"Look What We Can Do!"

Rising a majestic 19,565 feet into the clouds from the hot and dry plains of Tanganyika is snow-capped Kilimanjaro --the Mountain of Brightness in Swahili, a Hemingway setting to U.S. readers, the Seat of God to the Chagga tribesmen who live upon its lower slopes. Chagga legend has it that the great god Ruwa liberated mankind by smashing a vessel in which the first humans were imprisoned and scattering them over the mountainside. Actually, the 360,000 people of Chagga-land are a mixture of many tribes who for some five centuries have dwelt among Kilimanjaro's deep ravines and lived by their wits. Their wits have brought them far. Last week the European tourists who panted up the mountain behind studiously nonchalant guides found themselves in a country that is mostly Christian, and brims with more promise and progress than almost any land in Africa.

The Masters. The Chagga saga began in 1932 when, with the permission of the British, African coffee growers banded together to found the spectacularly successful Kilimanjaro Native Cooperative Union. In the 26 years since, KNCU, the largest purely native commercial enterprise in colonial Africa, has boosted the Chagga from a tribe barely subsisting to a well-fed people with cash in their pockets. Each year, through their union, the Chagga market a $6,000,000 to $8,000,000 coffee crop. They own and operate a modern restaurant and hotel (The Coffee Tree Hostelry, with a balcony for every room), publish their own biweekly newspaper, run their own schools and hospitals. Most important: the Chagga are their own masters. In their land, it is the whites who work as teachers and advisers for the blacks.

KNCU's five-story headquarters in the town of Moshi is in itself a symbol of the Chagga's progress. Built around a flowering courtyard of bougainvillaea and poinsettia, it not only houses offices and auction rooms, but also one of Tanganyika's few public libraries. Soon KNCU hopes to build a $15,000 community center for plays, concerts, art and agricultural exhibits.

The Leopard & the Monkey. In 1951 the Chagga chose as their Paramount Chief Thomas Lenana Mlanga Marealle, 43, well-educated (Cambridge and the London School of Economics) grandson of a chief who ruled during the years be fore World War I when Tanganyika was a German protectorate. To his own people, Marealle II is known as Mangi Mkuu (Great Chief), to the whites of Tanganyika, he is King Tom. But by whatever name he is known, he is one of Africa's most remarkable statesmen. He runs his country through a hierarchy of elected and hereditary councils which are topped by the supreme Chagga Council of 50 members. Each year the council puts $120,000 into education and $50.000 into public health. It operates 19 primary schools, 17 dispensaries and six maternity clinics. It has made elementary education compulsory, and by now, of Chaggaland's 36,000 school-age children, 33,000 are attending classes.

When the council meets, Marealle appears before it dressed in his coronation robes of leopard skins (for sovereignty) and colobus monkey skins (for gentleness). Otherwise, he wears Western suits and sports jackets, works from early morning to late at night like the efficient and overburdened executive that he is. A Lutheran, he discourages such superstitions as the pouring of the year's first bit of pombe (beer) as a drink for Ruwa, or of the ceremonious spitting towards Kilimanjaro at dawn. But while uprooting superstition, he has been careful to keep the tribal spirit alive.

First: Order. He adopted a tribal flag, set up a Chagga trust to preserve traditions, commissioned an Oxford scholar to write the Chaggas' history. To rabid Pan-African nationalists, this sort of thing is most disturbing, for Marealle's tribal consciousness, as well as his affection for the British crown, are taken as signs of shameful backwardness. Actually, Marealle is no less eager for independence than anyone. But, says he, "self-government is a thing to come when all other things are in order." The accomplishments of the Chagga, he believes, will do more for the nationalist cause than any amount of ranting and agitation. "We're making it possible for the nationalists to say: 'Look what we can do!";

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