People are not mountains
An Iraqw proverb about human connection
In August 2022, FUEL teammates Ayushi and Aakansha found themselves in the heart of rural Tanzania, sitting with elders from the Iraqw community in Babati, collecting the wisdom that lives in everyday people.
They discovered that proverbs, in Iraqw culture, aren’t just pretty sayings. They’re social blueprints, messages passed down through generations to help us navigate the messy, magnificent complexity of being human. Each evening, they would return to their rooms with a proverb added to their notebooks, pondering their meanings late into the night.
One proverb shared by a community member, Sabini John, completely reshaped our thinking about goodbyes, hellos, and all the mysterious spaces in between:
“People are not mountains.”
Mountains stay put. They’re magnificent and eternal, but immovable. Mount Everest will never grab coffee with Mount Kilimanjaro. They’ll spend forever gazing at each other across impossible distances, beautiful, but unreachable.
But people? We bend. We shift. We travel, forgive, call, text, hug, or simply show up. We move toward each other—and often find each other in the most unexpected places.
A casual compliment to the passenger next to you on a flight leads to discovering you grew up with their nephew, and you’re both now navigating a move to the same city. An elementary school best friend who moved away in third grade shows up years later as a participant in your workshop. Suddenly, you’re both adults laughing about that time you tried to build a giant dollhouse out of playing cards.
This week:
Send that text to someone you’ve been thinking about but haven’t reached out to in forever.
Say “see you later” instead of “goodbye,” because the universe loves plot twists.
Forgive a little easier, knowing that chapter with that person probably isn't over.
Leave gentler footprints in every interaction, because you never know when it might be your last chance to show someone who you really are.
Mountains may be eternal, but people are eternal in a different way. We live on in each other's stories, carry pieces of each other forward, and find our way back to each other when the timing is right. People are not mountains, we can meet. Thank goodness for that!
Moving a step closer,
Team FUEL.
PS: What lesson have you learned about making or remaking connections? Get featured on the World Wisdom Map by sharing it here.