Taking Root: The Vision Of Wangari Maathai. Filmmakers: Alan Dater, Lisa Merton, 2008.

Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai. Filmmakers: Alan Dater, Lisa Merton, 2008.

The documentary tells the inspiring story of the Green Belt Movement of Kenya and its founder Wangari Maathai, the first environmentalist and first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

The U.S.- educated Professor Maathai discovered her life’s work by reconnecting with the rural women with whom she had grown up. Their lives had become intolerable: they were walking longer distances for firewood, clean water was scarce, the soil was disappearing from their farms, and their children were suffering from malnutrition. Maathai thought to herself, “Well, why not plant trees?” She soon discovered that tree planting had a ripple effect of empowering change. Countering the devastating cultural effects of colonialism, Maathai began teaching communities about self-knowledge as a path to change and community action. The women worked successively against deforestation, poverty, ignorance, embedded economic interests, and violent political oppression. They became a national political force that helped to bring down Kenya’s 24-year dictatorship -Kanopy.

good essays i’ve read this year

“the siren song” by nina maclaughlin

“out there: on not finishing” by devin kelly

“illuminating kirinyaga: meaing and knowing in mount kenya’s forests” by tristan mcconnell

“on the igbo art of storytelling” by ikechukwu ogbu

“poetry fills tehran streets as iranians adapt nowruz rituals to corona restrictions” by alex shams

“writing emails to my late father” by krista stevens

“panic is worse than pain: how fiction failed me after trauma” by jenn ashworth

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reputation3ra

1 year ago

Supernatural / Dean & Cas // Love Of The Wolf By Hélène Cixous

Supernatural / Dean & Cas // Love Of The Wolf by Hélène Cixous

Happy birthday @deansmithfag!

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reputation3ra

2 years ago

i love tumblr because sometimes i get an urge to rb posts about something nobody likes and everyone just politely ignores me. everyone's like oh he's fallen into madness again, he'll be fine later i guess

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reputation3ra

6 months ago

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reputation3ra

2 years ago

somedays my heart feels so close to the surface like it wants to take me somewhere and is tired of the limitations of my body, of my feet always walking in the wrong direction. this isn’t really an original thought. i have told you this before. someone almost loved me and they come to me in dreams even now but i punish my daytime mind for any thoughts of soccer or duvet covers or carrot cake and i never think about him except when it is dark out and i am in the backseat of the car and no one can see the alternate life passing through me, the one where he laughs forever and i press my ear as close as i can because i am tired of the limitations of my body. someday things will be different. the losses will fall off of me like particles from another world, landing on a small unsuspecting planet. i will garden and have at least one big window where i can see the sky and have the good sense to look. but today i asked God to empty my heart of whatever wasn’t meant for it and he is still in there somewhere, occupying a small space in a big way. if i let myself reach out to touch it then i would probably find out that there’s small space inside of him too that flinches when he looks at the moon. of course it doesn’t help to know that. it doesn’t help to know that the dark sky is a cauldron we both sit in to punish ourselves for the life we didn’t have.

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reputation3ra

2 years ago