Women Academics From Kenya

"Life will always offer many more chances, so when they come your way, grab them."

"Getting a first class is not as hard as people think! It actually depends on you as a person. You must be motivated by something or someone greater."

"A degree can be just a paper, what matters is whether or not you can deliver."

"Everything is business. Whatever profession you are in, you can still open a business in that field. Even if you don’t do it today you can still go into business after you retire."

"Everybody can take everything from you, but they cannot take what is in your head. Even if they burn your certificate, you will still have the knowledge and skills."

"Students from private colleges drop out of school because they are sidelined by Higher Education Loan Board (Helb), unlike their counterparts in Public universities and colleges and private universities."

"I’ve had all sorts of horrible experiences where I’ve tried to speak to a head of department and they’ve just said, 'This is part of what you have to deal with.' I don’t think anybody would ever be so blasé about it now. I think it’s changing, but I don’t know to what extent or whether it’s changing quickly enough."

"As a black woman from a single-parent, working-class background I’m very conscious that diversity is sometimes skewed to a very narrow interpretation – it’s generally gender diversity, so racial, social class and other forms of diversity get put on the back foot. That is changing, but it’s changing very slowly."

"It sounds all really easy, but actually I didn’t have a plan for any of this. I don’t have academics in my family, so I had no example of how this is supposed to work. It’s very difficult for me, but I’ve been really fortunate to do something I genuinely like. I can put in the extra hours, and I don’t mind doing lots of reading or teaching because I genuinely like it."

"And that’s the key thing, you can have a great institution with great policies but a line manager who absolutely doesn’t recognise that you are human, and that you are capable of having a family and doing your research well."

"It really matters that you work with people who have the same values as you, and who are genuinely interested in creating a good working environment. I think some academic institutions and departments can be quite dysfunctional, with egos and difficult personalities, and nothing creative can grow in that environment."

"I was trying to find other places in Africa to continue my work. Wellcome were supportive – 'If you need to go to another location, if you need to have interruption of studies'. At the same time I felt like I really should go back [to Kenya]. I owed it to the people I was working with who had spent hours of their time with me. Then Wellcome were really helpful in supporting me to find another supervisor as well."

"The wheels came off completely. I felt like I had to start from scratch."

"I was going into people’s houses where there were really challenging social problems. Those kinds of challenges really made me question the data I was collecting and why."

"I was fortunate enough to work on two long-term projects which gave me quite a lot of security. I did try for PhDs in that time, but either there wasn’t anything that I was overly interested in, or the things I was interested in I wasn’t successful in getting."

"My time away on maternity leave had really been seen as writing me off. ‘That’s it now, we might never see her again,’ that kind of attitude. I found that very difficult."

"Everything started to feel like it was falling apart. Kenya was the main location for my PhD and it didn’t look like I was going to be able to go back safely."

"You find yourself wondering what makes a society work and why this society is different to another one."

"I left friends and colleagues behind, not sure whether they were going to be OK. I didn’t want to leave, I didn’t believe what I was seeing. I didn’t ever think that I would see dead people in the streets, or face threats of physical violence. It was a very, very dark time."

"I’m very conscious that diversity is sometimes skewed to a very narrow interpretation- it’s generally gender diversity, so racial, social class and other forms of diversity get put on the back foot. That is changing, but it’s changing very slowly."

"I thought 'the worst that can happen is that they say I’m not ready', which is fine. For me everything was about the idea – if the idea is strong then you can find ways to provide the infrastructure for it."

"I didn’t want to just launch into something and reinvent the wheel, I wanted to find out some of the issues they had, so that I could try and set my project up in the best possible way. That’s been really helpful and people were really generous with their time."

"Most academics don’t have a lot of management experience or training. We can try and manage our own careers, but it’s very different to trying to manage other people’s. We can try and manage our own careers, but it’s very different to trying to manage other people’s."

"This is an exciting time, and that’s what gives me energy. "I’m really happy that I’ve stuck with sociology. I love what I do and I have done since I was 14 years old and I picked up my first sociology book. The idea that I can do this for a living is just so wild."

"We can try and manage our own careers, but it’s very different to trying to manage other people’s."

"It really matters that you work with people who have the same values as you, and who are genuinely interested in creating a good working environment."

