"David, that wildebeest you're aiming for doesn't look friendly"

True, he was a big bull with long, sharp horns, and there were a lot of cows grazing nearby. I was cycling right toward him across the savanna, and there’s a lot I don’t know about the temperament and habits of wildebeest. “I’m going to keep you between me and him,” Susan added, just to reassure me.

But after we gave each other a good looking over, he turned and scampered away. Perhaps it’s hard to picture a 500-lb ungulate scampering, but that’s really what they do, running very lightly on their skinny legs. So we held our course, with wildebeest running off to our left and a couple of dozen Thompson’s gazelles keeping a wary eye on our progress from the right, and we went on bumping and bouncing over the rough ground of the grassland. (And, for the record, wildebeest, also known as gnus, are not aggressive at all. From a distance we were worried that they might be Cape buffalo, who have much shorter tempers. In this case, as we grew nearer, “no gnus” would have been very bad news.)

For the first few kilometers of our ride this afternoon, on a pair of Schwinn mountain bikes lent by our weekend hosts Jon and Phyllis Masso, we stayed on the rough dirt tracks that led off into the open country across the road from Daystar’s Athi River campus. A small herd of zebra surprised us by running very fast right across the track, just a hundred yards in front of us, and then stopping abruptly and looking back at us. Their destination looked to us like an ordinary patch of grass, but evidently through zebra eyes it was really special. The wildebeest and gazelles were grazing lower in the valley, far from any of the tracks, and we wanted to see them up close. So we spent most of our time riding across the grassland, which was churned up into little mounds and valleys by their hooves.

It was the first time on a bike for either of us since last fall in Michigan. (When was it the snow arrived and ended my biking season—late November? It seems like years ago.) And one of the most unusual bike rides we will ever take. Riding on such rough ground was exhausting, however. For a while Susan decided to walk her bike. I kept riding, til I realized I could not quite keep up with her.

We are back home now after a delightful country weekend at Daystar’s Athi River campus, where I could have chosen to live and teach and spend all my time. (Actually, although I had specifically requested housing at the Nairobi campus, we learned recently that the other guest faculty member who arrived in January was offered his choice between our apartment and one at Athi River and chose the latter. We’re glad he did.) Out there we would have enjoyed fresh country air, beautiful sunsets, a clear night sky full of brilliant stars, and lovely hiking and biking paths in the Lukenya Hills, and our flat (smaller than this one, but with more air and light) would have been one of four in a guest faculty block. But we’d have been 40 km away from Nairobi—5 km on rough dirt road, then 35 km on one of the most heavily traveled highways in East Africa with several stretches of unspeakably poor rocky surface around construction zones. The closest shopping—very limited at that—would have been 15 km away in Athi River town.

All in all Daystar at Athi River strikes us as a lovely place to visit but not to live, and couple of days there confirmed that we are city people at heart (even though we gave up our own wonderful city house to move to a quiet spot on Lake Michigan’s shore in 2006). The chance for an extended visit came from Jon and Phyllis, who learned that I needed to spend time talking with a colleague on Saturday and invited us to stay in their guestroom for the weekend. The plan had been for two nights, but both of us were down with short-lived but virulent indispositions last week, Susan on Wednesday with a severe GI attack, I on Thursday with completely different symptoms including headache, general neuralgia, and a fever. Friday we were both still very weak, but by Saturday morning we felt much better and were ready for an outing.

The minute we arrived, Susan turned around and went out with most of the Athi River moms and kids and one of the dads to an ostrich farm for a tour and an ostrich ride (Susan passed on that) and ostrich meat for lunch. (We could get delicious ostrich steaks in Ghana and South Africa, but not here, alas.) I spent the morning with a colleague in community development, who is focusing on many of the same issues in his research work as I am—how ideals sustain community and what motivates people to feel they have a stake—but in the context of a particular village in Niger, where he worked for 16 years for SIM, rather than in the realm of national politics. Then I took a long walk around the campus, sat for a while at a little dam and watched weaverbirds working on their nests and swallows skimming over the water, and found some books I need to read or reread in the library—only to be told that I may not check out any more materials on either campus until I return some. The limit for students is six, for lecturers ten.

In the evening almost the entire visiting faculty cadre went out for dinner together to a nearby private game ranch, Acadia Camp. It’s a lovely place (though unfortunately we arrived just after dark) and the buffet was scrumptious—some of the tenderest meat we’ve had in Kenya. We may try to spend a weekend there before we go, since it’s just an hour away and far less expensive than the national park lodges and camps. We saw shadowy forms of wildebeest and zebra on our way in and out of the reserve, and francolins flapped up out of the track when they saw our headlights approach.

We celebrated Palm Sunday at St. John’s Anglican Church in the tiny African settlement just across from the Daystar gate. The church is a galvanized iron shed on a wooden frame, about 20 x 30, with backless wooden benches to sit on. We set out in time to gather at 9:30 for a procession, but on finding that Jon’s car had a puncture (that’s a flat tire, for you Americans) we walked over and arrived a little before 10. Our arrival swelled the ranks from two to five. By the time we set out, shortly after 10, there were about 25 of us singing our way through the narrow dirt lanes between houses and shops, alternating between Western hymns and Swahili praise songs. Two young boys carried 12-foot palm fronds at the front of the procession, while the rest of us waved palm branches cut just this morning. It was a fine service, with a sermon by visiting Bible lecturer David Miller (in English, with a quick and fluent translation in to Swahili). And because the preacher was American (so says Jon) it lasted less than two hours.

