN THE KING! We all shouted. We were bubbly
and energized from having witnessed such a symbol of power and beauty.
Green Belt Safaris
Our trip had more than one amazing safari. We left our business suits behind, packed
jeans, colorful sarongs, and explorer hats, and headed for a Green Belt Safari (GBS). This
is a relatively new venture of the Green Belt Movement (GBM). The purpose of these
safaris is to raise awareness of a new kind of tourism that benefits the local communities
more and puts their lifestyles, charisma, and wisdom at the front stage of tourism. Also,
these GBS help make the GBM more sustainable, by brining funds and outside support
for the projects. The structure of these GBS is to have groups stay at community houses,
learn about the GBM’s impact by touring the village to see the trees planted and the
various initiatives, see a number of singing, dance, and theater performances by
community groups, and finally, do a community project together.
The village we visited, Murang’a, is located around three hours away from Nairobi. I
stayed with part of the UN van (Carishma from India, Anil from Nepal, and Neric from
the Philippines) at a home headed by Mama Ben. Our host was named after her son, Ben,
who is recognized by the community for his kindness. We found out that women are
often named after their sons — not necessarily the elder one, but the most popular one in
the community. On our first night, the mayor came to visit us, along with many of the
women who were also involved in our hosting, helping Mama Ben. We all introduced
ourselves, and had a pleasant conversation, translated by Joseph, an amazing
communicator, part of the GBM staff. I noted that it was a full moon that night, in an
absolutely clear sky. A woman from the village commented that there is an animal that
only goes out at night, as it is afraid of the light. However, because full moon nights have
more light than usual, the animal does not come out, which is why they call this night
“the night that scares the animal”.

7. We asked the people present in Mama Ben’s home the first evening for their vision of the
village. Once people shared their views, we noted a very interesting contrast between
what the women and the men said. Men talked much more about the need for
infrastructure, mostly roads, and the women mentioned the need to improve the schools,
and to create a hospital. We encouraged the villagers to ask us questions, and the first one
they asked us was “what church do you go to?” Hopefully they weren’t too shocked by
our lack of traditional religiosity: we had an atheist, a recovering Catholic, a Hindu, and a
nature-based spiritual seeker. The villagers were all fervently Christian, and their culture
was deeply influenced by their religion. I think that this has greatly helped the GBM
spread its programs, as both the Christian faith and the GBM are based on values of
service to one’s neighbor, trust on one another, and faith that they can make a positive
difference in their communities.
Singing in Murang’a
Signing with the women (taken by Maria Ivanova)
Music was the most powerful part of my trip to Kenya. Like nothing else I know, music
can create a sense of community instantly. Beginning with the silly song we sang to
Wangari, which bonded the members of the UN van in a very short time, my trip was a
series of songs that made me feel closer and closer to a community on the other side of
the world. The most memorable moments: stepping out of the vans when we just arrived
in Murang’a, and hearing an outburst of singing by the women:
♫♪
Utia Suich Si,
Ditima ia cane wone uega
Tuena Wangare
Tuena Esicoti
♫♪
This song says: “if you want the light of development, just switch the light on. With
Wangari, you have an escort.” After learning it, some of us would sing it with the

8. women, walking around Murang’a, cooking, or as a greeting to each other. The song was
a powerful connector.
Another memorable moment: the second night at the village home, when we asked for a
drum, and started playing and dancing to the different dances and songs from our
respective countries. Soon, we had a horde of kids surrounding us, which developed into
a joyful party, with everybody dancing, sometimes all loose, sometimes holding hands in
a circle. A girl, younger than twelve, took over the drum, and everyone was effervescent
with energy and movement.
The most unforgettable moment: after the women performed a play on AIDS and
alcoholism awareness in front of the school, kids came over to check out the Yale
students. At one moment a couple of us were surrounded by dozens of kids who wanted
us to sing a song. I remembered a beautiful tune I learned in South Africa, and sang to
them:
♫♪
Oh Lord
Give me power
Give me strength
Oh Lord
♫♪
Look at the Mountain
Look at the Sea
Take your time
And just look around
After the first time, the kids and the others sang with me. Two more of my peers shared
songs, beautiful and silly, and more and more kids joined us. Our voices in the African
landscape and the kids’ delighted faces are etched forever in my memory.
Singing in Murang’a (taken by Emily Hicks)
Wannabe Wangari
When I heard the song the women sang to us when we first arrived in Murang’a that
mentions Wangari as their escort for development, I realized that Wangari is unlike

