Could Mount Kilimanjaro Have Once Belonged to Kenya?

When I was a small boy, there was an old man who lived in our village in Central Kenya. He was a family friend and very wise. He loved coming to visit our home where he would have long chats with my Dad. Unlike many chatty old men, this one was different. His stories were positively interesting. We could never keep away from him whenever he came to visit. In those days, it was considered improper for children to crowd grownups when they were discussing serious matters. My siblings and I were however willing to risk getting into trouble with Dad to sit close by and just listen to the old man.

One thing that amazed me about the old man was the way he could describe places and directions. He used to recall his travels with relish and tell of how he and his friends would travel great distances, on foot, in search of pasture for their livestock. They would walk for months with their animals over hundreds of kilometres. The man, literary, had an atlas saved in his head. From my geography in school, I could tell exactly where he was talking about just from his descriptions.

There was one time he came and told a story that was so interesting it has stuck in my memory to date. He was telling of how he and others had travelled from what is present day Ngong hills area towards the South East in the area where the Amboseli national park now lies. He talked of direction the way the Agíkúyú used to define it using their terminology of east and west, and also north and south. I can still recall his booming voice, talking as he drew lines on the ground with his walking stick while leaning carefully from the traditional stool that he preferred to sit on when he came to visit.

On that occasion, he talked about something we had always read about at school. He talked about Mount Kilimanjaro. It really aroused my interest because it was one of the famous landmarks that we could see on some occasional early mornings in the distance from right there in our village. He talked about the way the Agíkúyú had always stood in awe of the mountain. The first thing they had done was to name it. He told us about the origin of the name. He explained that the rump of a cow was known as “Njaro” in the Gíkúyú language. When the Agíkúyú looked at the mountain, they observed that it had the shape of a cow rump. They therefore named it “Kíríma kía Njaro”, which literally meant “Mountain of the Rump”. This was eventually shortened to Kírímanjaro.

The Gíkúyú language does not have the letter “L” as can be seen from the spelling above. The “L” was probably introduced as a way of ‘Kenyanizing’ the name. And so, my fellow laymen, that is how the tallest mountain in Africa, and the tallest free-standing one in the world, got its name. Since the story by the old man, I have researched to see if there is another credible explanation as to how the mountain came to be called Kilimanjaro. All that I found were theories about how it must have been the Wachagga in Tanzania who came up with the name. Even Wikipedia buys the story, albeit half-heartedly. They rightly assert that the origin of the name is not precisely known, but now it is!

A strange story is told of the time when Kenya was under British control while Tanzania was under the Germans. It is said that the German ruler then was King Kaiser Wilhelm the Second while the United Kingdom was under Queen Victoria. Apparently, the two monarchs were related although I cannot establish the exact way how. Some sources say King Wilhelm was Queen Victoria’s Cousin while others say he was her grandson. I do not know which is which. What I know is that she was very fond of him. So fond that she gave him Mount Kilimanjaro as a birthday gift in 1886. Now all they had to do was carve Kenya’s border with Tanzania to encompass “our” mountain.

You have now received your history lesson from the Layman. Whether you choose to believe it or not is totally up to you. Alternatively, you can conduct your own research.

P.S. Instead of fighting for the control of Migingo Island, shouldn’t we have been fighting for “Bigger things”? Just wondering.