Phyllis is a lay reader and frequent preacher at this little parish, but she was busy with a preaching workshop at the Machakos cathedral, half an hour to the south. Jon and Phyllis’s house, just a kilometer away from the church, is part of a small development they launched ten years ago with eight others (some American Daystar faculty, some Kenyans, all with links to Nairobi Chapel). When we drove up Saturday morning Jon’s greeting was “Welcome to Paradise!” And he was not exaggerating: they built a compact but airy house, very cool even after a day of equatorial sun, surrounded by beautiful native-plant gardens. Cooling breezes waft over the Lukenya Hills from the south every day, and when the outdoor patio gets hot in late afternoon they retreat to the much cooler interior and watch the sun set over the savannah through a wall of (low-transmission, high-efficiency) windows. I understand now why Jon was so reluctant to accept an appointment as Acting Deputy Vice-Chancellor, since his days are now filled with meetings and he has to travel to the Nairobi campus several times a week.

For pics related to this entry go to http://picasaweb.google.com/dhoekema/1003CSAthiRiver?authkey=Gv1sRgCKrBlJq_1emsvgE&feat=directlink

Life in Nairobi: A Social Whirl

I had been thinking about writing about our typical daily life in Nairobi—shopping, teaching, etc.—but suddenly we’ve been swept up in a social whirl.  Daily life can wait.

 

It began last Sunday.  Two families from Athi River came in on the early Sunday morning bus and we all went with Jan Korbel (a member of the Daystar US staff who works in Nairobi with long and short-term visitors) to Nairobi Chapel.  We had visited Nairobi Chapel in 2001, when it met on the campus of the University of Nairobi and was outgrowing its facilities there.  Now it is housed in a vast tent complex off the Ngong Road on the way to Karen.  At church we reconnected with Njojo and Katindi, human rights activists who had visited us in Michigan last summer.  After church, we went out to lunch with a big gang, which included Diane Stinton, the author of a book on African Christianity David had recently read.

That afternoon, we were invited to tea at the home of Heidi, daughter of our Pasadena friend Faith Sand, who is working in Nairobi and had just returned from a visit to Ethiopia with Faith.  To our surprise, we met their Ethiopian driver, with whom they toured ancient monasteries, churches carved out of the rock, and castles.  He and Heidi convinced us that we should make a trip to Ethiopia while we have the chance.

On Monday, I went with a group of women connected with Daystar to a workshop called Amani Ya Juu, Swahili for “higher peace.”  They have a great website at www.amaniafrica.org.  I particularly loved the Unity Quilt hanging in their common room, which you can see if you click on “About Amani” on the left side of the site and then on “Our Unity Quilt.”

On Wednesday, David and I drove to the US embassy for our mail.  We gave a ride to Jim Dix, a Fulbright recipient from SUNY Binghamton, who then treated us to lunch at the Chiromo Club at the University of Nairobi and showed us the Chemistry department, where he teaches. 

 

In the afternoon, we went to the CRWRC office in Nairobi and met with Martin Mutuku, the Partners Worldwide partnership manager for Kenya.  I won’t say much about the work of Partners because they also have a website that explains what they do.  Check particularly the references to Kenya. www.partnersworldwide.org/partnerships/index.html

I had met Martin last October at the Partners conference in Grand Rapids.  Then we talked about some issues he was facing with businesses that were seeking bigger loans as they grew.  The business growth they were attempting was exactly what Partners wants to encourage but these loan requests were beyond the capacity of the community lending groups and the businesses lacked some of the tools and skills they needed to handle rapid growth.  On Wednesday, I learned that Martin was working on a partnership with a Kenyan bank to handle these larger loans and developing a structure of support for the businesses taking this step.  I am reviewing a draft of his proposal and will be giving him some feedback.

On Thursday, we went out to lunch at our favorite Ethiopian restaurant, Habesha, where we had seen an ad for roundtrip tickets to Ethiopia for $183.  While David and Jan were ordering lunch, I ordered tickets.  We will be flying to Addis Ababa on April 29 at 4:30 am and returning on May 7.

On Friday, I prepared lunch for the couple with whom we had stayed in Vipingo when Beverly visited.  They were on their way from the coast to England for their daughter’s 21^st birthday and were going to stop at Kenya’s immigration offices in the morning, lunch with us, go to a 4:30 meeting, and then head to the airport for an evening flight to England.  Then we got a series of text messages: We’re still tied up but will see you at 1; No, it will be 3; Could we come for dinner instead?  Fortunately the food I prepared—babootie, green beans, butternut and a fruit salad—held up well.  The Nightingales arrived famished (they had missed both breakfast and lunch) but relieved to have succeeded in completing their paperwork.  And we all had time to enjoy dinner because their flight to England was cancelled.  They flew out Saturday morning instead.

Saturday we did some work in the morning and then took a bus downtown to shop at the outdoor craft market that is set up near the Law Court every Saturday.  The market is very crowded, with most of the goods—carved animals, wood and bone spoons, jewelry, banana leaf mats and figures, sisal baskets, cloth, clothing baskets, soapstone bowls and carvings, sandals—spread out on plastic sheets or hanging on makeshift frames.  The pathways between the goods are narrow and are filled not only with customers but also with young men carrying things for sale—bracelets, banana-leaf mobiles, frames paintings—and brokers, men who tell tourists “tell me what you want and I will get you a good price” but in fact extort money from vendors and buyers alike.  The first time we went to the market, we were sucked in by the brokers, but now we know how to shake them off and deal directly with the vendors, who are mostly women.  But it is an exhausting way to shop—watching our feet to avoid stepping on fragile objects, fending off brokers, making our way through bottlenecks, bargaining hard for every purchase (the first price quoted is highly inflated) and doing the currency conversions in our head to be sure we are paying a reasonable price in the end.  


After about 40 minutes there, we escaped to the shaded patio of an Italian restaurant for coffee and what turned out to be the best tiramisu we’d eaten in ages.  Then I led David to the district where I’ve already purchased several pieces of cloth.  On Biashara Street, Indian merchants sell Kenyan, West African, and Indian cloth with the help of polite, helpful young Kenyans.  Their posted prices as good as the best bargains we can get at the market, and they give me a discount because they’ve seen me so often in the past couple of weeks.

