Kilimanjaro
by Hana Njau-Okolo
Kilimanjaro
You are
I am
Melting.
Those patterns etched into your face
Are tears carved under my eyes
Draining through the mask.
A glacial screen
The landscape of my life
Frozen into the familiar.
Snowcap
Washing away
As men in their folly
Plunder the spoils of the earth.
Face-to-face you say
Do not weep for me
Weep for yourself
And for your children.
For the Sahara
And its spreading.
For your soul
Marooned on an
Island of dreams
Unfulfilled.
PHOTO: Mount Kilimanjaro at sunset, view from savanna landscape in Amboseli, Kenya, Africa. Photo by Michal Bednarek, used by permission.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem was inspired after my visit to the home of my late grandparents after two decades of living in the U.S. I was saddened by the lack of snow on Kilimanjaro, and the lack of acknowledgement of global warming. I also pondered on what I had accomplished in my years of living away from home.
PHOTO: The author at the Nairobi National Museum next to a statue of Dr. Louis Leakey, a British paleoanthropologist and archaeologist whose work was important in demonstrating that humans evolved in Africa.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Hana Njau-Okolo is a Kenyan-Tanzanian born writer who lives with her husband in Atlanta, Georgia. The mother of three adult children, she is a writer of short stories who blogs at mamashujaa.blogspot.com. Her short story “The Shady Taxi Driver” was published in the 2012 African Roar anthology series out of South Africa.
Silver Birch Press 
Yes. And I wish more people would listen.
A lovely poem, Hana.
Thank you.
Beautiful words. Very real concerns.
Thank you. Yesterday a reader sent me a video footage of an aerial view of the top (taken recently by a tour group) – really sad.
[…] work has been published in the African Roar, an anthology series out of South Africa. Her poem, Kilimanjaro, appeared in Silver Birch Press, a publisher based in California, and she is working on her memoir. […]