My latest inspiration come from a woman I met yesterday,. Mrs Ajoke Murtala Muhammed, a small, gentle, modest, unassuming figure. In a photo I have of her she is wearing a simple kopdoek, an apron and heavy garden clogs, and yes some ear ringsI met her at a book reading at the celebration of the first birthday of the Sarins Palmetum, in a beautiful valley, filled with palms, gazebos, nursery and pathways through the hills of Abuja. This amazing place is her creation, not just her idea but her physical effort where she works every day from early until late. “I have to earn my pay today” she explains on questioned why she works so hard at her age. She knows the botanical name and has collected most of the palms on the property, the biggest palm collection in Africa.
Affectionately she is nicknamed Mummy by the Nigerians. She is a former first lady and in 1988 after the assassination of her husband she decided to accomplish two goals at once; to share her life-long love for plants and the natural environment with her fellow Nigerians and at the same time to honour the memory of her beloved late husband – former Head of State, General Murtala Muhammed.
In 1990 she was nominated as Nigeria’s delegate to the Osaka Expo – a global exhibition of horticultural and conservation of plants. In 1992 she was part of the official delegation to the global environment gathering in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – the Earth Conference., where she met Dr Wangari Maathai – now Nobel Peace laureate – founder and leader of the Green Belt Movement. The two agreed to start a Green Belt Movement in Nigeria to plant trees and restore degraded lands similar to the Laureate’s now famous program in Kenya and elsewhere in the world. (I read Wangari Maathai’s book “Unbowed” recently and can highly recommend it for inspirational reading.)
H.E.Mrs Ajoke Murtala Muhammed created the Murtala Muhammed Memorial Botanical Garden in Epe, Lagos and now she is busy with the Sarius Palmetum and Botanical Garden in Abuja…... And guess what: as the crow fly, it is about 500 meters, over a row of houses from my kitchen door. I was looking for this place, of which I have vaguely read about, ever since our arrival and….. there is, through nondescript gates on the road we travel everyday.
In the course of three years she has planted here a palm collection of over 400 different species, alongside other plant species including the Nigerian flora. Her declared goal in life: “I want to give something back to the society; I want to leave a legacy”.It is her modesty, intelligence and unselfconsciousness that struck me most when she came up to me and greeted me. I recognized her from the tiny picture on a pamphlet I had just read and asked if it was really she. On which she just laughed. I am going back to learn from her. I can walk there, she is there every day and said I can come and talk to her. Wow, I am staring to love this place and its women!!.
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