Saturday evening we had a lovely dinner at the home of Fred Witteveen, the CRWRC Country Consultant for Kenya, and his wife Georgina, who we first met in GR just after we learned we were heading to Kenya.  To get to their house on the other side of Nairobi and back costs more than $30 by taxi, so we took another big step in our driving adventures.  Driving at night in the car Daystar makes available to visiting faculty had been, until now, strictly forbidden.  On Friday, David asked the person in charge whether he could use the car on this occasion, since we had traveled the route several times by day on our way to and from the embassy.  She agreed that we could, provided we did not go through downtown and drove very fast.  We made it home without incident in short order, not because we drove very fast but because the traffic was so light.

We attended a wonderful service at All Saint’s Anglican Cathedral on Sunday morning (one of 10 services every Sunday!).  The highlight of the service was a Passion/Easter musical drama performed by an amazingly well-disciplined crew of about 40 kindergarten children, all in school uniform.  They all knew their lines and delivered them promptly, clearly, and LOUDLY.  They acted out the triumphal entry and the crucifixion and sang most enthusiastically, with exuberant hand motions, of the Resurrection.  The service was rich in many ways.   We sang from Hymns Ancient and Modern with organ accompaniment; sang the psalms in Anglican chant with the choir; and heard a highly animated and very thoughtful sermon from a young female priest about the story of Zaccheus, punctuated by several songs (she'd sing a line and the whole congregation would join) in English and Swahili.  There were perhaps a dozen wazungu (white people) in the congregation of 500 or so, none among the dozen priests and lay readers and musicians who led the service--this is a thoroughly African adaptation of high-church Anglicanism.  And the service lasted just short of two hours, which we would hardly have noticed if it weren't for the wooden pews on which we were sitting, which were a lot harder in the second hour than the first.  What a wonderful confluence of cultures Nairobi is!

We drove from church to the Oshwal Center, a Jain temple complex, on the north side of Nairobi, where we had agreed to usher for the Nairobi Musical Society orchestra concert at 3 pm Sunday afternoon.  Before our duties started, we walked a block over to one of the glitziest malls in Nairobi, had lunch at a café, and felt like we were back in South Africa.  This was my first visit to the temple complex, a huge structure, beautifully finished, with lovely gardens, a playing field and a concert hall as well as vast meeting rooms.  David rehearses at the Oshwal Center weekly with the Nairobi Chorus, which will perform the St John Passion next month with this orchestra accompanying them.  It's a small chamber ensemble of community members, but acquitted itself pretty well in a varied program.  Our next door neighbor Bill Rowe is half of the trumpet section.  The highlight for me was Vaughan-Williams' delightful tuba concerto, played by a young Brit currently teaching at a secondary school.  

Our most recent social event was lunch today with Daniel and Evangeline M'Mutungi, Daystar lecturers who spent 8 years in the States, who invited us to join them for traditional Kenyan nyama choma (grilled meat).  They led us to the Shade Hotel in Karen (actually in Ngong town past Karen), which is right next to the home of Kenya’s prime minister.  We spent a relaxing afternoon engaged in fascinating conversation about Kenyan and US religious and political life.  The menfolk (Jim Dix was with us) sat down in the garden, in the shade of a big tree, as soon as we arrived.  Before Evangeline and I joined them, she led me to the kitchen to look over the menu and the meat on offer and to make decisions about kind of meat, quantity, and how it should be cooked.  The first question concerned ribs:  not available at the moment, but a goat was about to be slaughtered.  Did we want to wait for its ribs?  We chose the leg of lamb.  Then we engaged in an extended discussion with the restaurant staff about which chicken we preferred—Kenyan or imported (we chose a Kenyan free-range chicken)—and how we wanted it cooked.  The staff was very concerned that we wazungu would find grilled Kenyan chicken too tough.  They tried to discourage us from choosing the Kenyan chicken by pointing out that it cost 100 shillings more ($1.33) and then suggested that we deep-fat fry it instead of grilling it.  But we persevered.  Evangeline assured me that our teeth would be strong enough to chew it.  And they were.  The meat was grilled to perfection and accompanied by potatoes and a variety of vegetables.  A delicious meal, well worth the time it took to select and prepare it.

This social whirl has encouraged us to extend hospitality.  Tuesday afternoon we will be hosting the first weekly Philosophy tea at our flat.  We are inviting David’s students and students from other sections of Philosophy 111 to our house for refreshments and conversation.  We’re hoping for a good turnout but are a little worried that the crowd may be more than we can handle.  David has almost 60 students attending his class and they won’t all fit in our living room.  And we have only 15 tea cups.

Rounding the post: nearly halfway

We have nearly reached the halfway point of our five months in Kenya, which began on January 10 and will end when we depart for home (with a stopover in the UK) on May 27. Te time has passed quickly, and there are many things we still want to do while we are here. But it’s a good time to take stock and look back.

Things that we have done together: settle into our spacious and comfortable flat and decorated the bare walls of nearly every room with brilliantly colored Kenyan cloth; organize a good internet connection in the house after a month of frustration and false starts; remain healthy (apart from a bout of mild flu for both, some trauma to David's foot from his Kili outing that is healing steadily but slowly, and a bacterial bronchitis David seems to have developed from the same cause for which he's now recovering with the aid of antibiotics); make new friends of several nationalities, through Daystar and church and CRWRC and Fulbright networks; attend many different sorts of church services, all wonderfully lively and uplifting, some right in our neighborhood and some in remote villages, some but not all conducted in English; go hiking in a nearby national park; spend three extremely busy but very rewarding weeks with twelve Calvin students observing church-related development projects in many urban and rural communities; welcome several houseguests for a few days or a few weeks and used their visits as the occasion to travel to the Indian Ocean coast and the Maasai Mara game reserve; experience the traditional welcome extended by the Kenya police to mzungu visitors, viz., an exorbitant bribe to avoid spending hours at the police station contesting a trumped-up offense; come to enjoy the thorough coverage of and pointed commentary on Kenyan politics in Nairobi’s daily newspapers; shake our heads in disbelief at the capacity of high government officials facing credible charges of corruption and malfeasance to brush them off and block any investigation; and attend a Women’s Day program at the Alliance Française that included a powerful film on how women suffered in the post-election violence of 2007/8 and a lively commentary following from panel members and audience on progress made, and great obstacles remaining, in matters of gender equality, domestic violence, and police brutality.

