Toto

The internet’s finest Africa* reference™ *That’s the song, “Africa”, not the continent, of course →Go uptown Kilimanjaro rising like itself above the Tsavo. Olympus, rising like Olympus, above — I don’t know — Thessaloniki or something. A leopress, up a tree, yesterday Click the ᐅ to expand: Toto Tell me more Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

Toto was — is? We can dream can’t we? — a progressive 80s pop band, made of industry super-session men like Steve Lukather (guitars), David Paich (vocals) and Jeff Porcaro (drums) and his brothers, and progenitors of colossal totems of modern cultural over-achievement such as Africa and Hold the Line, as well as Grammy-award winning Rosanna, which really is extraordinary.

Africa, and the rising (or otherwise) of Kilimanjaro above the Serengeti and/or Olympus

I know that I must do what’s right
As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti

Where to start?

For one thing, Kilimanjaro doesn’t rise above the Serengeti. (It rises above the Tsavo National Park. Why, you might wonder, didn’t he put “Tsavo”? It would have scanned better.) You can’t even see it from the Serengeti, unless you get in a hot air balloon and take a telescope: they’re about 250 kilometres from each other. A correspondent writes with photographic evidence, in the panel: you can barely see Kilimanjaro from Mount Meru, 70 km away in the Arusha National Park, let alone from Serengeti, three times further away.

And not just because it is a long way away. It is literally over the horizon. Let’s be fully scientific about this. From the ground, all but the top 900 metres of a 6,000 metre mountain would be over the horizon. 900 metres at 250km would appear about 4mm high, if you could even see it through nearby trees (with or without napping leopresses), haze, atmospheric perspective etc. This is not really rising at all, let alone majestically, like Olympus might (if it weren’t already rising above a national park in Greece, of course).

And Mount Olympus definitely doesn’t rise above the Serengeti. It’s in Greece.

To the extent you could say that something that has just sat there for millions of years does anything as energetic as “rising”, then Kilimanjaro doesn’t rise like Olympus, either. It rises like Kilimanjaro. They don’t look anything like each other. I mean, look.

And we haven’t even got onto the fact that THE LINE DOESN’T SCAN FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.