BBC BBC.

BBC.

Hello and thank you for downloading witness from the BBC World Service with me Alex Last and today we tell the story of the Kenyan ecologist Wangary Methai, who in 2004 became

the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. My mother was often asked, why are you afraid? You are fearless. How can you do all these things and she said no I was afraid but

she said what needed to be done was so compelling that I had to do it. She grew up surrounded by nature,

she grew up surrounded by nature,

surrounded by the beauty of nature.

Wangeiro Mathai is Wangari's daughter.

She grew up in Nieri, in the highlands of Kenya,

which she considered to be the most beautiful part of this world.

She described in such vivid terms her encounter with tadpoles,

rapids around rocks, and she would spend hours and forget that she had been sent to fetch water

and she would spend time playing with the environment. I think that had a lot to do with it.

I also remember her describing her mother being a farmer, her mother grew all the food that they ate and

she had a small piece of land within hers where she asked my mother to grow her crops.

And my mother enjoyed so much her interaction

with the soil.

It was clear early on that Wengari Methai

was very bright. She goes away to school to university out in the

United States and she comes back and joins the university as a very young member

of academic staff. She got her PhD in veterinary anatomy and became a professor at the University of Nairobi.

During her work, she noticed that population growth,

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