Kilimanjaro .... sixty years on.

 

From Ol Tukai lodge, Amboseli 1975 - 

the main peak, Kibo, on the right, with Mawenzi to the left.

Kibo, taken from Tsavo, 1969 - covered in a thick blanket of snow

Two local friends of mine, have just returned from a ten day safari to Tanzania, to climb Kili; I suspect it was quite an expensive luxury safari and climb.  They had guides, and I think they said they took about 8 or so days to climb the mountain.   When we were living in Kenya in the 60's and 70's, a guided safari to climb Kili was five days; three days up and two down.  

We always saw Kili from the Kenya (north) side of the border, but on a trip to the Marangu Hotel in Tanzania, in December 1969, we saw the mountain from the other side, with Mawenzi to the right of Kibo !

I also showed this photo of the Kili glacier to my friends .... I think it was taken about 1966, and possibly by my late father-in-law, but I'm not sure about that.  

My friends said that their guide told them there is only about 3% of the glacier left, and just a little snow in some of the gullies .... global warming has a lot to answer for, especially this year with all the forest fires in Europe and Canada. 

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It is said that Queen Victoria 'gave' Kilimanjaro to Kaiser Wilhelm as a birthday present .... but this isn't strictly true.   

During the 'Scramble for Africa' present-day Kenya was under British rule and Tanzania, then known as German East Africa, was under German control. The Society for German Colonisation was formed at this time to gain access to much of the area now known as Tanzania.  Karl Peters, an explorer and adventurer, gained much of the territory for the Society through documents signed by the chiefs (who probably had little idea what they were signing) ...  of the areas he passed through.

When the boundaries of the new colonies were drawn up the documents signed by the chiefs handing the land of Kilimanjaro to the Germans was accepted, and the highest point of Africa was allocated to German East Africa, and Kenya lost it, but still had Mt Kenya further to the north.

Kilimanjaro (from Kenya) with snow on Kibo's peak under a cloud at dawn

Another amazing Dutch Mill Hill missionary.

 I receive a Mill Hill newsletter almost every day, and in a recent one was an article about the retirement of Gerry Kraakman, whom I met on many occasions, and whose church I visited.  

He is 81 years old and arrived in Kenya the same time as us, autumn 1968, just four months after his ordination in Holland.   He was praised for the number of Christians he baptized in the parishes in which he served, all in western Kenya, and for the development of parishes and through the construction of new buildings, including a wonderful light and airy church at Nanga.

According to Fr. Joseph Oduor the Dean of Kisumu Deanery where Fr. Kraakman has been serving, the Dutch priest has become part and parcel of the people of Kisumu for his love to embrace the luo language.  He said “Fr. Kraakman preaches so well in the local language, that this has led to the spiritual development of the people.” 

Fr. Kraakman will continue assisting in the Parish of Nanga where he has been serving and at the same time assist in any parish that requests help within the deanery for some time before he returns to his native land.

Added later:-

Looking through my Kenya diary of my visit to Kisumu in 2017, I see on Sunday 19th March, I have written:  "Gerry Kraakman had his place at Nanga burgled last night; his night watchman was murdered,   I don't know yet what was stolen (just his fridge).  He seems to live a very frugal life; no TV, etc. - and no security lights or fence ..."

First school !

 

My first two daughters went to a small school on a farm in Lanet, near Nakuru,  This is the whole school, with three of the teachers (white !) and two ayah's (African !)  I love the mix of children .... mostly European .... various English, Dutch, German, American, and white Kenyans .... and some Asian, but no African children.  I suspect the fees were too much even for professional African families.  The white children came from ex-pat teachers families; one was the local doctors son; others were from still white owned farms at Njoro.   I love the little boy in the front row, chin in hands ... and his feet .... one just in a sock, the other bare !  I see 'pudding-basin' hair-cuts were the fashion for children, probably in the absence of any hairdresser or skilled mother !   My oldest daughter is in the third row back, the tall child sitting bolt upright, behind a boy in a white shirt.   I think #2 daughter must have been ill that day and not at school.

School nativity play - the 'choir of angels' !  My younger daughter is between an African girl and an Asian girl in the top photo, with her sister giggling in the front row; and in the second photo she is standing next to her 'tall' older sister in the back row.  

Old Africa - issue 108

 

This has arrived today, and I spent a pleasant afternoon sitting on the sofa reading it.

There is a fascinating article about Boy Long, one of the early settlers, who worked for 'D' .... Lord Delamere, on his Soysambu estate near Lake Elmentaita.   The article quotes 'Kenya Chronicles', a book by Lord Cranworth, and also mentions work by Elspeth Huxley ... both books which I have in my Africa library, so I spent more time during the afternoon finding these books and reading up more about this very enigmatic character.  Boy had an estate at the southern end of Lake Nakuru, near the Nderit river, and I'd guess is now part of the Lake Nakuru National Park.

Kenya certainly produced some interesting people in the early days of white settlement ... mostly of British aristocratic stock, and all quirky characters.   I was delighted to meet a few of them in my earlier years in Kenya.  I must check through the last ten years of blog posts and see if I have written about them !

