Doc-11—Wangari-Maathai-Kennedy-airlift-lbd7m_ocr.pdf

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going to school my parents encouraged me to study hard and be like

you.” How I wished they had told me so!

But at that time in Kenya, 1959, the number of women who had

completed high school was very small and their options for careers

or higher education were relatively few. Women could become teach-

ers or nurses while men could be teachers or clerks in. an office,
Being a clerk was a well-paid and highly esteemed job, because you
would be in the mainstream of British Kenyan civil life. You would
work in an office! You would be a member of the new elite class,

Although the nuns did not provide us with any career counseling, as
graduation neared many of my classmates were signing up for train-
ing in teaching or nursing. That was the end of education for them. I
did not want to be a teacher then and I never tried to be a nurse. I
wanted to go on with my studies, which for a girl was unusual. Back
when I was at St. Cecilia’s, neighbors would say to my mother about
me: “There’s no need to keep her in school. She cannot even become
a clerk. She’s a girl, after all.”

Even my teachers and friends asked me, “What are you going to
do? Become a teacher or a nurse?” But my mind was focused else-
where, “I am not going to be either of those. I’m going to Makerere
University,” I replied. Makerere was in Kampala, Uganda, and was
then the only university in Bast Africa. Anybody who passed their
high schoo] exams and could continue their studies went to Mak-
erere, which was the epitome of education—the Oxford of East Africa.
But aspiring to go there was very ambitious. Even though Iwas a
good student, I was more hardworking than naturally bright, so my
gaining admission to Makerere was still a gamble. .

“What if you don’t pass?” my teachers and friends asked. “What
do you mean?” IJ asked. “Of course I will pass!” As it turned out,
an opportunity arose that was to take me much farther west than
Makerere—in fact, all the way to the United States of America.

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Seer

American Dream

y the time I graduated from high school in 1959, the colonial

B: for most of Africa was coming to an end: Ghana had become

a sovereign nation in 1957 and three years later many French and

Belgian colonies in West and Central Africa achieved their inde-

pendence. In Kenya, too, freedom was in the air. Although Jomo

Kenyatta was in internal exile and political activity was still lim-

ited, the “winds of change” that British prime minister Harold Mac-

millan said were blowing across Africa made Kenya’s independence

inevitable. In 1957, black Kenyans were allowed to vote in elections

for the first time, and in 1959 the British government invited Ken-

yan politicians to London to negotiate over a new political . In

1960, preparations for Kenya’s independence had begun.

A newly independent Kenya would need educated men and

women ready to fill key positions in the government and society

once the British administrators departed. To that end, in the late

195os the Kenyan politicians of the day, led by Tom Mboya, Gi-

konyo Kiano, and others initiated and encouraged contacts with

political and cultural figures in the United States, led by then-

senator John F, Kennedy, Andrew Young, and others. The aim was to

provide scholarships for promising students from emerging African

states to receive higher education in the United States. This would

also open up the United States to these former European colonies,

hitherto closed from the rest of the world.

Senator Kennedy agreed not only to fund the program through the

Joseph P, Kennedy Foundation but also to fly all the students to

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the United States at the foundation’s expense. Kennedy also pushed
the U.S. State Department to expand its Africa scholarship pro-
gram and make it possible toreceive the African students (the State
Department initially had turned down Mboya’s request}. So began
what became known as the Kennedy Airlift, which eventually saw
nearly six hundred Kenyans airlifted to study in different colleges
and universities throughout the United States.

When the Catholic bishop in the Nairobi diocese learned about
the proposed venture, he decided to have students from Catholic
schools in his area join in, As fate would have it, I had just com- pleted my education at Loreto-Limuru at the top of the class and
was a favorite candidate for the bishop’s proposal. I was in the right
place at the right time, When I was informed of the opportunity to
go to study in America, I did not hesitate: “Yes!” I said,

Thanks to the bishop and the nuns, I became one of about three
hundred Kenyans selected for the “Lift” of September 1960. That
was the fourth time my educational destination had been chosen for
me and, as at my last two schools, I was to attend a Catholic institu-
tion: Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas, which was
under the management of Benedictine nuns.

