Facing Mt Kenya
My travels over the holidays took me to the Mt Kenya area, where my parents were born and raised, and where my grandparents held huge family gatherings when I was a child. My siblings and I, being city kids, would usually visit shags (slang for “village” in the informal language Sheng) over the Christmas holidays when schools closed for the year.
We would hang out with dozens of cousins, run around in the dirt and swim in the ice cold river which gushed clear water melted from the snow of Mt Kenya. When temperatures dropped, we would huddle by the fireside roasting maize, listening to folk tales and learning Kikuyu songs.
Visiting this place thirty years later had a different feel to it. There was Mt Kenya, still majestic and snow capped (though with less snow than before because of climate change and deforestation). There were the familiar indigenous acacia thorn trees teeming with weaver bird nests. And if you took a deep breath, you could still inhale the crisp mountain air. You could still feel the heat of the equatorial sun during the day and the cool temperatures at night.
But the little cousins we used to play with are now middle aged adults. Many are married, some with adult children and even grandchildren. Some, incredibly, still look the same, others are completely unrecognizable. My grandparents are long gone. The uncles and aunts who are still alive are now elders with white hair and walking sticks.
Looking at my extended family and clan gave me a renewed perspective and appreciation for family. After living in the US for two decades, it was wonderful to be surrounded by so many people who are so much like me – who share my names, physical features, ancestral roots, language and connection to this land. The last time we had such a gathering I was one of the “youngsters” in the group. Now, I’ve joined the ranks of parents and grandparents. I’m almost an elder. (Yikes, time to grow up).
Genius loci
In Risky Business: A Jungian View of Environmental Disasters and the Nature Archetype, Jungian analyst and scientist Stephen J. Foster describes growing up in the “rolling green hills of oak and chestnut trees” of rural Sussex, England, in a hamlet called Bodiam. He uses the Latin term genius loci to describe “the spirit of the place”, that deep sense of connection and belonging a place can evoke, experienced often as a feeling of emotional and physical well being.
Foster writes about numinous experiences of Nature from his childhood – those awe-inspiring encounters in the natural world with something transcendent. He tells us that his name Forster comes from “forester”, one who tends to the trees. It is no wonder that a person carrying such a name would be destined to work as a scientist in clean up projects for toxic spills and hazardous wastes, while also tending to the human psyche as a Jungian analyst, thereby caring for the soul of both the outer and inner worlds. About two years ago, I attended a weekend seminar with Dr Foster and was struck by how gracefully he moves through all these aspects of himself in his life and vocation.
Anima mundi
In his book, Foster combines his scientific background in organic chemistry, his Jungian training, and his love for Tolkien’s masterful storytelling to explore various experiences of the Nature archetype – the anima mundi or “soul of the world” – that nurturing principle that animates the earth and sustains life. I found Foster’s descriptions of his early connection with this anima mundi similar to mine, and I suppose to most people who have encountered something beautiful and mysterious in Nature. We may feel it as a sense of awe and wonder, as a comforting knowing of being home, as a bigness of the universe. Or as being in the presence of something at once familiar and strange, extraordinary yet homely; something sacred that captivates you in this present moment, yet is itself timeless.
My earliest memory of such an encounter with Nature was when I was around five or six, visiting my grandmother who lived about two hours away in Nyeri, on the foothills of the Aberdare ranges in the Mt Kenya region. One gorgeous clear morning, the kind where the crisp mountain air curls out of your mouth in white wisps when you exhale, I stepped outside to see the majestic snow-capped peaks of Mt Kenya in front of me against a clear blue sky. It took my breath away. I recalled learning that Mt Kenya was the sacred mountain of the Gikuyu people, which they named Kirinyaga, or “place where God lives”. It was easy to imagine God living in such a spectacular place. I fantasized about one day visiting God there.
Climbing Mt Kenya
Two decades later, as a teacher living in Thika, about 150 kilometers from Mt Kenya, I got the opportunity to do so. I was a form tutor, and part of my duties included planning and participating in outdoor trips with my students. During half term, it was a school tradition to accompany a group of students to climb Mt Kenya, a trip of about five days. These were students who, for various reasons, were unable to be with their families over the half term break.