"Attitudes are changing, but there are still pockets in academia that definitely see having children and a successful career as incompatible."

"The idea that there is bullying in academia isn’t new to anybody, but the discussion of it is new and the idea that you don’t have to put up with it is new. It’s important that students and junior members of staff know that because they are often the most vulnerable."

"I think academia is just still very conservative in the way that people are hired and promoted."

"It was a huge leap up,but I didn’t think about it too much because I would find a way to talk myself out of doing it."

"Human rights are not things that are put on the table for people to enjoy. These are things you fight for and then you protect."

"In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground- a time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now."

"We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own—indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty, and wonder."

"Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven't done a thing. You are just talking."

"As I conclude I reflect on my childhood experience when I would visit a stream next to our home to fetch water for my mother. I would drink water straight from the stream. Playing among the arrowroot leaves I tried in vain to pick up the strands of frogs’ eggs, believing they were beads. But every time I put my little fingers under them they would break. Later, I saw thousands of tadpoles: black, energetic and wriggling through the clear water against the background of the brown earth. This is the world I inherited from my parents. Today, over 50 years later, the stream has dried up, women walk long distances for water, which is not always clean, and children will never know what they have lost. The challenge is to restore the home of the tadpoles and give back to our children a world of beauty and wonder."

"(WHAT'S THE PLANET'S BIGGEST CHALLENGE?) The environment. We are sharing our resources in a very inequitable way. We have parts of the world that are very deprived and parts of the world that are very rich. And that is partly the reason why we have conflict."

"I think what the Nobel committee is doing is going beyond war and looking at what humanity can do to prevent war. Sustainable management of our natural resources will promote peace."

"Peace on earth depends on our ability to secure our living environment. Maathai stands at the front of the fight to promote ecologically viable social, economic and cultural development in Kenya and in Africa. She has taken a holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human rights and women's rights in particular. She thinks globally and acts locally."

"The people are starving. They need food; they need medicine; they need education. They do not need a skyscraper to house the ruling party and a 24-hour TV station."

"I kept stumbling and falling and stumbling and falling as I searched for the good. 'Why?' I asked myself. Now I believe that I was on the right path all along, particularly with the Green Belt Movement, but then others told me that I shouldn't have a career, that I shouldn't raise my voice, that women are supposed to have a master. That I needed to be someone else. Finally I was able to see that if I had a contribution I wanted to make, I must do it, despite what others said. That I was OK the way I was. That it was all right to be strong."

"I don't really know why I care so much. I just have something inside me that tells me that there is a problem, and I have got to do something about it. I think that is what I would call the God in me. All of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life, everything that is on this planet. It must be this voice that is telling me to do something, and I am sure it's the same voice that is speaking to everybody on this planet — at least everybody who seems to be concerned about the fate of the world, the fate of this planet."

"Trees are living symbols of peace and hope. A tree has roots in the soil yet reaches to the sky. It tells us that in order to aspire we need to be grounded and that no matter how high we go it is from our roots that we draw sustenance. It is a reminder to all of us who have had success that we cannot forget where we came from. It signifies that no matter how powerful we become in government or how many awards we receive, our power and strength and our ability to reach our goals depend on the people, those whose work remain unseen, who are the soil out of which we grow, the shoulders on which we stand."

"We all share one planet and are one humanity; there is no escaping this reality."

"nobody knows the solution to every problem; rather than blindly following the prescriptions of others, Africans need to think and act for themselves, and learn from their mistakes."

"“Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own … Recognizing that sustainable development, democracy and peace are indivisible is an idea whose time has come.”"

". “African women in general need to know that it’s OK for them to be the way they are — to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence.”"

"No matter how dark the cloud, there is always a thin, silver lining, and that is what we must look for. The silver lining will come, if not to us then to next generation or the generation after that. And maybe with that generation the lining will no longer be thin."

"“You don't need a diploma to plant a tree.”"

"“You would see me there now, cultivating the earth and carrying firewood on my back up the hills to my home, where I would light a fire and cook the evening meal. I would not tell stories, because they have been replaced by books, the radio, and television”"

"“Hallowed landscapes lost their sacredness and were exploited as the local people became insensitive to the destruction, accepting it as a sign of progress.”"