Kilimanjaro rears her snow-white head right behind where I live. She’s so close that on clear dawns or storm swept evenings that leave the sky clear of cloud and dust, I imagine that I could reach out and touch her. But mostly she is elusive. Mostly she wraps up coy soon after sunup and stays that way until the moon rises.
Before me, and opposite Kili, on the other side of this incredible sweep of valley, rises Meru. After rain she is cut-glass-clear, her profile engraved sharply against a blue sky. But now, in the dry weather, she is often obliterated by heat and haze and the dust that rises on the wind, in the footfall of the thousands of Masai cattle that thread the land in search of pasture and water and in the wake of wheels: cars and motorbikes – the ubiquitous bodabodas – trail ribbons that lace the breeze and then fray to near nothingness.
When the rain comes my valley view will be silvered with sheets of water that will foil the savannah – it’ll hurt the naked eye to stare at them for they will be burnished too bright by the sun – but then it will peel back to reveal brand new green.
Reluctant Memsahib 