Things we have not yet done but plan to do in the second half of our stay: return to several of the churches we have visited and talk at greater length with members and pastors about their ministry and the communities they serve; interview a variety of Kenyan contacts about their sense of possibilities and prospects for genuinely responsive and accountable government in Kenya (this is part of David’s research project but Susan plans to take part too); visit more of the parks and game areas that are within a day’s drive; spend another weekend at the coast; figure out where and when we can hear some local music without putting our lives at risk by going to the wrong parts of Nairobi at night; travel to Uganda and Rwanda with our philosopher friend Fr. David Burrell, formerly of Notre Dame and now teaching at Uganda Martyrs’ University (this is on our calendar for May, after my course and exams are done); and travel to either Zanzibar or Ethiopia to explore a wholly different cultural region of East Africa (we don’t have time or money for both and are now leaning toward the latter); buy still more of the irresistibly colorful Kenyan fabrics.

Things that David has done, but not Susan: drive all around Nairobi without causing any injury to anyone (discounting the terror and anxiety to his most frequent passenger when matatu minibuses come hurtling at us in the wrong lane); eat (and enjoy—really!) a traditional Kenyan delicacy, matungu, a stew made from chopped-up bits of cow stomach and intestines (and I ate it at the U. S. Embassy’s lunchroom); climb Mt. Kilimanjaro (have I mentioned that already in this blog?); gradually adjust my speaking speed and teaching style to Kenyan students; learn the names of about 10 students in my class (still working on the other 50, but the pictures I took last week will help); participate in two “moderation” meetings where all the faculty of my department met to review and approve each others’ grades in the previous semester’s courses and (at a separate meeting) to review and approve each others’ examinations for this semester; complete an article for a collection on African Christianity in which I was able to develop some themes from my Fulbright research proposal and apply them to recent observations in Kenya; attend the rehearsals of the Nairobi Musical Society, which will perform Bach’s St. John Passion in late April (and may need special divine intervention to do it justice); lose Susan’s beloved little Sony camera (either misplaced or stolen on our way back from a volunteer project in a Nairobi slum a few weeks ago with US Embassy staff and Fulbright program alumni); and take the arduous 40-km bus journey to Daystar’s remote campus at Athi River and back, fighting bad roads and heavy traffic, thankful that this is not necessary (as was once envisioned) to teach my classes each week.

Things David has not yet done but hopes to do: meet the main Daystar philosophy instructor; figure out whether there is an administrative support office for my department on this campus; receive any mail whatever through Daystar; obtain a Daystar faculty ID card; obtain residency papers that Daystar is supposed to obtain from the immigration service, whose absence has already cost us several hundred dollars in entrance fees to parks and museums (but I've been warned that expecting these to be issued by the end of a five-month stay is unrealistic); conduct the interviews for my research project; spend at least two full days a week on reading and writing for that project, which is supposed to occupy half my time but has tended to get squeezed out by more urgent tasks until now.

Things Susan has done, but not David: make contacts with nonprofit agency staff in Nairobi about what contribution she can make to some projects related to law and business development (appointments to discuss that coming up this week); explore the side streets and markets and fabric shops of the town center and ride the matatu out to the small town of Karen with our friend Mia; keep meticulous financial records both for the Calvin interim course and for our family budget; serve as a regular babysitter for two alarmingly energetic neighbor boys, aged 5 and 9; find (through Daystar friends) a young woman who comes twice a week to do laundry (all done by hand) and cleaning, a very hard worker and who when we sit down to lunch together has lots of ideas and lots of questions about the US and Kenya, the church, family relations, and more; make lots of wonderful things in the kitchen including stews that transform the usual tire-rubber consistency of Kenyan beef into tender morsels, Indian curries of varieties we never encountered in the US using leaves from the curry bush just outside our kitchen door, and numerous batches of granola.

Things Susan has not yet done but hopes to do: identify some concrete projects that can use her skills and experience for nonprofits with whom she has so far had only preliminary contact; buy more baskets and more fabric.

How the Nairobi where we live differs from the Nairobi we expected to encounter: it’s a great deal more interesting, more varied, more cosmopolitan, and more enjoyable to live in. And less worrisome: there are things we know we can’t do, like walk or drive around freely at night, ride matatus on unfamiliar routes, and venture into slums and other problematic areas of the city even during the day unless we are with someone who is known in the community. And we were victimized just this week by credit card fraud: someone apparently swiped our credit card number at a supermarket on Friday and used it to charge more than $2000 of purchases ($500 at another supermarket, $1700 at a tour company) the same day. Susan discovered this Saturday evening when she checked credit card records on line. She immediately spent 15 (very expensive) minutes on the phone to the bank in the US; that account is now closed and another card is on the way. But on the whole we feel no less safe, and no more anxious, than when we are in a major American city. And the people of this city are just amazing. We’ve had the most illuminating conversations with people who sit next to us in church, stand at the bus stop with us, introduce themselves at receptions, or tend to us in shops. The air quality in Nairobi is dreadful, it’s true; but the quality of human interaction is extraordinary.