9. anyone I had ever met before. In my view, Wangari not only deserves the Nobel Peace
prize for the 30 million trees she has planted all over Kenya and for empowering women,
but for being a true leader who brings out the best in others. You could tell that Wangari
had catalyzed something powerful in Murang’a. Those women had switched the light on
for their own development, and were moved by something greater than themselves to
improve their communities. Wangari achieves these transformations through her
charisma and her personable nature with anyone that comes her way. Most of all,
Wangari shines when she is teaching. I see her as a professor at heart, driven by a deep
commitment for the issues she cares about. She is able to communicate the most complex
concepts and inter-linkages in simple language that both villagers and PhD students can
comprehend and be stimulated by. Her way of thinking is holistic: she is a scientist, but
she also has a distinctly political mind, connecting natural science with peace,
democracy, and community empowerment.
Wangari and her work brought to the surface a tension I have been feeling. In the last few
years, I have been torn between work in the field with communities to drive change from
the bottom up, and working in policy at national or international levels to create the right
environment and incentives for change to happen. Wangari is a prominent example that
the first alternative is possible, and quite effective. However, it did take Wangari 30 years
to achieve this success. Where can one achieve the greatest impact for the protection of
the environment and the quality of life of communities? Neric Acosta, a Philippine
member of parliament who accompanied us in the trip, said that this is only the beginning
of a lifelong tension, one that he also feels. He said that in order for him to stay grounded
in his political work, he needs to continually connect with communities. He told me that a
trip like this one renews his spirits and commitment to his work more than anything in the
world. He found the answer in using the political capital he had to be in power, and
maintaining a healthy balance by continually connecting with communities.
UNEP is faced with a similar tension. In our research, we found that UNEP is
increasingly becoming more “operational”, which means it is more involved with on-the-
ground projects. This is partly due to a greater availability of funding for these projects,
and less for “normative work”, which is the analytical, policy, and comparative work that
they originally set out to do. Also, there is a greater demand, particularly from developing
countries, for help with implementation of the myriad treaties and guidelines UNEP
helped formulate in the last three decades. The capacity building group I was part of
found that UNEP does not necessarily have the competence to effectively implement
projects on the ground, and that it should focus on normative functions. However, I do
understand the appeal of working in projects, as one can have a better grounding of the
problems and a better understanding of the dynamics that accelerate or halt
environmental degradation.
Meeting Wangari also made me reflect on the idea of leadership. I think part of the
exceptional success of the Green Belt Movement is owed to Wangari’s captivating
personality and extraordinary commitment. What experiences in life lead to this level of
engagement in a project? How can education contribute to developing this sense of
ownership? Also, it is worth asking what would happen to the GBM if Wangari were not
here anymore, and if it would continue to be so effective? This is a question about

10. governance in general. Has UNEP lacked the stamina and influence post-Rio due to a
lack of leadership? But if charismatic leadership does not necessarily assure long term
effectiveness and sustainability of the organization, what takes its place? In light of the
research I did on UNEP and global governance, and the belief that the magnitude of the
problem calls for a multitude of change agents, my hope is that stakeholders will be able
to create effective partnerships with each other, by clearly defining and working with
each others’ comparative advantages.
At the end of the day, however, it’s true. I ”wannabe” like Wangari. I admire her deeply,
and I think I am not the only one. I heard one my classmates say, “This woman is Mother
Nature!” In our last evening in Kenya, she came over to have a conversation with us
about our experience during the Green Belt Safari. We all sat in a circle in the garden of
the Green Belt Movement training center, surrounded by trees and flowers, and the
night’s buzzing sounds. As always, she responded to questions with extraordinary
generosity and eloquence. She was absorbed telling us anecdotes of when she got arrested
while protesting the development of an urban park, or the campaign she organized to
plant trees. Her assistant had to remind her of the time, and that she had other
commitments. “She is a very busy woman!” he said. At the end of our discussion, many
came to her to ask her for a last minute picture with her, or to thank her for the amazing
experience we had. I waited a bit and at the end went up to her and said, “Wangari, all I
have to say is…
♫♪
Utia Suich Si,
Ditima Ia cane wone uega
Tuena Wangare
Tuena Esicoti
♫♪
She smiled the biggest smile I had seen, and gave me a hug so long and so deep, I can
still feel it. I knew that the song communicates her success more than many things can. It
is a Nobel Prize in itself, which speaks to the mark she has left in Kenyan women’s
hearts. This song communicates the love the women feel for her, the gratitude, and the
hope. By singing this song to her I also wanted to express my own gratitude for showing
me new heights of what’s possible to achieve in a lifetime of commitment and passion.
Thank you Wangari, thank you Yale, and thank you Kenya for an amazing journey. Your
music and colors will always remain in my heart.