THE SYMBOLISM OF WANGARI MAATHAI’S CREMATION.

THE SYMBOLISM OF WANGARI MAATHAI’S CREMATION.
Today one of the most iconic women of our time was laid to rest; well not quite not, in the traditional sense. She was cremated in keeping with her last wishes. That she lived before her times more so in the African continent not up for debate. She rises on a pedestal, she plies in her own league, has no contemporaries not in current African statesmen. (I will consciously use the present tense even though the aforementioned “Tree Mother of Africa” is now deceased.
Hers is a life time that was filled with a zestful pursuit of what she believed in ‘the pursuit of happiness’. She was the first East African woman to achieve a PhD, succeeded in lobbying against the construction of a Sixty story complex on Uhuru Park’s Freedom Corner a venue, she successfully organized the mothers of political prisoner into a nude protest, sad as it was into a nude protest in the early 1990’s something that led to the release of the political prisoners incarcerated by the former autocratic Moi regime. Her efforts though were vindicated when she became the first African Woman to win the Nobel peace prize.
In keeping with her keeping with her last wishes; her family, peers and friends were left with no recourse but honour her last wishes. She had previously observed that it was wasteful and immoral to cut down trees to inter the dead. We the living require trees. Thus in keeping with her desires her clay was carried from the Lee Funeral home, not in an ornate coffin of gold and teak but rather in a simple casket made from papyrus. She further moved away from contemporary cultural customs by directing that her remains be cremated at the Kariakor crematorium, rather the conventional customary or Christian burial.
This decision has been the subject of debate in and around the country. While the conservatives bemoaned this decision, some of us, the objective ones could not help but marvel at her conscious and genuine love for nature. Yet superseding all this debate about her passionate love for the environment was the symbolism regarding her last rites.
The superficial observer might have dismissed her as some whose aim was to go against convention. Yet in the foresight that characterized her life she had been foresee what a conventional burial would have meant for her and her course. In death as in her life she had refused to be confined within the rigid confines of a grave. She had decided that her spirit, her zest her verve would not be confined in a in a grave, decorated or not.
It gives me great hope to know that while the smoke from the crematorium wafts above up into the heavens, it carries with it her spirit, her soul envelopes the world like the sky. In death she gives us, the living lessons to refuse to get tied down by physical, cultural, religious or any other constrains that might tie up our desires and our aspirations within ourselves.
Wangari Maathai’s humming bird analogy is a harbinger of hope for all those of us who want to bring progressive change in our society.
A huge forest caught fire and started burning down, as the animals stood aside stupefied and watching helplessly, a small humming bird ran into the stream and carried water in her beak and decided to try and extinguish the fire. Back and forth she went from the stream to the burning forest. The big stupefied animals started mocking her, “What are you doing, your beak and feathers are too small.”
“I am doing the best I can,” the humming bird answered.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGMW6YWjMxw