Whispers of The Hummingbird

In honor of the late Wangari Maathai’s legacy, and to celebrate her birthday, I spoke to women who embody Maathai’s ethos of perseverance, practicality and women’s empowerment in the global transition to a sustainable future.

There is an often repeated the notion within the environmental movement that in developing countries, and across African nations in particular, there is little sustainability effort to speak of beyond the environmental practices of indigenous peoples. Dr. Musonda Mumba, a UN expert on climate change and ecosystem-based adaptation who lives in Nairobi explained, “that view is exactly what most people have for a continent that’s not a country but a region with very diverse, incredibly different countries and ecological regions.”

In an interview conducted over email, Dr. Mumba described her view of sustainability work; “There are ‘clusters’ of movements in the different sub-regions of the continent. The only challenge is that they may or may not be communicating with each other.” Adding that social media provides an important tool for widespread environmental organizing efforts, Dr. Mumba, who works on climate adaptation in the mountain ecosystems of Peru, Uganda and Nepal, also sees a need for unity across multi-dimensional environmental groups. “The ambition therefore would be to have a collective voice even though people reside in incredibly different locales: forests, drylands, wetlands and coastal area,” she said, in acknowledgment of regional and local differences in language, dialect and perhaps most importantly for sustainability work, ecosystem. But it’s not just UN academics who are continuing Maathai’s vision.

While her work with the students is focused on learning how to grow food sustainably and providing tangible agricultural skills, Tetteh also has a more holistic view to environmental education. Through self-reflective writing exercises and even some yoga techniques, students are learning the basics of organic gardening and the importance of the environment to human wellness.

For Tetteh, the sustenance of environmental work lies in emotional and personal connection. In our conversation, she emphasised the importance of fostering both mutual trust and self-esteem; “I’m nurturing some small whispers of environment and health, and hopefully the children’s confidence to think and act on those things, seeing themselves as agents.”

The hummingbird flies above this eclectic mix of animals, turning away from her overwhelmed forest companions to travel toward a nearby stream. Once there she takes a single drop of water in her beak and flies back to drop it on the fire. Travelling back and forth as fast as she can, the hummingbird continues to bring water drops from the stream, dropping them into the fire each time. All the while the other animals, even the much bigger ones like the elephants with big trunks that could carry far more water, look on helplessly. They tell the hummingbird she simply can’t make a difference here; “you’re too little, and your beak — so small!” In Maathai’s narration, the hummingbird turns to the animals and says proudly, “I’m doing the best I can!”

“That — to me — is what all of us should do. We should always feel like a hummingbird,” Maathai ends, tilting her chin up to the camera. “I may feel insignificant, but I certainly don’t want to be like the animals watching as the planet goes down the drain.”

For Tetteh, the question of impact is a balancing act. “A year ago I was like I want roll out a program across all secondary schools in Ghana,” she says, “and now I’m like okay start small — one single school, one group of students, okay what am I doing session four.” Ultimately, her focus is on the depth and sustainability of the program; “It’s important to me that [my students] know that I care on a personal level.”

Focusing on the beauty of the work that they do is a sentiment running through both Dr. Mumba and Tetteh’s stories. “At the end of the day it gives me joy to garden and plant,” Yvette laughed in response to a question on what brought her to Accra’s Cambridge school, “and even when I’m really tired and stressed its energising to see the students engage in planting seeds, and tilling the soil.”

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