List of names on Mount Kenya  Mount Kenya () is the second highest mountain in Africa and the highest mountain in Kenya, after which the country is named. It lies just south of the equator and currently has eleven small glaciers. Various expeditions reached it in the following years. It was first climbed in 1899 by Halford Mackinder. The mountain became a national park in 1949, played a key role in the Mau Mau events in the 1950s, and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. It is climbed and walked up by up to 15,000 tourists every year. Mount Kenya received its current name by European missionaries who, wrote the name as 'Kenya' from the Akamba word 'kiinyaa'. The first missionaries, Johann Ludwig Krapf, and Johannes Rebmann, were led into Kenyas interior by Akamba long distance traders. So when they asked the name of the mountain, they were given the name 'kiima kya kenia'. 'kenia' in Kamba means to glitter, or to shine, hence the Akamba people referred to it as the mountain that glitters, or the shining mountain. So these missionaries recorded it as Mt. Kenya, a Kamba word, and the country was then later named after this mountain. Wangari Maathai tells the following story about the naming: Krapf and Johannes Rebmann asked their guide, a member of the Kamba community, who was carrying a gourd, what they called the mountain, and the guide, believing that the Germans were referring to the gourd, replied "kĩĩ-nyaa", which became the name of the mountain and then the country. Other ethnic groups living around the mountain such as the Agikuyu called this mountain 'Kirinyaga'; 'nyaga' in Kikuyu means white patches, hence it is also the Kikuyu word for Ostrich, and 'kiri' means with: so in essence they called it the mountain with ostriches. The Maasai call it "Ol Donyo Eibor" or "Ol Donyo Egere", which mean "the White mountain" or "the speckled mountain" respectively. Krapf was staying in a Wakamba village when he first saw the mountain. Krapf, however, recorded the name as both "Kenia" and "Kegnia". According to some sources, this is a corruption of the Wakamba "Kiinyaa".