I was very excited about this new development: It would be so
much fun to go to America. It was-a great honor and privilege that
people in both countries had such trust in me and had made this
great opportunity possible. My parents supported me and were happy
to hear that I had received a scholarship for further education in the
United States. It was quite astonishing news, especially in my vil-
lage, where girls’ education was still not fully appreciated. *

As had happened on my return to Nyeri in 1947, in September
1960 a whole new world opened up, one that reached for the first
time beyond the b s of my own country. You can imagine what
it must have been like when L twenty years old, boarded a plane for
the very first time. Indeed, everything I saw or did for the next few
days was for the very first time, The propeller-driven aircraft took
off at midnight and flew for days, crawling across the sky: northward

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AMERICAN DREAM

to Benghazi in Libya, then on to Luxembourg, Reykjavik in Iceland,

Newfoundland in Canada, and finally New York City.

As the Sahara Desert unfolded beneath me, I could not believe my

eyes. You can look at an atlas or read about how large the Sahara is,

put you don’t realize its vastness until you have flown over it. I

looked at the desert as dawn rose, fell asleep, and woke up hours

Jater to see still nothing but sand. We were flying too high to make

out people or animals or individual dunes. Instead, below were mas:

sive, fantastical formations of sand and the occasional green dot o1

mt was fascinating to be in Luxembourg, because I had only read

about Europe in books. I had never heard of this small country,

whose name sounded so beautiful and memorable. Why we stopped

in Luxembourg of all places is a mystery, but I loved feeling that the

geography I had learned in school was coming alive with the names

of places we arrived at or were near. All three hundred of us drove

through the winding streets from the airport to town for dinner.

In Newfoundland, a name I fondly remembered from my geogta-

phy class, we stopped for dinner, which consisted, so some students

told me on the plane, of frogs’ legs. I thought I’d eaten chicken and

was shocked that it could have been frogs, since I’d never considered

frogs edible before. Even before I had time to digest that piece of

information, the pilot informed us that we were about to land in

New York. Buses picked us up from New York International Airport

(later tenamed for President Kennedy} and took us to various hotels

in Manhattan. As part of our orientation, we toured the United

Nations, where dignitaries welcomed us to the United States, and

we met other young Africans who had also just arrived to study.

Coming to New York City was like landing on the moon. Fortu-

nately, ] was constantly in the company of my friend Agatha Wan-

geci, with whom I had studied at St. Cecilia’s and Loreto-Limuru.

Both of us were to attend Mount St. Scholastica. Together we fig-

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ured out this strange city and shared our experiences. As we walked
the busy streets of New York, we were lucky not to be knocked over,
since we spent most of the time staring up at the skyscrapers, which
seemed to sway in the wind and touch the clouds.

Then there were the elevators! I had been in an elevator in
Nairobi when I had received instructions on how to get a visa for the
United States. But that elevator went only to the fourth floor. In
New York I rode in elevators to the twentieth and thirtieth floors at
lightning speed. I was convinced my stomach and heart would not
arrive at the same time as the rest of me: How relieved I was when I
reached the ground floor again and got out!

One of the things we had to do in New York was go shopping, of
course. This led to my first encounter with an escalator. My initial
reaction was to think of the irimii—powerful and noisy, slithering
between floors, coming from nowhere and returning to nowhere.
“Well,” I thought, sizing up the escalator, “everybody else is step-
ping on it, so I’d better do the same.” While I made it safely to the
next floor, one of my shoes didn’t and I looked back wondering how
I would recover it. I had no idea that there was another escalator
going down on the other side. Luckily, a good old New Yorker real-
ized my predicament and brought my shoe to me with a smile on his
face, [have never forgotten that man’s generosity and his warm wel-
come to the magic city. Neither have I forgotten that first encounter
with a moving staircase. Even today, I’m a little circumspect when I
get on an escalator. .

