Mount Kenya

This was taken from a light aircraft flying from the Samburu reserve north of Mount Kenya back to Nairobi.

I heard an interesting story on As It Happens this evening: apparently the management of the National Museum in Nairobi has bowed to pressure from a fundamentalist evangelical 'bishop' to move its incomparable collection of humanoid fossils to a back room because they will "confuse" children. They conducted a phone interview with Richard Leakey who was surprisingly calm about it all - not happy, of course, but resigned, and reasonably confident that within a few decades a richer and more educated Kenyan public would be able to throw off the overweening influence of the (mainly North American) religious fundamentalists who flood the country. I'm not sure I share his optimism. It really is astonishing that reasonable people could genuinely think for a minute that presenting the fossil record, without interpretation, would prejudice people or confuse children. It's obviously an indication of the weakness of the fundamentalists' own faith in their mythology. On the other hand, I didn't agree with Leakey when he argued that religious beliefs have no place in a museum. That's exactly where they belong. The Kenyan National Museum (which is fantastic by the way) could present a fascinating collection of creation myths gathered from the hundreds of ethnic, tribal and religious traditions in the country.

Details: Minolta X-500, 50mm lens, exposure not recorded. North-west of Mount Kenya, December 1997. Placemark.