Maathai shunned elitist life to stand for ordinary people

She was a woman of the grassroots, in the way that word is properly defined, not the way we often use it now.

She was to be found in the villages, wearing ordinary kitenges and braids, planting trees with ordinary women. (SEE IN PICTURES: Wangari Maathai)

Her whole deportment was like that. Not for her the designer outfits of the “accomplished” women and their clipped English accents.

As the first Kenyan woman to earn a PhD, she had a glittering academic career open for her.

But save for a brief spell as a university professor, she chose to devote her life to something else — the greening of the planet. This is what ended up earning her world renown and recognition.

As she said at the launch of her autobiography, Unbowed, she had never dreamed that “the little girl growing up in Nyeri” would one day be regularly feted by kings and presidents and Oprah Winfreys and what have you. Or become the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

President Daniel arap Moi in the late 1980 scolded people he claimed had “dudus (insects) in their heads.”

He was referring to Prof Maathai who was leading a feisty crusade against the construction of an ego-driven, 60-storey Kanu complex at Nairobi’s Uhuru Park.

The all-powerful Kanu monolith eventually had to eat humble pie and abandon the project after a public ground-breaking ceremony.

Yes, it is such people driven by “dudus” who ultimately change their countries — and their world.