Case file · Sacred site
Krapf sees snow on Kirinyaga
On 3 December 1849 the missionary Johann Ludwig Krapf saw snow on Mount Kenya, the Kirinyaga of the Kikuyu, where their god Ngai is said to dwell; armchair geographers in London refused to believe him.
1849 CE · -0.15, 37.31 · status: official
The account
The Kikuyu traditionally built their houses with doors facing the mountain and prayed toward it. Krapf's report, like Rebmann's of Kilimanjaro, was dismissed for years by critics such as William Desborough Cooley, who doubted that snow could lie on the equator. Joseph Thomson confirmed it in 1883.
The sceptical view
Both the snow and the critics' error are documented; the mountain's sacredness is living Kikuyu tradition.