Meetings at AKU all day but we took a break and went to Karura Forest for lunch. It is a forest right in the middle of the city, the second largest in the world after Toronto. Before colonization it was owned by a family who surrendered it to the British on the condition that it would remain a forest. It all went along nicely until after independence; in the late 1980s the Minister of Environment secretly granted holdings of it to his friends in development companies. Plans to build shelved for about ten years, but in 1999 building began in earnest. Thanks largely to the efforts of one woman, Wangari Maathai, the developers were thwarted. It eventually turned out that the sale of the land to them had no paperwork, so they had no legal claims. Maathai led various protests, which attracted international attention and it is now run by a committee that is organized by government but independent.
Peter, my friend, told me that at one point, when Maathai was about 75, she stood in front of a bulldozer and removed her clothes, along with several other old women. According to the story in the newspapers, they “shook their breasts” at the men. In Kenya, seeing mothers naked is a strong taboo, and a curse on men, and since these were old women, they were equivalent to mothers. It effectively stopped the development as the men, according to the story, ran away. An interesting form of power.
Tonight I am back at the apartment, sharing it with two young women from Ontario. One is on leave from Algonquin College to do some IT work here, and the other is from Toronto, a student who is here doing her practicum. It’s nice to have company.