⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The World We Once Lived In by Wangari Maathai

A beautiful book in which Wangari Maathai highlights the devastating link between violence in our world (predominantly by men) and the harm being done against nature.

The author focuses on trees, and beautifully emphasises the spiritual relevance of their company and how, to this day, they can be a source of healing. She describes how trees have been used for millennia as places of worship, sanctuary or justice (judges from the Maasai and Kalenjin communities resolved disputes under the cover of a sacred tree, where it was forbidden to lie), and how nature has always been a place to retreat and restore.

Yet she also points to the harmful destruction of these magical friends on a mass scale. She references the Congo (“the planet’s second lung”) and how harm is “justified” by the status it can provide, and the entitlement to waste life in the name of inevitability and “progress” – but whose progress? The connection between the r@ping of nature and male violence against women was not lost on me here.

She ends by highlighting how man continues to try and exploit and control the environment, but leaves with a stark warning that eventually he will lose, and ultimately by his own hand.

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