Kilimanjaro: Mountain, Memory, Modernity

Description

Mount Kilimanjaro is one of Tanzania’s most consummate symbols. Interest in Mount Kilimanjaro dates back to the nineteenth century, when epic excursions by scientists, explorers, and missionaries kindled controversy, envy, and unquenchable desire, and the mountain became a prototype of colonial exoticism. Contemporary preoccupations with the mountain as an essential ingredient of national identity and of Tanzania’s self-image are in some senses attempts to recapture what has been stolen. This beautiful book of essays and photographs explores the multifaceted real and imagined natures and features of the mountain from various perspectives: literary, historical, environmental, sociological, geographical, and regional; and from three different continents: Africa, North America, and Europe. The study was a Tanzanian-French collaborative project between the Geography Department at the University of Dar es Salaam, an environmental research group at the University Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux, and the French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA) in Nairobi.