The chief called on his ancestral spirits and dropped magic powder along the route he wanted to take.

[5] To the west of the hill the land falls away steeply to the headwaters of the Zambezi River, where there is the Zengamina hydroelectric power generation plant.

[3] In the 1880s Kalene Hill was an important slave trading center, where Ovimbundu slavers came to deal with Ndembu headmen.

[6] In 1884 the Plymouth Brethren missionary Frederick Stanley Arnot traveled through the region and identified the source of the Zambezi.

[7] He considered that Kalene Hill would be a particularly suitable place for a mission, since he thought the cool breezes would keep it relatively free of malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

In 1905 the medical missionary Walter Fisher, who had accompanied Arnot on a later visit to Africa in 1889, established a hospital at Kalene Hill.

[3] The original hospital was built using the traditional Angolan method of making bricks from baked anthill.

A serious incident occurred during the cold, dry season, when temperatures at night often dipped below the freezing point.

The fire spread and destroyed all of the Fishers' trade goods, medical supplies and personal possessions.

Fisher's prestige was enhanced in the eyes of the local people by the huge tribute that he had received from distant parts.

The station was well supplied with fruits, grains and vegetables from the countryside, fish from the river, and goats, sheep, cows, pigs and chickens raised by the mission.

Harsh treatment by colonial administrators in Angola and continued illicit slave trading caused people to come to settle near the mission for safety.

[2] Due to shortage of water, soon after Fisher's death the hospital was moved to its present location at the foot of the hill.

[20] The growing local population was trapped in a poverty cycle, with very low levels of formal employment, living through unsustainable slash-and-burn subsistence farming.

[21] The Zengamina hydroelectric project on the Zambezi has provided 24-hour electricity to the hospital since 2007, later extended to the orphanage, schools and 1,000 houses.

The site, about 1,500 m (4,900 ft) above sea level, is marked with a copper plaque that was unveiled in 1964 as part of the independence celebrations.