Threshold - Winter 2004

Alumna Wins Nobel Peace Prize

In 1960, a young Kenyan arrived in Atchison, clutching a single suitcase, memories of her faraway village, and a deep thirst for knowledge.

Wangari in the monastery dining room on a 1991 visit with
now deceased Sister Alered Pottinger and Sister Loretta Schirmer

Mary Jo Wangari (Maathai) and her companion, Agatha Wangeci, were the first two women from Africa to attend Mount St. Scholastica College. Educational aid to young women was part of the efforts of the Kennedy Foundation and other groups to assist emerging African nations. The sisters added their own resources not only by offering scholarships, but by taking care of other needs of young women a half a world away from their homes.

Sister Regina Hansen was one of the prefects in the residence hall and remembers the concern with which the sisters rounded up whatever the girls needed, such as winter clothing. Sister Joachim Holthaus was also a prefect. “Mary Jo was young and kind of scared, but the fact that she was courageous enough to make the trip says a lot about the kind of person she was.”

Sister Kathleen Egan taught the college speech class. “She was a dynamic speaker with a vivid smile. When she got up to speak, she would light up a room.”

She learned science and the liberal arts and something more. The time-tested Benedictine values of peace, listening, reverence for all of creation, and the honor due every human being, spoke to her heart.

Wangari graduated in 1964 with a biology degree. She later received a master of science degree at the University of Pittsburgh. “She always said that she would get her education and go back to Africa and work for her people,” Sister Joachim continues. “We get many students who say that, then become successful and decide to stay in this country, but she kept her word.“

She returned home and began to practice what she’d learned, one tree-planting and one person at a time. She continued to hope and dream, even when harassed and tortured.

The first woman to receive a doctorate from the University of Nairobi, Wangari was alarmed by the deforestation of her country. She began the Green Belt Movement in 1977, giving saplings to village women to tend and plant. Today there are 6000 village-based nurseries run by women. The trees have revitalized the soil; the women benefit from the proximity of firewood, the income and, most importantly, the dignity and independence they have learned.

Not everyone in Kenya has been pleased. Her activism among women, her outspokenness regarding social structures and environmental destruction, her confrontation of corruption, and her passion for justice have led to great suffering and great progress. Imprisoned, tortured and persecuted, she persevered to become a member of parliament and deputy environment minister in a new reform government.

She taught other women that they mattered, just as she had learned at Mount St. Scholastica.

Nearly twenty years ago, her former professor, the now deceased Sister John Marie Brazzel, began writing on her behalf to legislators and diplomats. The correspondence gradually grew beyond pleas for her safety to requests that she be nominated for the Nobel Prize. Sister Thomasita Homan, long-time friend of Wangari, continued the campaign.

Readers of Threshold may have been among the minority of Americans familiar with Wangari Maathai before the announcement of the Nobel Prize. Sister Thomasita had written about her for the Spring, 2003 issue and the bond between the Mount and Wangari has remained strong.

“Dear Sisters, I owe you so much! I can never repay. I can only try to live a life in which you can find your own values and ideals reflected because in many ways I am the other side of all of you.”

On the day of the Nobel Prize announcement, Sister Thomasita happened to awaken early and listened to her radio with disbelief. After the word spread and the media began calling the monastery, a sense of the magnitude of this honor, not only for a former student but for those who helped form her, began to dawn. Newspapers carried quotes from the laureate about her American ties.

“On a daily basis, I saw women working hard for higher goals and inner peace. This must have impacted my own conscience and values as I matured.”

Surely a community based on Benedict’s teachings of peace and oneness could expect no higher affirmation from the world than to have been part of the life of a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Judith Sutera, OSB

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