Outdoors

TheReview

Tuesday, December 24,1991 — AI16

AFRICAN MADONNA AND CHILD

Christmas on the slopes of Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro. The very name
conjures up remoteness, splendid
isolation, transcendent beauty.

The highest mountain in Africa,
Kilimanjaro, rises from its forest
clad slopes to expose its wondrous
snow capped dome to the cold thin
air 19,321 feet above the warm
seas and colourful coral reefs that
we had encountered at Mombasa.

We first saw this superb moun-
tain from the lower elevations of
Amboselli. Though distant, it
dominated the landscape, drawing
the eye irresistibly to its utter
grandeur. Glistening glaciers
within a stone’s throw of the
equator.

A broad belt of alabaster cloud
encircling its mid-slopes like a
giant phosphorescent sash, draped
handsomely below the shoulder.

And below, what else but a long
line of travelling elephant, com-
plete with accompanying cattle
egrets, each as gleaming white as
the remote snowfields above.
There must be something very
special on those slopes, I thought.

We had left Canada with a
request from Mary’s god-daughter.

“Would you please do me the
favour of looking up my pen pal?”

“Where do we find him?”

“Tn Africa. Isn’t that where you
are going?”

“Yes, but Africa is the second
largest continent in the world, you
know.”

“Shall you be going to Tanza-
nia?”

“Yes, we don’t want to miss
Ngorongoro Crater nor the famous
Serengeti Plains.”

“He is attending a Lutheran
high school in Arusha. That’s in
Tanzania.”

“We will do our best,” I said.
And then to Mary in a whisper,
“What a hope!”

Two months later, we were in
Arusha after crossing the Kenya-
Tanzanian border at Namanga. The
pen-pal’s school was in recess for
a couple of weeks but the principal
directed us to the village of Uswa
on the slopes of Kilimanjaro.

“Eliophe should be with his
family in their shamba there,” he
said.

The trail to Uswa was not diffi-
cult to follow. It led, always climb-
ing, through heavy jungle with
giant trees festooned with a dra-
pery of pale green lichens, strug-
gling for a place in the sun.

The understory was a mass of
dense shrub and tall, bright green
ferns, their slender fronds rising
from carpets of yellow-green
mosses.

In more open places, huge
kapok trees rose almost branchless
to their canopies above where they
hung out huge cylindrical fruiting
heads, for all the world like strings
of giant grey-green sausages sus-

CY HAMPSON photo

pended from a rack in an English
butcher shop.

After much inquiry, complicated
by our lack of familiarity with
either Swahili or the local tribal
tongue, we found Eliophe — a
fine, upstanding young man who
had mastered his tribal language,
Swahili, and English to complete
his university entrance.

Denied educational assistance
in both Canada and England, he
would later complete a degree in
medicine in Moscow and proceed
to post-grad work in Sweden.

But it was Eliophe’s sister and
her very young child who would
strike my imagination to the core
as they later posed for me against
the mud wall of their hut, allowing
me to capture my African
Madonna and Child.

Soul-searching beauty is often
found in unexpected places. The
time was appropriate. Dec. 25,
Christmas Day.

Best Wishes

for a Merry Christmas
and a Happy New Year.
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