There is also an article about Grace Onyango, who died in March, and who was the first African female mayor, and an MP.   She taught for a while at Ng'iya Girls School, where we lived when we first arrived in the country, and I met her there some years later, when she was visiting.   

First English slave fort in Africa ....

 I've always been interested in archaeology, and have taken part in many 'digs' in my home town here in Wales .... so this discovery in Ghana immediately caught my eye. 

Taking care, archaeologist Christopher DeCorse spreads the rare artefacts out on a makeshift table next to the dig site.  A gunflint (used in old-fashioned guns), tobacco pipes, broken pottery and the jawbone of a goat are carefully laid out. These discarded fragments, unearthed from centuries of compacted soil, offer clues to a lost past.
"Any archaeologist who says they are not excited when they find something are not being entirely truthful," the professor from Syracuse University in the US says with a broad smile.
These remnants point to the existence of "the first English outpost established anywhere in Africa", he argues.  The archaeologist is standing in the ruins of Fort Amsterdam, speaking above the wind and roar of the Atlantic Ocean waves hitting Ghana's coastline.

Inside that fort are what are thought to be the remains of an older fort - Kormantine - long-lost under the earth, which the professor's team are gradually excavating with brisk activity.  The site of the dig, under the blue canopy, (see picture above), is inside Fort Amsterdam built by the Dutch.  They are methodically combing through distinct layers of soil and stones with soft-bristle brushes and trowels. The disturbed soil removed from the trenches is carefully sieved.  A canopy protects the team and the site from the weather and despite the intense sun and the occasional shower, the archaeologists' work continues.

Ancient maps had referred to a Fort Kormantine in that area, for example the name of the nearby town, Kormantse, is clearly related. In addition, another version of the name, Coromantee, was given to some of the enslaved people in the Caribbean thought to have been transported from this place and later known for slave rebellions.

But where exactly the fort was located remained a matter of speculation, which may have now been brought to an end.  Dating back to the 17th Century, Fort Kormantine sat on the Atlantic coast just at the time when Europeans started shifting their interest from the trade in gold to the trade in humans.  It was a pivotal moment in the history of their involvement in Africa that would have a profound effect on the continent.

The discovery by the team of archaeologists may shed some light on the lives of those early traders and what they were doing, as well as those who were sold and the impact on the community around them.  Ghana's coastal fishing towns, known for their colourful boats and the melodies sung by the fishermen, remain scarred by a past of European exploitation and human cruelty.  The slave forts dotted along what was called the Gold Coast are a looming reminder of that past.  Hundreds of thousands passed through them before being transported in horrific conditions across the sea.  Fort Kormantine - built by the English in 1631 - was one of the earliest places where that journey started.  It began life as a trading post for gold and other items like ivory.

The slave trade only began from there in 1663 when King Charles II granted a charter to the Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa (later the Royal African Company). He gave it monopoly rights over the trade in human beings.

It was only in English hands for another two years before the Dutch seized it but Fort Kormantine played a key role in the initial stages of the slave trade. It served as a warehouse for the goods that were used to buy slaves. It was also a brief holding point for those who had been kidnapped in different parts of West Africa before being shipped to the Caribbean to work in plantations to develop the sugar economy.

"We don't have that many details on exactly what these early outposts of the slave trade looked like, which is one of the things that make uncovering the foundations of Fort Kormantine interesting," Prof DeCorse says.

After capturing the fort, the Dutch built Fort Amsterdam on the same site, which is why its exact location could not be pinpointed, especially after it became a United Nations-recognised World Heritage Site, making excavation difficult. But initial digs in 2019 in and near Fort Amsterdam, which turned up some early 17th Century artefacts, suggested where it might be. Archaeologists returned earlier this year and began further searches.

Nigerian archaeology student Omokolade Omigbule says it was "mind-blowing" to see the remains of the English fort.  At first there was some disappointment as they started by finding a lot of plastic items that must have been dropped more recently. But then Omokolade Omigbule uncovered a stone that Prof DeCorse identified as part of a bigger structure.

"It was mind-blowing, seeing first-hand the remnants, the footprints of an actual building subsumed under a new fort.  Seeing the imprints of these external forces in Africa first-hand and being a part of such a dig takes me back a few hundred years, it feels like I was there."

As the excavations continued, they uncovered a six-metre-long (20ft) wall, a door post, foundations and a drainage system made of red brick. All these indicate an English presence pre-dating the Dutch fort. These bowls of tobacco pipes were among the artefacts found at the site.

The pipes with their small bowls where the tobacco was placed "is also very distinctive of the time that we are talking about here", the professor says, adding that over time the bowls got larger as tobacco became cheaper and more readily available.

Archaeology is painstaking work. Each fragment of the past it throws up needs to be interrogated and interpreted.

But in some ways, the hard work has only just begun. Archaeologists will spend the next three years trying to unravel the gamut of Fort Kormantine - its architecture, look and feel - which should in turn reveal its true significance.

By Favour Nunoo of BBC News, Accra