Sorry to have been out of touch for so long! I have been somewhat busy training, doing and recovering from one of the most challenging and incredible experiences of my life and certainly of my time in Africa. Last week I spent nine days traveling through East Africa and climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. I had been running through the smaller hills by Table Mountain to condition but the summit day was the single most grueling thing I have ever been through. We spent four days on the ascent and two on the descent with the summit attempt beginning at midnight of the fourth day. We have to start then for two reasons: one, on the more practical end, to climb through the cool of the evening when the snow and ice are still fully solid and two, on the more aesthetically focused side of things, to reach Uhuru, the summit of Kibo peak and the highest free standing mountain in the world, by sunrise. There were four of us on the trip but only three made the summit, as one girl got terrible altitude sickness about an hour in. The rest of us were okay until we hit the section leading up to the crater rim, where we were essentially scrambling blind over a vertical slope of ice and volcanic ash and gravel. It was at this point that I began to envy my friend her crippling altitude sickness. By the time we reach Gillman’s Point, at the edge of the crater, the remaining three were in less than top condition. Allie, a division one track runner at USC, had already thrown up once and would do so twice more before reaching the peak. Carrie was battling a head ache from dehydration and altitude while I had been nauseated since about moonrise at the halfway mark. BUT. I made it. Though not before literally tearing up from joy at the sight of the peak, which had to be one of the more embarrassingly uncontrolled emotional outbursts of my time here. We came to the somewhat melodramatic conclusion of “which is worse: childbirth or summit day?” “Summit day” (or I suppose I should say 19,000 ft) since at the end of child birth at least you get a baby.
That said, I hands down loved it. Travelling through East Africa was completely different from my experience in South Africa. I felt so little of the racial and class resentment so prevalent here, even though, in Nairobi for example, we saw no other white people on the streets or in the shops. There was instead a frankness about race and a kind-heartedness that all of us had felt missing in Cape Town. Moshi, the town at the base, was an incredible town. Vibrant, diverse and welcoming and in such a genuine way. This has all been rather heavy so I’ll end off with two of my funnier interactions:
1. At a roadside stop in Kenya, by the Kenyan-Tanzanian border
Shopekeeper: Where are you from?
Me: America
Shopkeeper: Did you vote?\
Me: Yep! For Barack Obama!
Shopkeeper: [Huge grin, huge high five]
2. With Solomon, our guide, at our day three camp side. We are on an acclimatization hike (“climb high, sleep low”) by Mawenzi peak and a small lake.
Us: Solomon, can we swim?
Solomon: Oh…no.
Us: Too cold?
Solomon: Too cold…also…maybe magical
Us: [Stunned silence]
Solomon: Maybe magical…don’t know what lives there…maybe hole all the way to Moshi town.
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