Welcome to the history tricks, where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.

Hello, welcome to the show. This is part two of our coverage of Wangari Matai. As a short recap,

Wangari was Kenyan-born, she was an indigenous Kikuyu, and she had opportunities that were not available to all, especially first-born daughters in large families, which is exactly what she was.

Her heritage made her appreciate and respect nature, while her education, first in a Catholic girl school in Kenya, then college and grad school in the United

States, prepared her for a career in the sciences. We left Wangari at the age of 26. She's a research

assistant at the Department of Veterinary Anatomy at the University College of Nairobi, and she's living

in a newly independent Kenya.

One of the first things she did with her independence was to register to begin her PhD work

at the University College of Nairobi, and one of the next things she did was the ultimate

symbol of freedom, at least for young people, a car.

So she bought the car and then she learned how to drive it.

Her life was so different than it would have been if she had been born just a few years later,

like her younger sisters had.

She felt an enormous responsibility for these sisters in particular.

They had not been able to get the same education that she had

due to the timing of the Mao Mal Revelyan that had sort of trapped them out on the land

without access to schooling. And so, as if she didn't have enough to do now as a PhD candidate,

as well as her more than full-time job,

Wangari rented a shop with an apartment in the back for her sisters to live and work in

and paid to send them both to secretarial college so that they could eventually support themselves.

So she passed on the tradition of the older siblings sacrificing for the

younger. She spent early mornings going to markets, you know the wholesale markets that you go to

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