Mathai is Maathai’s former husband. She meets him when he is an executive and later supports him when he twice runs for Parliament (he wins the second time). His bid for public office marks Maathai’s own first experience with politics and she finds the demands of being a political wife frustrating; she feels an implicit pressure to downplay her accomplishments and to present herself as a “good African woman” (110). She is frustrated by the hypocrisy of members of the Kenyan elite, such as her own husband, who “project their ‘Africanness’ through their wives, both at home and in society” (110-11). 

Mathai comes across as a limited and conventional character, uncomfortable with his former wife’s strong will and impressive professional achievements. Maathai intimates that his discomfort contributed to the end of their marriage: “He saw me through the mirror given to him by society rather than through his own eyes” (139). However, Maathai is also careful to document her former husband’s gestures of decency after their divorce. She notes that he remained an attentive father to their three children and took them in for several years after their divorce, when Maathai’s work required her to travel. She also recalls a time when she was arrested and her house was left open to looters; her former husband first sent security guards to the house, then “himself kindly came, closed and locked the gate to the house after I had gone, and made sure the guards stayed” (213).         

Maathai’s mother is a background figure in this book, but Maathai tells us that she was one of the most important figures in her life: “As far back as I can remember, my mother and I were always talking. She was my anchor in life” (13). Maathai’s lifelong closeness to her mother rests on her being the eldest daughter and having been entrusted since she was little with farming and household chores. Their relationship seems to be one between equals rather than parent and dependent. It is alongside her mother that Maathai learns to cultivate the land and develop a deep appreciation of the natural world.

When Maathai’s mother dies at age 94 while in Maathai’s care, Maathai experiences her death as devastating: “By the time of my mother’s death, I had already lost my father (in 1978, aged seventy-five), my brother, and some friends. But when she passed away, I was more upset than I have ever been in my life” (275). 

Maathai finds it significant that her mother dies on International Women’s Day: “[…] the day women around the world celebrate their solidarity” (274). In general, the reader sees Maathai’s mother primarily through the associations that she evokes and her role in relation to Maathai. We do not see her as an independent character very clearly, perhaps because she and Maathai are so close: “You do what your mother does and you are always with her. The two of you become almost like one” (13).