07 Reading DIA 2 2017-18 a Child of Kenya

07 Reading DIA 2 2017-18 A Child of Kenya The passage below is an imagined version of a day in the life of the young Wangari Maathai. I am Wangari Maathai, and early in the morning, I rise from my bed when I hear the rooster crowing. Our little round house is made of wood and covered with straw and leaves, and although it keeps out the rain, I can sense everything outside. Sometime I hear a leopard roaring in the night. I stretch and hurry out to where Mama is cooking the ugali for our breakfast. It’s like a porridge made from the maize we grow in our garden. Today we have the sweet, ripe tomatoes I picked yesterday to accompany it. The sun is just rising, and far to the west, I see the light shining on the peaks of Mount Kenya. After we have eaten our morning meal, Mama, my sisters, and I walk to our garden plots. Here we grow ample food to feed our large family. Today we will hoe the weeds from the bean and potato plants. As the sun climbs higher in the sky, sweat begins to trickle down my neck. But I am used to this work, and usually I distract myself from the heat by humming a little song as I chop my hoe into the dark soil of our plot. Sometimes I listen to the birds singing and calling in the forest. It is wondrous to live amid the lush trees and grasses of my country, Kenya. When the sun is high overhead, we stop to have our midday meal. I fetch a bucket of water for us to drink from the stream that runs nearby. The water is so clear that I can see frog eggs clustered on the waterweeds. The eggs are perfectly round like beads, and in my imagination, they are a lovely necklace for a mermaid until they hatch and swim away. After we eat, we hide from the heat in the shade of the fig tree beside our house. It is the dry season now, and there will be no clouds in the sky until the monsoons return. Then there will be a deluge of rain, and our bare legs will be wading through mud. As I lie in the grass and stare up at the wide boughs of the tree, I think about tomorrow, when the familiar rhythm of my days will begin to change. It will be my first day of school. My big brother has attended the local school for years; he reads me books and sometimes teaches me what he has learned. “Wangari,” he says, “did you know there are people in other parts of the world who take trips in airplanes and live in giant houses made of stones?” I think that someday I would like to visit those places, but for now, it will be enough just to leave the daily life I know. Page 2 GO ON My brother can write beautifully. Last week, he said, “Come here, Wangari, and I’ll teach you how to write your name. You’ll have to do that when you go to school, you know.” Then he took a stick and scraped my name in the dust beside our house. “Now you try it,” he told me. I practiced over and over. My brother encouraged me, but I wasn’t sure. I knew my scratches didn’t look as neat as his, and my stomach began to churn when I thought about writing in front of my new teacher. Most of the girls I know have to stay at home and work on the farm, so I am fortunate. But how will it feel to be the only girl in the school? What if the others judge me before giving me a chance? I promise myself that I will be an excellent student so that everyone will know that girls are just as intelligent as boys. My sisters and I labor again in the fields until late in the afternoon. As we head back to our house, I see my brother returning from the market. “Hello, little Wangari!” he calls. “Are you ready to join me at school tomorrow?” My heart beats faster as I think about walking the path to the school in the morning. Trying to collect myself, I stare at the dusty ground and trace a capital W in the sand with my foot. It looks like two birds flying side by side. I picture my brother and me and say, “Yes, I think I am.” Page 3 GO ON 1 Which sentence from “A Child of Kenya” best shows how Wangari Maathai’s family is different from many in her village? A “I stretch and hurry out to where Mama is cooking the ugali for our breakfast.” B “When the sun is high overhead, we stop to have our midday meal.” C “My big brother has attended the local school for years; he reads me books and sometimes teaches me what he has learned.” D “Most of the girls I know have to stay at home and work on the farm, so I am fortunate.” 2 How does Wangari Maathai’s older brother most affect Wangari's opinion of herself in “A Child of Kenya”? A He shames her for not being educated. B He helps her believe that she can be a good student. C He makes her proud of the work she does on the farm. D He makes her think that she must rely on him for everything. Page 4 GO ON Wangari Maathai Wangari Maathai was born in Kenya on April 1, 1940. Her family farmed the fertile soil of this country in East Central Africa. Even as a small child, Maathai appreciated the beauty of her nation. Mount Kenya rose to the west, an extinct volcano towering in the sky that had long ago helped produce the rich farm soil. Clean and clear streams ran throughout the area, supplying water for both people and animals. In Maathai’s traditional Kenyan family, it was expected that she would not attend school. Young girls stayed at home to help with the family farm until they married. But Maathai was extremely intelligent, and she felt it was unfair to deny an education to girls. She enlisted her older brother’s help, and he was able to convince their parents that she should have the chance to be educated. Maathai began attending the village school at age seven, and her teachers were surprised at how quickly she learned. In fact, she was so successful at her studies that when she was twenty years old, she earned a scholarship to attend college in the United States. Maathai seized this opportunity because she knew that by studying abroad, she would gain knowledge and skills to help her make improvements in her country. Maathai attended college in the United States during the time of the Vietnam War. Many Americans were protesting the war because they did not agree with the policies of their government. Maathai was surprised because in Kenya, the government was rarely questioned. Later in her life, Maathai said that her experiences in the United States helped her realize that people can speak out against government decisions they feel are wrong. Maathai returned to Kenya when she was thirty-one years old and entered the University of Nairobi. There she earned a doctorate in veterinary anatomy, which is the study of the structure of animals, and she became the first female professor at the university. Still very interested in improving her country, Maathai joined a group that was trying to make the lives of African women better. While working with this group, she traveled to rural villages and saw how difficult life was for farming families, especially for the women. She became upset when she saw how many women in her country were struggling. It was difficult for them to get an education and earn a living. In the villages, Maathai organized meetings where she spoke to the people about bettering the lives of women in Kenya. In her travels, she discovered that many of the small farms, such as the one she had grown up on, were gone. In their place were huge plantations that produced crops such as coffee and tea, not for Kenya, but to export to other countries. The plantation crops used up all the nutrients that plants required, and farmers could no longer Page 5 GO ON grow food for their own families. The forest trees had been cut down, so there was no firewood for cooking or heating. There was no grass left for livestock to graze on, and the clear, clean streams were being polluted with chemicals used on the plantations. People and animals could no longer drink the water. While the plantation owners pointed to how much money they were bringing into Kenya, Maathai saw how the village people were suffering because of the changes. Maathai came up with a plan to change what she saw as a tragedy against the land and the people—and especially the women—of Kenya. She would plant trees! At first members of the government laughed at her, but soon she had founded the Green Belt Movement. This group taught villagers to plant trees and to gather and plant seeds. As the Green Belt Movement spread, more and more trees were planted. Their roots helped keep the rich Kenyan soil from washing away in the monsoon rains or blowing away during the dry season.

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