David's Kilimanjaro adventure

This post is very long--but so was the hike!  For photos please go to http://picasaweb.google.com/dhoekema/DavidSTrekToTheSummitOfMtKilimanjaro?authkey=Gv1sRgCMSB8o2et5TozwE&feat=directlink

Sometimes you plan out major events in your life years in advance (e.g., apply in 2008 for a 2010 Fulbright).  Sometimes they just show up in the headlights and somehow you cope (e.g., someone smashes into your beloved 1964 VW in which you’ve just installed a reconditioned engine, so you buy another VW and swap out all the good parts).  And once in a while you find yourself facing a momentous choice with no time at all to think about it.  Example:  on Saturday, 27 Feb., we had hired a car and driver for the day with another couple and were on our way to hike in Hell’s Gate National Park, a couple of hours north of Nairobi, when fellow Fulbrighter Jim Dix mentioned casually that he would be departing Monday to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, and his wife Mia instantly decided that I should accompany him.  We waited that evening for him to contact the guide who arranged the trip—the same one who took him and 30 University of Nairobi students on an ascent of Mt. Kenya a couple of months ago.  It would have been a relief to learn that it was too late to expand the party, but Wilson, the guide, said it wasn’t.  So I had to make up my mind.  Fast.

At least half a dozen of my friends, on learning last year that we would be in Nairobi for the semester, asked, “So are you going to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro?”  No, of course not, I replied:  it takes a week, hiring the guides and porters costs $5000 or so—and it’s 19,000 feet high, for Pete’s sake!  Climbing to the highest point in the continent, to the top of what many call the largest free-standing mountain in the world because it rises in splendid isolation from low surrounding plains, seeing its summit before the glaciers vanish—sure, that would be a fantastic adventure, but it’s just not something I could possibly do.  So I didn’t pack any clothing or gear suitable for such an outing.   I brought only light hiking shoes (trail-running shoes, really) and a daypack and figured that any hiking we did in Kenya would be an afternoon’s outing.   

But then came Jim’s invitation.  It would cost me a quarter of the figures I’d seen from tour agencies; I’d have a highly reliable guide who would organize all the porters and make the reservations; I’d have a hiking companion I’ve only met recently but who has lots of experience and, like me, is an active but not competitive guy in late middle age  (13 months my senior, to be precise).  I had just reviewed the semester schedule a week earlier and found that I had more class sessions that I was anticipating, and I’ve observed that few classes actually meet every week throughout the semester.  With a midsemester exam coming up, it was a good time to give my students an extra week for preparation.  So I decided to bite the bullet and sign on.

But this was late on Saturday night, and our departure was on an 8 am bus on Monday!  I decided my shoes would be adequate, and I have a raincoat and lots of layers to wear on top, but I needed good wool socks and warm layers to go under my hiking pants.  So after church (another story—a wonderfully lively service at Dagoretti Corner Baptist Church in a slum area, whose pastor is a Daystar graduate and former flight controller and pilot) we shopped at several clothing stores but found nothing suitable til we tried the only outdoor outfitter shop we’ve heard of in Nairobi, run by a Swiss man whose gear is nearly all Chinese-made, high in quality but outrageously expensive.   I bought two $20 pairs wool blend socks (what blend?  Impossible to tell because all the labeling was in Chinese) and $60 fleece pants (labeled “XXXL” by the Chinese manufacturer, but in fact somewhere between M and L).    And Wilson assured me that he could find a backpack and sleeping bag that I could rent, for a couple hundred shillings ($4) each per day.

So Susan and I headed out by taxi at 7 am Monday to the hotel in central Nairobi from which all the Tanzania buses depart.  I met Wilson for the first time, paid him for all the arrangements, stuffed the Susan and Mia waved us off.

(From here on I’m transcribing the notes I made in my journal on the trip and adding some comments.)

Monday, 1 March.  Not a very auspicious beginning to our trek:  9 bumpy and hot hours on the bus, only half the time on paved roads, from Nairobi to Arusha and on to Moshi .  Both in Kenya and in Tanzania, road construction means diversion onto rough dirt tracks for many months while the crews are at work.  Barely room to stuff my legs in between the seats, no air conditioning on a hot and muggy day, lots of dust.  And not a glimpse of our destination, which was shrouded in clouds as we circled its west and south flank.  The Tanzania border was less irritating than the borders we have crossed in West Africa:  everything done by the book, no one demanding a bribe.  But the system for obtaining a visa is maddeningly inefficient:  queue up to submit your visa application form and passport; queue up again at the bank across the road to pay your fee; queue up again at the immigration office to present your receipt; then wait til your name is called, in no particular order, and you receive your stamped passport.   Moreover, Wilson’s information that Tanzania visas cost $50 proved to be accurate for everyone except residents of the US and Ireland, who pay twice as much!   There are lots of young men preying on the tourists in between the two immigration posts.  Jim and I had no difficulty shaking them off, but an older American couple on our bus who accepted their “help” were robbed.  They realized it only when one of the men came running up to the woman saying, “Excuse me, madam, I believe you dropped this wallet as you were walking,” and she opened it to find all her cash missing.

Moshi is a lively town—I would have said “small town” til Jim and I walked past the huge bus station, which in fact serves a population of about 200,000.  Our shuttle dropped off some European and Japanese tourists at posh resort hotels and then brought us to the Hotel Buffalo, a very modest place on a side street.   We walked all around the town, picking up a delicious sample of street food that seems to be a Moshi specialty, a filled pastry cooked on a grill called “Pakistani pizza,” and later had a delicious meal at an Indian/Italian restaurant just across from our hotel.

Wilson’s friend who promised to deliver a sleeping bag before the bus left in the morning had let him down, and he was on his mobile phone during our bus trip trying to track down another.  It was waiting at the hotel:  a thin nylon bag you might use for a church basement sleepover, completely unsuited to the conditions we would encounter.  Fortunately, more phone calls yielded a much better result later in the evening, a thick Kelty polyester bag rated to -20 F.  It weighs 7 or 8 lb, three times the weight of the REI goosedown 0 degree bag that’s sitting in storage back home.  Was it uncharitable of me to think, “Thank goodness the porters will carry it”?

