When it comes to mountains I am with the ancient Greeks – I believe they are the right and proper dwelling place for the Gods. My own sense of awe and wonderment when in their presence stems, in large part, from my childhood experiences on our farm, Nyangui, which lay at the very end of The Old Dutch Settlement Road, in Nyanga North, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

The mountain range which ran along our eastern boundary was shrouded in legend and was dominated by Mt Muozi, a steep, semi-detached peak attached to the main Nyanga plateau by a narrow saddle. Looking like some great fortress and frequently masked by cloud, it played a pivotal role in local belief system.

To the Saunyama people, who live nearby, Muozi had always been an extremely sacred site, harbouring a protective, if somewhat touchy, deity through whom all life was cycled and who had an important influence over both their lives and the weather. Upset it and you would be punished with the curse of no rain; give it the proper respect and make the right offerings, your crops would flourish and all would be well.

In an area where every stream, knoll, rock, cranny, glade, cleft and grove seemed to have its own special spiritual connection, it was the most revered of them all, the epicentre of an important rain-making cult, a mountain whose significance extended way beyond the mere physical. It was a gateway to another dimension, a bridge between past, present and future.

When we were still on the farm a new chief was chosen for the Saunyama people and was then led by an ox up the mountain as tradition dictated. The fact that it rained, as he proceeded up its slopes, was taken as a sign that the ancestors had given their blessing to his appointment.

It may or may not have been coincidental that the three mission stations established in our area – St Mary’s, Mount Mellary and Marist Brothers – had all been built in the long shadow cast by Muozi (or Rain God Mountain as my father liked to call it).

To the bringers of light in a great darkness, carriers of the word of God to a heathen race, such beliefs and superstitions must have provided ready proof that their presence was urgently required. Here were souls in need of salvation!

One of the taboos concerning the mountain was that ordinary tribes-people were forbidden from climbing it. Determined to prove, once and for all whose God, was the more omnipotent, a local missionary decided to lead a party of school children to its summit.

Again, it may or may not have been a coincidence, but that year the whole region experienced a devastating drought.

Depending on what angle you tackle it from, it would, admittedly, have been a fairly tough climb. Vaguely volcanic in outline, although that is not how it was formed back in early geological time, the mountain has, at its top, a massive tower of square-sided, near vertical, rock. The easiest way to reach the summit would, in fact, be to double back to Nyanga and drive along the old road that runs along the top of the range and then walk over the saddle that links Muozi to the main plateau. That, however, would probably have felt like a cop-out – far better the little children suffer for their sins by making them slog their way up from the bottom!

Another legend concerning Muozi was that if there was ever a cloud in the sky, there would always be one hovering over it. We were constantly amazed by how often this proved to be true although I suppose a meteorologist may be able to come up with a perfectly logical and reasonable scientific explanation about precisely why this should be so.

It was easy to see why Muozi should have become an object for such devotion. Although by no means the highest peak in the range (neighbouring Nyangui, for example, exceeded it in height), its magnificence consisted of something else. With its dramatic cliffs and crags it was more sharply formed and was much more striking to look at than any of the other mountains in the Nyanga range

I was always fascinated by this mountain amongst whose vapours both good and bad spirits seem to have learnt how to co-exist. One moment it could seem dark and threatening, the next it was as welcoming as some benevolent old giant.

Cranky, changeable, a totem for our more fearful imaginings, it has, for me, come to symbolise an Africa that has increasingly become consigned to the world of books, banished by the rising tide of humanity and economic development. Here, something of the old magic still clings to the earth.

From this point of view, I, too, felt the mountains should be treated with circumspection – it was a deity to be wooed and won over and then revered and respected; its was not one you wanted to trifle with or cross.

When we were still in the process of moving out to the farm, way back in the early 1960s, we had often stayed in the cottage that J.Bekker, one of the original Afrikaner settlers in the district, had built, in the traditional Dutch-style, at its base. When we moved out there, Summershoek, the farm on which it stood, was owned by Marshall Murphree, an American missionary who in 1970 would become Rhodesia’s inaugural Professor of Race Relations. He and his family did not live there permanently but used it as a holiday home.

At night, with its peak washed white in the moonlight and a gentle wind sighing down from the slopes, I often used to feel like I had crossed through some portal into another world, one that was both a little scary and also unimaginably beautiful – a feeling that only intensified as more stars appeared and the nightjars started calling.

Adding to its allure was the fact that there were still leopard living on it. One of them attacked old Charlie, the aged caretaker of the property, as he was out rounding up cattle and was then swiftly despatched by his equally ancient wife who brought an axe down on its skull. Displaying still more commendable fortitude – as well as devotion to her spouse – she then staggered back home, carrying Charlie, so that my mother could attend to his wounds.

I was not the only one who felt Muozi’s strange power. Our Malawian gardener, Devite, who we had bought out with us from Salisbury (now Harare), lived in such fear of the mountain – he talked about seeing white, ghostly figures going in and out of it – that after a few months he decided he had had enough. Packing his few possessions in a battered old suitcase, he caught a train and headed ‘Down South’ to Jo’burg, to look for a job on the gold mines.

A couple of years later – by which stage we had moved to our new house on the neighbouring Witte Kopjes farm – we were astonished to see his thin, skeletal figure hobbling up the road. For him at least, South Africa had not proved to be the land of money and opportunity. He also appeared to have had a rethink and decided he could live with the ghouls and malign spirits that inhabited the mountain for he carried on working for us for the rest of his remarkably long life.

When we were forced off the farm during the Rhodesian Bush War, I was sad to say goodbye to that great brooding mountain and the wild country at its feet.

Looking back on those days I realise what a pivotal role it played in my life. No other landmark has affected me as deeply or had such influence on my imaginative development or provided me with such a rich vein of memories. Living in its shadow, imaginative doors were opened, creative juices started to flow, ways of seeing begun.

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