Another aspect that amazed Agatha and me about New York was
the.presence of black Americans. We could not believe that these
were Americans and that they were as dark as we were and didn’t
speak English with Kenyan accents! As a child in Kenya, I grew up
thinking there were only three types of people in the world: black
people, like me, pink people such as Europeans, and brown peo-
ple such as Indians, Goans, and those from the Seychelles. I had
assumed that all American Negroes, as we were taught to call them,
were light-skinned. Therefore, to arrive in New York and see people

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as black as me going about their business was a shock. Agatha and
I kept comparing some of them with people we knew at home:

“Doesn’t he remind you of so and so?” We smiled as we compared
the likenesses.

How little I knew about the Americas apart from what I learned
from my geography class: the Appalachians, the Rocky Mountains,
and the Andes; the Amazon rainforest, the prairies and the pampas

and the Great Lakes. I had also learned about the Mayflower, the
Civil War, and the Indians (although probably more from the cow-
boys’ point of view than theirs}, and I knew that the Americans had
fought a war for independence from the British in 1776. In those

days in Kenya, there were few radios, no television, and very few
films and little pop music to take America to every village. I found
myself ignorant about simple things, such as knowing that Coca-

Cola was an American drink and that Indians in Kenya and those in
America are different.

We didn’t spend long in New York City. Myself, Agatha, and a
young Kenyan man called Joseph Kang’atu boarded a Greyhound

bus with other students for our long journey to the Midwest, where
we would spend the next four years studying. It would take us two
days to get to Atchison on our bus, which was specially chartered to
transport us to various colleges. We traveled through New Jersey
to Pennsylvania and then to Ohio and Indiana. In the Midwest we
began, to pass miles and miles of flat land full of corn that was per-
fectly proportioned and ready for harvesting. I thought to myself,
“Lord, have mercy! Where did they get all this corn?” When I found
out that corn had come from the Americas and was not native to
Kenya, I was stunned.

At each stop a few more students left the bus, and by the time we
reached Indiana there were ten of us left. At one stop, we decided to
get a drink at a local café. We saw a big sign for Coca-Cola, which,

’ along with Fanta, was a very popular drink in Kenya—in fact, they
were the only drinks we recognized. While we girls looked around
the café for a place to sit, the boys went up to the counter to

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the drinks. A few moments later, however, they returned, empty-

handed.

“We can’t sit down and have a drink,” they told us.

“Why not?” we asked.

“Because we’re black,” they replied.

A lightbulb went on in my head. “Even here in America and even

in a small, open café!?”

It was explained to us that we could have a drink but only out-

side. “Why should we drink outside?” we said, outraged. “Let’s go.

Let’s get back on the bus.” So we did—without a drink. That was my

first encounter with racial discrimination in America. It was so

shocking because it was unexpected in my newfound home.

Years of colonial education on the subject of America had some-

how kept the African American part hidden from us. Even though

we studied the slave trade, the subject was taught in a way that did

not leave us appreciating its inhumanity. An African has to go to

America to understand slavery and its impact on black people~-not

only in Africa but also in the diaspora. It is in America that words

segrega-

tion,” “discrimination,” and “the ghetto” take on lives of their own.

wa,
such as “black,” “white,” “Negro,” “mulatto,” “skin color,

The Greyhound bus finally rumbled into Atchison, which is in the

northeastern corner of Kansas. When we arrived we found a small

town along the Missouri River, best known as the birthplace of

America’s pioneering female aviator, Amelia Earhart, and a one-time

hub of several railroads, including the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa

Fe line. Benedictines were among Atchison’s first settlers, establish-

ing St. Benedict’s College for men in 1858 and its sister college,

which became known as Mount St. Scholastica, for women in 1863.