I was a new teacher at the school then, and I heard stories from the old timers that decades ago we had lost a headmaster who fell to his death trying to get to the highest peak, Batian (17,057 ft), a treacherous climb risked only by professional mountain climbers. Apparently this is how our school climbing tradition began, as a kind of homage to the mountain that had claimed one of our own. Our school trips stopped at the lowest of the three peaks, Point Lenana, 16,355 feet.
Although Mt Kenya is the second highest mountain in Africa after Mt Kilimanjaro’s impressive 19,341 feet, it is notoriously much harder to climb. This is because of its steep incline and precarious peaks, which pose dangers of terrible falls, injury or death, as well as the serious risk of the dreaded altitude sickness. Far more people die climbing Mt Kenya in proportion to Mt Kilimanjaro. Because of this, our school group had to follow strict protocols to help our bodies and physiology acclimatize at each level.
The hardest part of the climb for me was the “dawn attack” on the fifth day. We woke up at 2 am after a short and restless sleep on the frosty ground in flimsy tents and sleeping bags. Climbing in pitch darkness for four hours straight using flashlights (on my second trip we were lucky to have a full moon), we arrived at Point Lenana at around 6 am, just in time to witness a magnificent orange-golden sunrise.
At the summit, strong cold winds whipped against us and made it hard for us to breathe. We realized that was why our strict schedule called for just a few minutes at the top before beginning our descent (that, and the now melting ice on the slopes made for a slippery way back). It was an out of body experience for me to see and touch the snowy mountain from my childhood from this amazing vantage point. Off in the distance, 324 kilometers away, we could see Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania coming into view. It was mind blowing.
Facing Mt Kenya
After our large Kihato clan gathering last month, our family retreated to a charming country lodge straddling the equator in Nanyuki town, where we stayed for several days in cottages facing Mt Kenya. Every morning we were greeted by colorful songbirds and incredible views of Mt Kenya. We breakfasted on the terrace facing the mountain, savoring the fresh food and cool air. It was paradise. To top it all, we had two full moon nights where the night sky lit up so brightly you could see individual thorns on the acacia trees.
Mzee (Elder) Jomo Kenyatta, the freedom fighter during British rule who became Kenya’s first president, wrote a book in 1938 called Facing Mt Kenya. It was quite popular when I was growing up; I remember seeing copies of it in friends’ homes and school libraries. My father still has an old copy of it in his book case. In it, Mzee Kenyatta describes the customs, rites and rituals of the Gikuyu people who live around Mt Kenya. He tells us how this sacred mountain played a central role in their lives, defining their social customs, sense of community and belonging, and religious beliefs.
It is easy to see why this mountain was sacred to the Gikuyu people and why it captured the fascination of early western explorers, who sent written reports back to their countries about a mountain that straddles the equator yet, unbelievably, boasted white snowy peaks. Even now with climate change and destructive human activities, this area is still a veritable ecosystem and major water catchment area.
This is mainly because of the courageous and tireless environmental activism of Dr Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya. Wangari Maathai, who came from the Mt Kenya region, was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her fierce fight against the stealing of public land, destruction of forests, oppression, and corruption. Thanks to her outstanding work, the snowy peaks of Mt Kenya and their indigenous forests, wildlife and natural resources are slowly being restored all over the country.
Although our beloved Wangari Maathai is no longer with us, I imagine her taking her place among the ancestors of Mt Kirinyaga, watching over the natural beauty that our children and grandchildren may yet get to enjoy. Her legacy also lives on in the urban forests and parks within the city that Nairobians and other city dwellers in the country can still enjoy today.
One World
From alchemy, Foster borrows the concept of unus mundus or “One World” to describe how “the genius loci, sense of a place, is both unique to a specific location and common to all places in its meaning and connection, through felt experience of a greater universe.”
Watching the sun rise over Mt Kenya, I imagine this is what my ancestors must have felt. Here, in this sacred place where God lives, I arrive at the center of the universe, I experience All There Is.
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Mt Kenya sunrise – Photo taken by Nyambura Kihato in Nanyuki, Kenya, December 2023