Mt. Kenya

10min

1/1/92

JAMES SCHOFIELD

At 17,058 feet, Mt. Kenya towers above the Kenyan landscape just as it did millions of years ago, when man’s first ancestors stood beside the shores of Kenya’s Lake Turkana to gaze upon its grandeur, wreathed in rage of mist. For more than a century, tales of a fabulous ice clad mountain on the equator inspired adventurers from Europe to try to climb it. A feat finally accomplished in 1899. But it was another sixty years before it was ascended by a Kenyan African. That man was Munyao Kisoi. So important was this feat that almost five years later Kisoi was selected for a crucial role at Kenya’s independence.

celebrations

As celebrations erupted in Nairobi, it was Kisoi standing on the summit of Mt Kenya who raised the new born country’s national flag at the moment of independence, at midnight on December the 12th, 1963.

Man

Thirty years later, and Munyao Kisoi, now an old man, is returning to the mountain to raise his country’s flag once more. I’m going with him. And everything we need for the next few days must be taken up the mountain. At night time temperatures fall to well below freezing.

In Africa, little goes to waste. Kisoi doesn’t need new boots. He’s wearing the same boots and trousers that he wore in 1963.

Our first big obstacle is a vertical bog. A thousand stamina-sapping feat of rain and mud-soaked heather. It’s a tough and daunting task for anyone, let alone a sixty year old man.

Music

: Walking with Kisoi, it’s possible to understand how this Kenyan hero came to be forgotten. He’s a self effacing man. So quiet that after his great feat, he simply faded from the limelight, preferring to start a business of his own.

Music

What’s the reason for this thirty year break in your mountaineering life?

MUNYAO KISOI

Because my climbing companions, they left the country. And those was the Europeans. And after they left the country, I couldn’t find anybody who I could climb with. Another thing, I did not have money to support me to go climbing.

JAMES SCHOFIELD

Two hours later we emerge onto moor lands at the lower end of the Teleki Valley, and the mountain towers five thousand feet above our heads.

Kisoi takes the lead as we negotiate a rocky trek that brings us from the valley. With every step ice shatters underfoot, and soon we pass the snow line.

This may look like a lot of ice to you or I, but the permanent snows are melting from Mt Kenya very quickly. Of its 18 glaciers at the turn of the century, only 11 are left today. Each is smaller than it was. All may disappear completely within the next quarter century.

MUNYAO KISOI

When I came here in 1963 this rock was covered by the glacier. But now the glaciers are moving forward. Can you see the water is running away there.

JAMES SCHOFIELD

This will be our camp for the second night. It’s a hut built by the Austrian government. Kisoi, so near the top, is in the mood to reminisce.

What was the weather like when you climbed up to the summit of Mt Nelion back in ‘63, at 6pm, and waited for the midnight ceremony.

MUNYAO KISOI

At that time the weather was very bad. Was raining, snowing, every rock was covering by the snowing.

JAMES SCHOFIELD

What makes Mt. Kenya different from many other mountains is that there’s little to protect you if things go wrong. Mt Kenya claims half the world’s fatalities from mountain sickness. More than 60 climbers have died here.

At 16,000 feet, Austrian hut is as high as the summit of Europe’s highest mountain. Long before nightfall, a blizzard sets in. The altitude and cold make sleep impossible.

Dawn. And the rest of Africa is still asleep as we start climbing. It’s as if the continent was waiting for the warming power of the sun. Kisoi picks out a path from among the jumble of rocks and ice, and follow it. It should be tiring, but with every step, the climb is more exhilarating.

Turning a corner, he stands upon the summit.

Beside a steel cross, Kisoi unfurls his country’s flag once more, bellowing the national motto, pull together ‘Harambee’.

MUNYAO KISOI

Harambee!

JAMES SCHOFIELD

The words are caught up by a gust of wind and carried far away.

MUNYAO KISOI

Harambee!

GEORGE NEGUS

An inspiring view from the top of Mt Kenya in East Africa. That’s all from ‘Foreign Correspondent’ for now. See you next week