Somewhere in the US, Kenya’s Mary Jos stands imposingly at the prestigious Benedictine College. Standing 5 feet 10 inches under a tree, she holds what she lived and fought for throughout her for; a seedling.

Scolded at home by many politicians for her determined battle against corruption, lack of democracy and environmental degradation, the late Prof Wangari Maathai may not have won the hearts of those in power in her battle to conserve the environment in the country, but she was a great inspiration in the college where she studied decades ago.

“To have a statue of Wangari Maathai on our campus has been a dream for a while, and it is appropriate that it is here in St Scholastica Plaza, where our students will see it and aspire to be like her,” said Benedictine College President Stephen D Minnis during the unveiling of the statue on June 14, this year.

Fondly called Mary Jos (short for Miriam Josephine, before she became Margaret after she was baptised in the Catholic Church) by her friends in the early days the college’s class of 1964 had also in 2005, planted a tree in honour of Wangari’s 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.

And to exemplify the dignity the former Mount St Scholastica College bestows on the environmentalist, who died three years ago on September 25, 2011, her statue will on October 17, 2014 be moved into the revered St Scholastica Plaza, near the tree planted.

The plaza was established on the campus to recognise and commemorate Mount St Scholastica, a Catholic-run institution, which later changed its name to Benedictine.

And here, she will stand next to the statue of St Scholastica, thus depicting Wangari as a disciple of St Scholastica. A dove, the symbol of peace sits on a branch of the bronze tree that “grows” behind Wangari.

Here also, Wangari is immortalised together with Catholic sisters who planted the roots of the college. In fact, the sisters’ bronze works were created by Bill Hopen, the same sculptor who has now done the Wangari and St Scholastica statues. The two statues were done under one contract, and donations were collected by the Mount sisters and the college to cover the cost of the project

Florence Conrad Salisbury, a friend of Wangari who used to take her home over the summers, still recalls the trying times the young women faced when they ultimately returned to their home country. “They went home and did what George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and our Founding Fathers did, they became Founding Mothers,” she said. “They suffered terribly. We knew much about what Wangari suffered. Agatha endured every bit as much, maybe more. We did not know that and we must honor her, along with Wangari, for their dedication in establishing the underpinnings of democracy in Kenya.”

Historic statue

Mrs Agatha Wangeci Kahara, the country’s first Information Officer and part of Wangari’s 1964 class, attended the occasion.

“I felt quite honoured to have been invited by my former school to unveil this historic Prof Maathai’s statue. The grand occasion, attended by people of various countries, nationalities and age groups also marked the school’s 1964 graduates-that is 50 years to date. I was in the same class with the late Prof Maathai. We were part of the 1961 famous Air lift students from Kenya,” she said in the interview adding that other people were ahead of Kenya in honouring Wangari, the first African woman to win the Nobel.

She recalls that during Prof Maathai’s funeral service at the Holy Family Minor Basilica, Nairobi, the gathered congregation was told of a planned move to erect a statue at the Nairobi’s Freedom Corner, within the wider Uhuru Park in honor of the professor. “Close to three years down the line, this is yet to happen; hence we should thank those who have already done it.” Before succumbing to ovarian cancer, the British Royal Family had planted a tree in her memory, while US President Barack Obama described her as “a remarkable woman who devoted her life to peacefully protecting what she called ‘our common home and future’....proof that one person’s simple idea that a community should come together to plant trees can make a difference first in one village, then in one nation and now across Africa.”

Successful resistance

Popular search engine Google even created a special doodle to honour the late Nobel Laureate, which appeared on it’s homepage across Sub-Sahara Africa countries on what would have been the late environmentalist’s 73rd birthday in 2013.

But at home, Wangari was not a darling of those in power. For her dogged fight for the environment and democracy, she suffered bruises from police rungus in the Kanu regime, but never bowing to harassment. Politicians often used her as an object of ridicule to display their loyalty to the authorities, as evidenced in 1989, when she led a successful resistance against a plan to build a 60-storey complex at Uhuru Park.

She also found herself in trouble for failing to follow the dictates of powerful politicians in her Central Kenya backyard. After the disputed 2007 elections when the country erupted in chaos, Maathai took a non-partisan stance much to the anger of those in Kibaki’s PNU.

It was in the midst of this that her security detail was withdrawn in April 2008. She said she had received death threats from Mungiki gangs. But then, as they say, a prophet is never honoured in his own home-place.