The women’s college was popularly known as the Mount and the stu-

dents proudly referred to themselves as Mounties. The emblem for

both colleges was the raven, which I used to see everywhere I turned.

The reception we received at Mount St. Scholastica was won-

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derful: nothing to compare with the one we had gotten at the café

in Indiana. The other students had obviously been told that Agatha

and I were coming. They were very welcoming, exhibiting the over-

flowing enthusiasm typical of Americans. Throughout our stay, the

girls embraced us so warmly that I do not remember ever being

homesick or lonely. They truly made us feel at home.

We quickly became aware that election fever was sweeping the

country and the campus and that the Nixon-Kennedy electio
n was

less than two months away. The students knew that we were part of

the Kennedy Airlift and, even though I had no idea what Republi-

cans or Democrats represented, they assumed we were for Senator

Kennedy. The fact that he was a Catholic also added to the excite-

ment. Visiting local Democrats urged us to join the campaign and

asked us to speak at campus rallies supporting Kennedy..It was a

great introduction to campus culture—even before we unpacked, we

were plunged into the presidential campaign. We Kenyans on the

two campuses celebrated with everyone else when Kennedy won.

Just like the nuns at school in Kenya, I found the sisters at Mount

St. Scholastica very kind, and several became academic and personal

mentors and friends. Among them Sister Imogene, the college dean,

and Sister John Marie, my academic adviser and mentor in bio-

logical sciences, were wonderful people to be with. They gave me

a sense of belonging to the community and the feeling of being

at home, even though I was thousands of miles ‘from Kenya. Each

Christmas, Sister Marcella, who taught me home economics, would

make Agatha and me the most beautiful new dresses, taking great

care with the design and the sewing. I have never forgotten that ges-

ture or the times she and I would talk about my life in the United,

States and Kenya and what I hoped and dreamed of for my future.

My academic experience at Mount St. Scholastica was quite dif-

ferent from what I had known in Kenya. The workload was demand-

ing, although I made it to the dean’s list several times. I enjoyed

biology more than the chemistry I had focused on in high school,

so biology became my major, and I minored in-chemistry and Ger-

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man. The classroom presented challenges. Although the nuns were
surprised that Agatha and I could understand so much English, we
noticed the difference between speaking English as a foreign language
and being surrounded by native English speakers. Critical analysis
was not easy. We had little idea of English literature. The American
students knew more about it than we did and could relate culturally
to Shakespeare in a way we never could.

I worked hard at my studies and was pleased with the results,
The sisters wrote each semester to my parents to update them on my
progress. Since they couldn’t read English, my brother Nderitu trans-
lated the letters for them. He saved some letters from that period,
and I was amused to read so many years later what Sister Imogene
had written at the end of one semester: “Iam pleased to inform you
that your daughter is doing highly satisfactory work, She seems well
and happy and has made a most successful adjustment to life in the
U.S. We are proud and happy to have students from Africa in our col-
lege and we want you to know ‘that they are very fine representa-
tives of their people.” ‘

In one of my own letters to Nderitu, dated February 28, 1961, I
recounted my experiences of college life and my studies, as well as
my responsibilities to him as my oldest brother and to the family.
It is interesting to read this earnest, pious young woman’s words:
“Your description of the adventure to the Aberdares almost made
me homesick,” I told Nderitu, “This semester I am taking zoology,
psychology, scripture, English composition, modern European his-
tory, and sports. It’s quite a bit of work, enough to keep my little
brain busy.” :

I assured Nderitu that the college was treating me well. “The
nuns with whom I live are as nice as the ones I had at home. They
have a big heart for Africans.” The dean of the college was going to
send Nderitu a report and I was clearly concerned, “She will tell you
my behavior and such things as 1 should not do, Should you feel that
there is some weakness I… ask you kindly to let me. know and I
will do my best to put it right.” Finally, I sought to allay any con-
cerns he and my family might have. “Don’t worry about me, my

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AMERICAN DREAM

dear. God is taking care of me. Give my best love to my mother and

all the neighbors. . .. am as sound as a bell.”

