A Quote by Wangari Maathai
I'm sure the government of Qatar is not coming in to grow food for the people of Kenya; it's coming to grow food to sell. If it can also sell to the people of Kenya, well, then good. I think that the moves can be helpful, but I think that the history that Africa knows, as I say in my book, has been a history of exploitation.
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For example, they have land. The government of Qatar wants to lease the Tana River delta, which is in Kenya, from the Kenyan government, so that they can produce food there. People in Kenya need food. We have people who have studied agriculture. Why is it that if we really need food, we cannot go into the delta and develop our own food?
Living in South Africa and periodically coming back to Kenya, my relationship with officialdom in Kenya was just insane.
Why do we have to have people come from afar to come and grow food for us, or to grow food to sell to us? It is partly because we are almost becoming used to people doing things for us. Like somebody else is going to solve that problem for us. And that to me is very disempowering system.
I think everybody knows that Africa is in a very deep crisis. There is economic misery and social deprivation and that Africa needs help but the question then is how. And also we have to make sure that we don't repeat old mistakes; this help is only short term. It doesn't address Africa's long-term fundamental needs and how to put Africa on the right track to development. What Africa needs to do is to grow, to grow out of debt.
My father was a professor of political science and also a young politician fighting for democracy in Kenya, and when things got ugly, he went into political exile in Mexico. Then I moved back to Kenya shortly after I turned one, and I grew up in Kenya.
Over 80% of the poor are people who have small plots of land and grow their own food and they don't grow enough to sell much into the marketplace. So they will be hit hard by the worst in climate. They really get hit hard starting in the 20-year time frame and thereafter.
History proves that dictatorships do not grow out of strong and successful governments, but out of weak and helpless ones. If by democratic methods people get a government strong enough to protect them from fear and starvation, their democracy succeeds; but if they do not, they grow impatient. Therefore, the only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over its government.
The White House announced that President Obama will attend a summit in Kenya this July. When asked if he's ever been to Kenya, Obama said, 'Of course. I was born - no, bored - over there. There's nothing to do in Kenya.'
I was in Kenya when I read 'Catch-22,' and I associate this book that has nothing to do with Kenya - whenever I think of 'Catch-22,' I think of Nairobi.
The two biggest hits (by Machito)... were about that enduring Cuban song topic-food: 'Sopa de pichn' [pigeon soup] and 'Paella'. If you think that all songs about food are double entendres for sex... Well, maybe all songs about food can be double entendres, but in many periods of Cuban history, for many people, food has been harder to get, and the subject of more fantasies, than sex.
In Kenya, one of our biggest exports is coffee. Where do you grow coffee? You grow coffee in the land. To be able to grow coffee you need rain, you need special kinds of soils that are found on hillsides, and that means you have to protect that land from soil erosion so you don't lose the soil. You also want to make sure that when the rains come you're going to be able to hold that water and have it go into the ground so that the streams and the rivers keep flowing and the ground is relatively humid for these plants.
I think that idealism is always there in America. It's a spirit that's been subverted lately, and sold down the river to the contractors, what with the privatizing of all aspects of the government. It's so cold and cynical - all dollars and cents and parcel it up and sell it out and downgrade it and outsource it. They don't consider what it does to people. I think the spirit of this country is finally coming back, and hopefully it will triumph.
When you hear a lot of stories about Africa, and you get to a place like Kenya and other countries like that, where they think the same way we do, I was happy to find that the Schedule of Rights that I drew for the Kenyan Government was working very well.
There's also a growing trend toward having gardens in schools to literally show kids where food comes from by having them grow and prepare their own food. There's also a movement that's bringing farmers into schools and creating relationships between local farms and local cafeterias, so that instead of frozen mystery meat, you have fresh produce that's coming from the area that has a name and a face associated with it.
Even people who like the kind of food on offer, are coming to recognize that eating from this food chain is not conducive to good health.
American business at this point is really about developing an idea, making it profitable, selling it while it's profitable and then getting out or diversifying. It's just about sucking everything up. My idea was: Enjoy baking, sell your bread, people like it, sell more. Keep the bakery going because you're making good food and people are happy.
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