No one believed him. No kidding. In fact, he was roundly ridiculed, and not just by the usual tongue-clicking, Intelligencer-reading know-it-alls, either. No less than the Geographical Society of London dismissed Rebmann’s claim as either a lie or a malaria-induced hallucination.* And that’s just mean.
In the age of Google Earth it’s hard to imagine that a debate once raged over whether or not a mountain had snow on it. Yet Rebmann’s claim was widely disparaged… for 12 years!
For want of basic telecommunications, then, frustrated explorers in remote locations had no way to prove to their countrymen what they were seeing with their very own eyes, even if what they were seeing happened to be blazing white and perched atop a giant volcano 60 miles wide and 3 miles high. Your heart goes out. It really does.
There are only two seasons on the Equator: hot and hotter. Or, to be more precise, rainy-hot and dry-hot. The idea that you could find snow there seemed preposterous in the 1800s, especially to highborn, pinkie-extending members of London's Geographic Society who could escape nearly all traces of winter simply by vacationing in southern Spain.
But back to Rebmann, who fared only marginally better as a missionary than as a field geographer. Islam had beaten Christianity to East Africa by centuries, seeded along the coast by Arab traders as early as 700 CE. And Arabs had much to offer in addition to monotheism. They bestowed valuable boons, such as algebra and astronomy, on their African converts. Hard to compete with that. In addition, since one cannot know the words of The Prophet without reading the Quran, wherever Islam went, so also went the Arabic language, its numerals, and its incredibly useful alphabet. Or so it is written.
What's more, African Muslims were every bit as zealous and missionary as their Christian rivals, so Rebmann had his work cut out for him. As monotheists, African Muslims were no more likely than Arabs to have their heads turned by another god, certainly not one as jealous as their own. Consequently, Rebmann focused his efforts on the inland natives.
He appears to have had some limited success converting traditional Africans to Christianity, but this isn’t surprising. It's not especially difficult to encourage polytheists to accept a new deity, particularly one equipped with such impressive idols as busts of Jesus and Mary. The thing about polytheists, though, is that although they are often eager to adopt a new god (or two), they almost never replace their old deities with the new lone god. Instead, they happily add the new god to their crowded pantheon and go on praying to the whole lineup. This drove missionaries like Rebmann to distraction. Ah, but half a loaf, as they say…
It’s only fitting, then, that one of the glaciers crowning Mount Kilimanjaro was named for him in 1900, albeit 24 years after he died. If my legs and lungs don't fail me, I should see it with my own eyes this summer.
You'll believe me, won't you?