Wilson had agreed—when pressed by Jim to give at least some discount now that he had two paying clients rather than one—to cover our hotel room for the night, which he had said earlier would cost us Ksh 1500 ($30) each.  But when we arrived it was clear he intended to pay for just one room, and the room  offered, a spacious room with private bath, had one double bed.  No thanks, we said—we need two beds.  Reluctantly, the hotel staff led us to a tiny room on the top floor, with just barely room for two twin beds, a shared squatter toilet down the hall.  I think they normally rent it to drivers and guides, not tourists.  It cost Wilson all of 12,000 Tsh ($9) for both of us.  Still, despite the warmth and humidity, we both got a good night’s sleep.  And with the first light of morning we decided our room was absolutely perfect:  out our window the mountain had cast off its cloudy veil, and its snowy summit glowed in the early light.

Wednesday, 3 March:  I didn’t write about Day 1 of our hike because it would have been a rather cheerless account, starting with a delayed start (scheduled for 8:30, but nothing happened til 9:30), a van breaking down on the way to the park (then repaired by a mechanic who walked over from his garage half a mile down the road), a vendor at the Marengu gate to the national park who pestered me endlessly to rent a little daypack raincover for Tsh 10,000 ($7, more than I’d have paid to buy it), and more delays getting our permit processed.  (Park entry and hut use fees alone came to $600 for each of us.)  There had been several  stops on the way to the park to buy fresh fruit and vegetables and meat for our meals on the trail—no bags of freeze-dried imitation foodlike matter on this trip.  It wasn’t til a little after noon that we finally set out, on a wide, well-graded trail.  Our officially licensed Tanzanian guide, Godwin, is a cheerful older man with a wizened face who says he can’t even begin to count how many times he’s climbed Kili.  He’s a chatterbox in Swahili, but says very little, and understands less, in English.  The other five in our party—an assistant guide, a cook, a waiter, and two porters—are equally friendly and almost as experienced, but their English is limited to a few greetings and phrases.  Jim and I were never introduced to them by name, and I’ve had to make a point of asking them.

Soon we were deep in the rainforest, with many varieties of ferns everywhere, Spanish moss (the guides call it “parasite plant”) hanging in loose ribbons from all the tree branches, and a heavy green canopy overhead.   But the light drizzle in which we began our hike turned before long to a steady, heavy rain that stayed with us for the next two hours, with thunder and lightning from time to time as well.  I stayed dry on top, but my nylon hiking pants were quickly soaked.  Worse, my DMX trail-running shoes are not designed for wet conditions at all—unlike the hiking boots I’d have packed if I had thought there was even a remote chance I would undertake a hike like this.  Soon there was water squishing around my toes with every step.  But the overpriced Chinese socks did their job—no chafing or blisters at the end of the day.  Unfortunately my daypack, which protects its contents well from brief showers, turned out to be no match for a steady rain, and everything in it that wasn’t encased in plastic got soaked.   Maybe I should have listened to that annoying vendor and paid far too much for a cover.

After about 4 hours, the last two in a diminishing drizzle, we arrived at Mandara Huts, a complex of about 30 buildings that houses up to 70 hikers and 200 porters and guides.  We had covered 8 km and ascended 1000 meters, but it felt like much more.  Mandara is like two separate villages in the mountains:  the wazungu hikers live in tiny A-frame huts with four beds each, clustered around a couple of large A-frame dining halls, while the porters and guides are in a complex of large bunkhouses and common kitchens on the other side of the site.  I discovered that a couple of hours’ walking in puddles had caused the front part of my left shoe’s sole to come unglued and flap around uselessly.  I was horrified, and feared I would have to hike back down Wednesday and skip the rest of the ascent.  But Godwin found a porter who was able to sew it back on securely.  (Postscript:  the repair lasted the entire trip—until the last day, after another half-day of hiking in the rain, when it came completely off just about the time that we reached the gate!)

The routine at the camps is very civilized:  sign in and find your cabin, change clothes if necessary (very necessary today!), then wash in the basin of warm water that your waiter brings to your cabin.  Proceed to the dining hall for tea and a snack—biscuits, roasted peanuts, or popcorn.  Then there’s time to relax (usually reading time for me, walking around the site time for Jim) until dinner is served in the dining hall, each waiter having set out a tablecloth for the members of his party.  Our dinner begins with a delicious spicy soup made from fresh vegetables.   Next comes rice or spaghetti with a meat and vegetable sauce, with fresh vegetables, and the sweet is a bowl of freshly cut mango or pineapple or papaya.  A far cry from my fare on backpacking trips in the US!

At Mandara we shared our very cramped little cabin with two young German men on their way down from the summit.  They were exhausted, not very friendly, and noisy sleepers.  But all four of us were in bed by 8 (I read for another hour) and awake by 6.  I hung my wet clothes up to dry in the evening inside the cabin (and packed up still-wet clothes in the morning).  The two novels I was carrying got half-soaked inside the backpack, despite being inside a plastic bag.  Worst of all, the porters hadn’t properly protected the Kelty bag, and it was wet from top to bottom.  That would have made my down bag completely useless, but poly is still a reasonably good insulator when wet.  After a couple of unpleasant hours my body heat had dried out the inside and I got a good night’s sleep.