I quickly realized that Mount St. Scholastica and St. Benedict’s,

although both Catholic’schools, were very different from St. Cecilia’s

and Loreto-Limuru. The education was broad-based and, on reflec-

tion, quite liberal. I marveled at the freedom that the students had—

young men and women kissing in public and watching films with

romantic scenes. In high school, we had seen Westerns and other

American and British films, but the romance had been blotted out

or edited. It astonished me to see young men and women walking

past the nuns holding-hands and the nuns not making any comment.

On the weekends, students held parties where men and women

danced—with each other.

In this and other ways, America was incredibly liberating. It was

also troubling. It made me think about what the nuns in Kenya had

told us. I began to ask myself, “Why was dancing so wrong? Why

was holding a boy’s hand so atrocious?” I came to understand that

my previous education had been very Victorian. I had been practi-

cally living the life of a nun, even though I hadn’t taken holy s.

When I arrived in Atchison I was a very strict and dogmatic

Catholic. This was the time leading up to the Second Vatican Coun-

cil (196g-1965] and support for reforms in the Catholic Church was

growing. At the Mount, I began to look at religion differently and to

examine the issues confronting people of faith. During Vatican II I

began to question my faith: not to the extent of losing it entirely, as

happened to some, but wondering why behavior we had been told

was wrong was now deemied acceptable by church authorities.

In my schools in Kenya, for instance, we never ate meat on Fri-

days, and suddenly there were no food restrictions. It used not to be

possible to take Holy Communion if you had eaten anything after

six o’clock the previous evening and now that limit was three hours.

Mass every Sunday had been compulsory, but now Catholics could

attend services on Saturday evening instead. The Mass had always

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been said in Latin, but now services in vernacular languages were
allowed. Even though Mass wasn’t compulsory at the Mount, ft
found myself attending it quite often, partly out of habit and also
because it was easy for me to get to the chapel. The Mass itself was
much more personal, with fewer directed prayers. We could follow it
in English in the prayer book rather than reciting the rosary ad
infinitum. Though some of these changes were relatively minor,
they made me think, Had God changed his mind? Was that possible?
All this was strange and discomforting, and forced me to reflect on
my faith.

The countryside in Kansas was also different from my home region,
which is full of hills and mountains. By contrast, Atchison is as flat
as a pancake. There were no hills for me to look up at in Kansas, but °
I did enjoy taking long walks along the Missouri River; known to me
from maps but now very real. Unlike in Kenya, near the Equator, the
seasons in Kansas are also very distinct. When we arrived in late
September, we found leaves of green, yellow, gold, radiant red, and
brown. Shortly after they dropped from the branches until each tree
looked naked and dead. Although leaves fell from wild fig and acacia
trees in Kenya, it was nothing to compare with the colorful leaves
gathered in heaps, flying in every direction at the slightest breath of
wind in Atchison. Never before had I seen so many leaves on the
ground at the same time. No wonder the season is known as the fall.

And then there was the snow! I had seen the white ice on top of
Mount Kenya and had not quite understood how it was frozen
water, but I had never seen snow fall. And nothing could have pre-
pared me for the cold weather when it finally arrived in earnest
in January. I had never been as cold as I was during those winter
months. Fortunately, the sisters made sure I was warmly dressed
and, despite the cold, I do not remember being sick while I was in
Atchison.

Another unforgettable experience of Atchison was the murmur of
the winds, blowing through the branches of the leafless trees. I had

AMERICAN DREAM

geen trees sway and dance to the wind, but only in Kansas did the

wind whisper in the dead of winter. At first it seemed eerie, but I

soon learned to love that sound, which reminded me of violins. [had

never heard anything like that whisper, and still haven’t anywhere

in the world.

