The Smiling Mountain

Kilimanjaro is a shy mountain. It seems that she spends most of her time shrouded in clouds, even on the clearest and brightest of days. To see her in all her glory is a rare and humbling pleasure. When I came to Tanzania in 2010, she smiled on us and I knew then that it may be the finest view of her I will ever have, no matter how frequently I might visit. Indeed, when I returned to Moshi this weekend, located at the foot of Kilimanjaro, I didn’t get even the slightest glimpse of the mountain.

So imagine my surprise and delight when she decided to escort me on my journey back to Nairobi!

Fr. John and I departed Arusha by public transport at about 8 am. The morning was grey and wet, an excellent thing for the parched country, but not ideal for window-watching from the bus. Mt. Meru towers above Arusha, and there are some other mountains visible from the Great North Road, even through the mist. I have a great love of mountains large and small, so I was very content to watch them roll by as we traveled. One of the more craggy peaks even appeared to wear a fine dusting of snow on its head. As this mountain passed us by, another more distant mountain appeared with even more snow on its peak. I actually thought to myself, “That mountain must have nearly as much snow as Kilimanjaro.” It wasn’t until we had traveled many more miles without the mountain fading into the distance that I began to suspect that this was Kilimanjaro. I mean, she had to be at least 75 miles from where I was, and I wasn’t certain that the mountain was even visible from this angle. I kept convincing myself that this was simply a smaller, closer mountain with which I had hitherto been unacquainted. But as the bus entered a great flat expanse, I saw her towering above the plain in all her snow-capped majesty, I knew I had been kidding myself all along. She is simply too magnificent to ever be mistaken for another mountain, at least not for too long.

Kilimanjaro is the 3^rd tallest mountain in the world, a source of pride for all Tanzanians. Her image is everywhere- bottled water, tee-shirts, beer bottles, vehicles, billboards. But it doesn’t matter how often you see the image; nothing in the world can compare with seeing her smile in person.