Final Reflections

Coming from a physical geography background I thought I would focus on the glaciers' paleoclimatic history. Still, I spent a lot of time on their cultural history and the western perception of this region. I realised how much even such remote areas were, and to this day still are, impacted by colonialism; there is a need for the deconstruction of this system through interdisciplinary research to fully understand the complexity of the issues associated with this region. This is not to say that the environmental processes disturbed by anthropogenic activities were not fascinating to explore. In particular, the diversity within the East African region and the ways different climatic processes shape each peak and its surroundings are crucial to address.

I believe that the cultural and historical tangent this blog took me on was due to two reasons. Firstly, it was the lack of both academic research and media coverage on the climatic processes shaping East African glaciers; secondly, the time I had during the course of the blogging allowed me to reflect more deeply on how we view this region and the need for a thorough deconstruction of many of our inherited or preconceived perspectives.

I hope the regions explored in my blog will be more attentively researched and the existing research updated in order to address the issues they face. I have just stumbled on a relatively new article in The New York Times highlighting the threats to Kilimanjaro's diversity - a step in the right direction!