Uncovering the History of Kilimanjaro Mountain Crews

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
Leslie Hadfield, American, with PhD in African history from Michigan State University. She has been teaching African history at Brigham Young University (BYU) since 2010 and is now also the coordinator for BYU's Africana Studies Program. Hadfield primarily studies South African contemporary social and political history. Her research interests include South African liberation movements and the work and lives of Black nurses in the Eastern Cape. Oral history has played an important role in her work. She has conducted extensive interviews in South Africa in both English and the Xhosa language, which she speaks. These interviews formed the basis for her first books, Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa (MSU Press, 2016) and A Bold Profession: African Nurses in Rural Apartheid South Africa (University of Wisconsin Press, 2021). Hadfield also speaks Kiswahili and has accompanied several groups of students on Mt Kilimanjaro climbing experiences.
Kokel Melubo, Tanzanian, holds degrees in natural resource management and nature based tourism. His environmental-tourism interests include wildlife tourism, eco-tourism, and community development. His publications including the book Ecotourism and Livelihoods among the Maasai in Ngorongoro, Tanzania (Lambert Academic Publishing, 2013); and the articles “The working Conditions of ‘Wagumu’ (High Altitude Porters) on Mt Kilimanjaro” (in Mountaineering Tourism, edited by Musa, Higham, and Thomson-Carr, 2015), and, with Christine N. Buzinde, “An Exploration of Tourism-related Labour Conditions: the Case of Tour Guides in Tanzania” (Anatolia, 2016). Melubo is Senior Lecturer at the College of African Wildlife Management, Mweka, located in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania.

Festo Mkenda, SJ, Tanzanian, is a historian with general interest in matters of identity and nationalism and also in the history of Christianity in Africa. His research on the people around Mt Kilimanjaro culminated in a DPhil thesis entitled “Building National Unity in sub-Saharan Africa: The Impact of State Policies on the Chagga Community in Northern Tanzania” (University of Oxford, 2009). His most recent publications include The Jesuits in Africa: A Historical Narrative from Ignatius of Loyola to Pedro Arrupe (Brill, 2022), and A Splash of Diamond: The Jesuit Presence in Ethiopia from 1945 to the Present (JHIA & IHSI, 2023). Mkenda currently serves as academic director of the Roman archives of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) and part-time lectures at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.
ABOUT THE TALK:
The typical history of the Mt. Kilimanjaro climbing industry has tended to follow a European trajectory, starting with missionary-explorer Johannes Rebmann (1820-76) as the first European credited with sighting Kilimanjaro and climaxing with the first recorded successful accent of the mountain by Hans Mayer (1858-1929) in 1889. Hadfield, Melubo, and Mkenda have been working together to re-write this narrative from the perspective of Tanzanians. This includes beginning with the history of the people who have lived in the Kilimanjaro region for generations and drawing heavily on the oral history of those who constitute the backbone of the industry as guides, porters, and cooks. The three panelists will present key points in this new narrative as well as discuss the methodology employed to uncover and highlight local African perspectives.