Encounter 09 · 09 of 42 · 5 June 1977
Seven trees
On World Environment Day, 1977, a procession in Nairobi planted seven trees. They did not know whether the gesture would outlive the afternoon.
Kamukunji Park, Nairobi
Count the tins before you count the future forest.
Rural Kenyan women had been saying that streams were poorer, firewood farther, soil thinner. Wangarĩ Maathai, working with the National Council of Women of Kenya, proposed planting trees. On 5 June 1977, World Environment Day, the NCWK walked from the Kenyatta International Conference Centre to Kamukunji Park and planted seven trees in honor of community leaders.
What they knew
- The day’s public act: a procession, seven trees, a park on the edge of the city.
- The practical hope: nurseries, native seeds, women’s labor paid a small amount per surviving tree.
What they could not know
- Whether anyone would keep watering.
- Whether a tree-planting group would become a political problem for the state.
- Whether seven trees in a park would be the end of an afternoon, or a method.
Rural Kenyan women had been specific: streams poorer, firewood farther, soil thinner. Wangarĩ Maathai, working with the National Council of Women of Kenya, had a university post and a proposal that sounded small. Plant trees. Pay women a little for the ones that lived.
On 5 June 1977, World Environment Day, the NCWK walked from the Kenyatta International Conference Centre to Kamukunji Park and planted seven trees in honor of community leaders. The work was not only a feeling, and it was not only Maathai’s.
Later there would be a movement, harassment, jail, a prize. Those sentences are later. This afternoon is seven seedlings. Whether they would take was not yet a method, and not yet a name.
What was at stake
In 1977: time, municipal patience, and the women who would do the work. Later stakes (land, dissent, bodily harm) were real, and must not be read back as a promised plot.
The next move
They planted. Then they asked other women to plant.
What they had
- A park
- Seven seedlings
- A council of women
- Complaints from the countryside that were specific, not abstract
What happened
The movement grew, was harassed, survived, and became famous. Fame is not the 1977 event. The 1977 event is seven trees and a question about whether civic planting was a serious next move.
Whether seven trees in a park would be the end of an afternoon, or a method.
Private. No one else will see it.