Today, of course, I made sure all my gear, in my own daypack and in the pack for the porters, was securely wrapped in plastic bags against rain.  And there wasn’t a drop.  Instead we had a day of absolutely magnificent hiking, so beautiful and so varied that the 12 km and 3000 feet (from 2800 to 3700 meters) didn’t seem difficult.  Well, hardly ever:  the walking became more and more difficult, my breath shorter, as we approached 12,000 feet.  But the surroundings were just amazing:  first an hour in the upper reaches of the rainforest, then emerging into fields of low trees and high grasses, and then climbing higher into alpine moors, brilliantly decorated in heathers and sedges, with occasional bright flashes of the “red hot pokers” we so admired in South African coastal regions (Kniphofia thompsonii and Kniphofia kilimanjari) and succulents bearing great constellations of bright yellow blossoms (Golden Daisy Bush, a variety of Euryops).  At one point Wilson pointed out a lovely wild gladiolus, a bright crimson flag-like flower, that I would have missed (Gladiolus watsonioides).  Another beautiful little flower on a stalk  (Wilson called it another kind of red hot poker, but that didn’t seem right) turns out, according one website on Kili’s flora, to be an orchid.  I was delighted to find clusters of protea bushes, too, of a variety unique to this mountain (Protea kilimanscharica).  I’ve included photos of all these in the Picasa album (see link at beginning and end of this posting).


Along the way we heard lots of birds, but saw very few except white-necked ravens.  Cisticolas were chattering all around us throughout the moors, sometimes chasing each other across the path.  In the rainforest we heard some amazing birdcalls, which Wilson could identify:  thrushes, what was probably a turaco, and the scream of a crested eagle.  But Godwin (very knowledgeable about plants, both English and botanical names) wasn't a lot of help. Hearing a very distinctive sort of three-tone whistle once when Wilson had dropped back, I asked him what it was.  "A bird."  And what kind of bird?  "There are many kinds of birds," he said, shrugging. 

Halfway along today’s route, at around 4500 meters elevation, we began to see gigantic tree-flowers of several varieties, alongside streams and along the slopes.  These are giant groundsel (Senecio kilimanjari) and lobelia (Lobelia deckenii) plants, looking like creations of a Hollywood special-effects studio.  Some of these too are found only in this zone on this mountain, though others grow high on Mt. Kenya and in other East African alpine moors.  Increasingly dominant as we climbed higher was the tree heath (Erica arborea),  a sparse shrub with small yellow or white flowers.  Often the plants are covered in lichens.

Today’s hike took us nearly 5 hours.  Wilson and Godwin kept advising us “Pole, pole!” (“Slowly, slowly”) and walked behind Jim and me all day.  Even so, we were the first party from Mandara to reach Harambo Hut, a similar complex but situated on a ledge with commanding views of Moshi and the plains to the south.  I spent the rest of the afternoon perched on the sunlit rocks below the camp, reading my slightly waterlogged book (Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for Stone).

There aren’t many English speakers on the mountain.  The guides and porters all speak Chagga and Swahili, plus a few English phrases and maybe a smattering of German or French.  The other hikers are mostly Swiss, German, and Spanish.  Tonight we were assigned to share a cabin with a French couple on their way down, the man having had to turn back while his wife went on to the summit early this morning.  They speak English haltingly, so I’m translating for Jim.  (In fact they moved out later in the evening—evidently the camp isn’t full so not all beds were needed.)

Clouds have moved in more heavily now, and it’s turned cool and misty.  I should say “moved up,” not moved in:  every time I look down the slope toward Moshi town, which was clearly visible in mid-afternoon, the heavy blanket of clouds has concealed more of the rocks and moors below us. 

Thus far I’ve had no symptoms from the high altitude except fatigue—no headaches or nausea, thankfully.  Jim is dealing with persistent but mild headaches, but, oddly, they seem to clear up when he’s moving and recur when he stops to rest.  By tomorrow night we will be camped at 4700 meters (15,000 feet), which is as high as I have ever been in any place on earth.  And that’s just the base camp for our ascent!

Thurs. 4 Mar.  A long, hard climb today, across high moors that soon gave way to an utterly barren alpine desert, with hardly a plant to be seen anywhere.  This was the stretch called “the saddle,” which is not a bit like the high exposed ridges that bear that label in the Rockies or in Arizona.  This is a wide valley, perhaps 5 km across, with nothing but rocks and sand and wind.  The only living things visible are lots of lichens on the rocks and an occasional brave little ground-hugging yellow aster.  We had sun on and off all day, but didn’t need to worry about sunburn because we were wrapped head to toe against the chilly wind. 

After about 4 hours of walking—very slowly, but still needing frequent rests—we crossed a small ridge and saw Kibo camp up ahead.  Almost there?  Hardly—we had another hour of very slow slogging uphill , now in loose gravel, which is what we’ll be hiking on most of the way to the summit.  Better than mud or uneven rocks, but difficult going.  Nobody goes anywhere very fast, however, at 4700 meters (16,500 feet).  Slow as we were, we were the second party to arrive from Harambo.

Big, noisy crowds of porters were milling around when we arrived—attached to a large party that had summited in the morning, it turned out, who were already on their way down to Harambo.  At Kibo there’s one large concrete block bunkhouse for hikers, with three rooms of 12 beds each and a dining area.  It’s cold and damp inside even in the midday sun.  Jim and I are sharing a room with a group of 6 Slovenians, friendly enough but not very proficient in either English or German.   (Note added later:  They were up noisily repacking long after we went to bed.  Granted, that was at 7:30 pm.) 

At Wilson’s urging Jim and I hiked some distance up the summit trail to prepare ourselves for tomorrow’s still higher altitudes:  “Hike high, sleep low,” he advised.  It was very hard going, the more so when after half an hour it started to snow heavily.  But it was magical to watch the broad valley below us suddenly turn from dusty brown to white.  While we hiked, I was startled by a phone call—from a vendor at a craft market, telling me I could pick up my sandals this weekend!  He had no idea he’d reached me on the slopes of Kili, but his call inspired me to send text messages to Susan, letting her know how we were doing.  By the time I reached the camp, though, the signal had vanished.

Now we are waiting for dinner, and afterward we will catch what sleep we can before a midnight departure to climb to the summit.  Do we really have the strength and stamina—and the breath—to climb another 1300 meters?  Soon we will know.

Sat., 6 Mar.  What a day yesterday!  While sitting in Moshi waiting for the bus back to Arusha and Nairobi  I will try to jot down a chronology of our incredible adventure—I still can’t really believe we made it to the summit and back.

