Kenya: Struggling with Trees

Living in the Western world makes me, and I assume most people, take daily things in our lives for granted which in addition, I think has caused us to over consume and become selfish with our need for more. After viewing the film, The Vision of Wangari Maathai, it shows the effects of our selfishness. Western countries go into low income countries in Africa and export their resources for us to use with little regards of how it effects the people and the land that is used to export the items that we require, in this case tea and coffee. While we buy our expensive coffees and teas, it hardly crosses our minds that to get these drinks, people are starving and dying. I imagine that people do not consider where the coffee and teas come from because feeling guilty about drinking a coffee because someone far away who they will never come into contact with is dying as a result, does not fit into the Western societies fast paced consumer life.

            In Kenya, the lives of people there are very different. They cannot afford the luxury of spending five dollars on coffee. In fact, they get paid very little to work on the coffee and tea plantations. These plantations not only pay very little but they are also destroying the lands and way of life for Keynesians. As a result of creating the plantations, many trees and forests were cut down, which resulted in the drying up of rivers and made it difficult to sustain lives. Without the forests, the people in Kenya cannot cook proper food because they do not have firewood anymore. This results in not being able to get proper nutrition and the women cooking for their family now have to make carb rich food instead of vitamin rich foods, resulting in malnutrition and death. 

            This situation would have continued to get worse and worse if many women in Kenya did not start planting trees. This movement started to regrow the trees and forests that were destroyed and cut down the plantations. Though Kenya has yet to be restored to its full capability and may never be able to sustain the population like it once did, it is in the process. Perhaps our Western consumer society should do more to help this process, as we are the ones that created the demand that destroyed Kenya’s forest which caused malnutrition for many, if not most, of Kenya’s population. 

Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai. Prod. Dir. Lisa Merton and Alan Dater. Marlboro Productions, 2008.