Bring Back Wangari Maathai

Bring her back on stage, dear Too Early for Birds!
Let her run for a month in the capital city
And since Nairobi is not Kenya
Take her round the country for two months
And when that is done, send her out on a world tour


We all need to watch this show
To use the memory of Wangari as the scriptwriters did 
To think about today
How our neighbourhoods look
          Vs.
How they should look
How our governance looks
          Vs.
How it should look


We all need to watch this show 
To use the memory of Wangari as the scriptwriters did
To reckon with our long history of disenfranchisement
And with our long history of protest

We all need to watch this show 
To use the memory of Wangari as the scriptwriters did
To document our domestic foibles
Which range from the cuckolded to the assassinated 


We all need to watch this show
To appreciate the sizeable corpus of our country’s rich cultural produce
Adverts
Hymns
Modern proverbs
Pop songs
Poetry
Protest chants: from then and now 


We all need to watch this show
To appreciate the depth of work, knowledge, and skill
That Wangari gave for Kenya
To appreciate the depth of work, knowledge, and skill
That these actors who bring her back to life have
Not their talent, but their craft
They have learnt it, rehearsed it, and honed it into excellence
They embody Wangari’s cadence so poignantly that the audience wears it
As they laugh with Wangari, sit pensively with Wangari, cry with Wangari
Cry for Wangari


We need to sit with Wangari 
To learn from her how to question truth
To learn from her how to honour the wisdom of our ancestors
To learn from her how to apply ourselves
How to build solidarity
How to face failure
How to rise from its ashes
And how to enjoy ourselves

This is the kind of performance that serious governments sponsor 
To show off to the world 
Show off to the world
Not with promises of planting 15 billion trees to mimic Wangari
As they lust after carbon credits
As they raid forest reserves and game parks to build hotels and car parks 
Driven by greed to bank Judas cheques from tourism and dubious science

Serious governments show off the thinking of their most illustrious sons and daughters
The ones who transformed how others think about social, environmental, and political spaces
The ones who taught the world to reimagine freedom, justice, equity
The ones who never paraded or trumpeted their degrees at every microphone, every podium
The ones who did not pollute the skies with choppers 
Hour after hour, flying high to launch— for a third and fourth time— projects that never leave the ground

Serious governments show off the truly outstanding servants of the people
Those who did not waste time greasing palms with stolen notes
Instead
They spent years formulating self-reliance, shifting minds, chasing liberty—
not personal wealth

They knew the real work of degrees is to nurture the soil and the people 
So they joined hands, bent their backs, bowed their heads
They worked with, walked besides, sat-in with
The young and the elderly 
They worked with knowledge from every quarter—
degreed and undegreed, 
diplomad or undiplomad 
but never diplomatic in ways that pussyfoot around, or collude with, to evade tyranny 


We need to sit with Wangari in the brilliant ways that Too Early For Birds 
have animated her remarkable life
Bring back real funding for the Arts
So that we can sit once again with Wangari
So that we can tell Story Zetu more often, more widely 
So that we can know our histories well enough not to repeat the errors of eras past 
and present
 

Bring Back Wangari Maathai the stage play
Bring Back Wangari Maathai in spirit
For this her land and nation, our land and nation, stands today at a crossroads
A moment in time when other Wangaris must rise

With the courage to pen powerful protests
With the courage to demand answers 
With the courage to march
With the courage to take blows
With the courage to sit-in and demand change
With stealth to move surreptitiously
With wisdom to recruit the right allies
With wit to build communities
With skills to sustain them

These leopards are the ones we need to face the malignant narcissists at the helm
Rulers who raid our taxes 
Tormentors who pose as our mentors

We need Wangari’s spirit today not tomorrow
For we must throw down the gauntlet
Cross the Rubicon
Save Kenya 
It is not ours to destroy
It is ours to cultivate for posterity
The way Wangari did

Bring back Wangari Maathai.