Spring was also very new to my senses. It reminded me of the

excitement of seeing seeds germinating after the rains fell at home. I

would watch as plants emerged from the ground once the snow had

receded. Buds appeared on twigs and branches and before you knew

jt trees would be clad again with beautiful green leaves, all at once.

Back home leaves would grow and fall throughout the year, so there

were never trees uniformly green or bare. What a miracle!

Summer in Kansas was hot and humid. That first summer, Aga-

tha and I worked on campus. These must have been the days before

air conditioners, because I remember Agatha and I trying to work

with one hand while we were fanning ourselves with the other.

waving hot air onto our faces and wishing for the cold highland air

of home.

The Americans were baffled. “Why are you fanning yourself?”

they asked me. “We thought that you’d enjoy this weather.”

Tlooked at them askance as sweat streamed down my face and my

back. “Let me tell you,” I said. “I’ve never experienced such miser-

able weather anywhere in the world.”

“Well, where else have you been?” They laughed.

“Well, you have a point,” I replied, appreciating that this was only

the second place outside the Kenyan highlands I had ever lived. Ever

since then I have appreciated even more the near perfect weather

in the Kenyan highlands. These seasonal changes also helped me

understand why people outside the tropics like to bask in the sun
even when their skin is peeling off!

In those days, it was not possible for us Kenyans to go home and

visit: The journey took too long and it was very expensive. We

resigned ourselves to the fact that we would go home only when we

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completed our studies and, in the meantime, we consoled ourselves

with letters, although they could take as long as three to six months

to reach Kenya or the United States, Since then, the revolution in

communication has been extraordinary: telephones, including cell

phones, computers, faxes, and color television have taken informa-

tion technology to levels unthinkable forty years ago during my

days in Atchison.

Luckily, I made some good friends at the Mount. On off-hours

during the school year my friends and I would go window-shopping

in Atchison. I couldn’t afford to buy anything, but we enjoyed look-

ing at the latest styles of clothes. One friend with whom I have

stayed in touch is Florence (Conrad) Salisbury. She became a real sis-

ter. During most Christmases, Thanksgivings, and Easter holidays,

Florence would take me to her family’s house near Wichita.

I felt completely at home with Florence’s many siblings and lov-

ing parents. J would spend evenings chatting with her father at the

kitchen table as we sipped coffee and nibbled on biscuits that we all

had participated in baking. The Conrads’ house became like my sec-

ond home in Kansas. If I was not there making Christmas cookies

with Florence and her sisters, ] was back on campus doing the same

with the nuns in the kitchen. Or I would be packing books with my

great friend Sister Gonzaga, the registrar, to send to her favorite

schools in the Philippines.

Another friend was Margaret Malone from Texas. She was so fond

of her state that she kept giving me presents decorated with the Yel-

low Rose of Texas, which was also the nickname I gave her, since

she was a beautiful blonde. During my third year at the Mount

another student from Kenya arrived to join us, Mary Paul Gakunga.

Together, Agatha, Mary Paul, and I formed a great team and had a

very happy life both on campus and off. We have remained friends

and when we get together in Kenya we often reminisce about our

experiences at the Mount. ,

Among my other friends at the Mount were fellow international

students from China, India, and Japan. There was a certain bond

among the foreign students and sometimes we would be inter-

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viewed by the local press and asked to speak about our countries at

Jocal schools and functions, We also put on an international night

at the college so we could share our national heritage. I remem-

ber dressing up with a sheet over my shoulder to look like a typical

Kikuyu girl and teaching some of my friends dances from back home

~ . ag a way of sharing my culture with other Mounties.

We valued such events because they gave a sense of belonging to

our adopted community even though we were many miles from our

own. Although the alumnae office tried to keep us informed about

one another, years of separation and the responsibilities of family

made it difficult to keep in touch. In …