AMAZING PEOPLE
By cyril chami The amazing People of Kilimanjaro . If you look at Kilimanjaro’s history, one culture stands out as being intimately tied to the mountain: the Chagga. But the Chagga didn’t live around the foothills of Kili in isolation, and in fact, for several centuries, they weren’t a unified culture at all. Much like their neighbors (and longtime adversaries) the Maasai, the Chagga peoples were divided into multiple clans, which were then further divided into mitaa , or petty chiefdoms. Today, these clans have consciously come together to form the modern Chagga culture. But as recently as the turn of the 20th century, they were at war with not only their neighbors, but with one another. Each clan had a distinctive territory along the southern and eastern slopes of the mountain. Natural boundaries—including ridges, rocky outcroppings, and ravines—usually defined the borders between one clan’s land and another’s. Today we think of the Chagga as one people, but formerly, 15 s