Thursday 10:30 pm:  wake up, have some tea, put on all my warm clothes, pack daypack

Thursday 11:30 pm:  head for the summit, headlamps seldom needed because the sky has cleared and the waning gibbous moon illuminates our path up an endless talus slope of loose gravel.  Up and up and up, always with more to climb.  After a couple of hours we can look back down into the valley and pick out four other parties who set out later than we did by the pinpoint lights of their headlamps.

Friday 4:30 am:  light-headed, dizzy, close to fainting, I have to stop every 50 paces or so to regain my breath.  Or 20 paces.  Or sometimes 10 paces.  We are still on that endless talus slope, walking up very narrow switchbacks, often sliding off the path, though it’s becoming more rocky as we ascend.  Assistant guide Allen leads the way, seeming to walk one foot at a time in slow motion.  Just at this point Godwin, our licensed Tanzanian guide, decides that he cannot go on:  he is so dizzy he cannot keep his footing, and though he’s been on the summit more times than he can count he must return to lower elevations before he loses consciousness or had a fall.  Wilson announces this to us, but I think he’s saying that I should go down with him, since I’ve also been complaining of dizziness.  He puts his arm on my shoulder and says confidently, “No, David, I am sure you will make it!  Pole, pole.”

Friday 5 am:  we reach Jamaica Rocks, and suddenly a view opens up into a vast moonlit crater before us.  Then a hard scramble over the steep rocks to Gilman’s Point at 5750 meters.  Uhuru Peak is now visible to the southwest across the crater.  It’s going to mean more climbing, but the slope will be more gentle that what we have been dealing with til now.  And from now on we will be on solid rock, not loose gravel, even though it’s covered in a thick blanket of snow.   We are the first on the route today, and there are no trail markings.  Allen has to pick his way along the often precipitous edge of the crater on the basis of his memory of which routes are passable.  First tracks on Kilimanjaro today!

Friday 6:30 am:  We are at the summit!  We have reached Uhuru Peak, at  5,895 meters ( 19,341 feet).  The first light of dawn reddens the sky to the east as we stagger up to the marker.  It’s bitter cold, -11 C (10 F), but there’s still hardly any wind.  Fingers and toes are frozen, but my new fleece pants, and the five layers I’m wearing on top, keep my core warm.   We are no longer alone on the trail:  several parties have ascended on the Machame route, a more direct route up the south face of the mountain, and we can see several more growing nearer.  At the summit are about twenty people, hikers and porters, snapping photos in front of the marker. 

6:45 am:  The sun rises and throws a warm light over the crater, onto the glaciers nearby, onto the vast snowfields of the peak.  Shadowy forms in the crater gradually form themselves into rocky outcroppings, overhanging ledges, snowfields, and the leading edges of several glaciers of the Southern Ice Field.  It’s stunningly cold, but it doesn’t matter—we are at the top of the world, and the sun is about to turn the world from darkness to light.  And I don’t have to climb any higher!

Let me insert a comment here on Kili’s glaciers.  In the outfitter’s shop I read a mountaineering guide published in 1990 that described  various routes to the summit.  The trails described are all in use today (though some are restricted to a very small number of parties, to minimize impact.)  In addition to the trails, the guide identifies a dozen technical routes up the glaciers that then covered the upper flanks of the mountain on the south and west.  All of those glaciers are now completely gone.  The Northern and Southern icefields remain, inside the crater, but their area is much smaller than it once was.  The mass of glacial ice has diminished by 80%, one source reports, in the past century. 

But the familiar story (cited by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth, among many others) that this is a result of global warming turns out, according to some sources on tropical ecology, to be only half true.  The usual explanation is that the retreat of the glaciers has dried up streams and killed the forests on the lower slopes by depriving them of reliable water.  And it’s quite true that temperatures across Africa have risen several degrees in recent decades, and this has had disastrous consequences as deserts expand, droughts intensify, water sources dry up, and crops fail.  Probably no continent is less able to cope with climate change, yet more likely to suffer devastating consequences, than Africa, even though its output of polluting gases is minuscule compared to that produced by the industrialized North. 

But blaming the loss of glacial ice for deforestation turns out to be exactly backward, according to the sources I have read.  On Mt. Kilimanjaro, it is population-driven deforestation of the lower slopes that has caused the most serious disruption to the local climate, since forest cover is essential to water retention and to generating rainfall at higher elevations.  The glaciers themselves are starved for water because the mountains’ lower slopes have been cleared of trees, cut down for firewood.  Estimates of how long the glaciers will remain vary—some say just ten more years, some say fifty—but their demise owes more to local environmental pressure than to large-scale climate change.

7:15 am:  After drinking in the panoramic vista, and waiting to catch the sun’s light on the summit, we head back down.  The first hour, to Jamaica Rocks, is a lot easier than the ascent, though finding our footing on steep and snowy slopes is sometimes tricky.  At least there are now footprints from other hikers that we can follow.  Then it’s time to descend that interminable talus slope.  At the end of the rocky upper slope, looking down at several more miles of steep and loose gravel, our guides suggest that we follow their example and hop/slide down the “shortcut route,” a path that avoids all the switchbacks and goes straight down the steep slope.  You’d never be permitted to do that in any American park, since it makes such a mess and moves so much material down the slope; but on a 3000-foot featureless talus slope I suppose that’s not really an issue.  Still, it’s exhausting, and very hard on the feet and knees.

9:15 am:  Back at Kibo camp, our return having taken only a third as long as the ascent.  “Please have some tea and we will bring you breakfast in five minutes,” says our waiter, Abem.  Unfortunately the five minutes turns into more than an hour and a half.  “Breakfast” is a soup made from yesterday’s dinner leftovers, a rich broth with vegetables and noodles.  Very welcome after our exertions.

11:15 am:  We depart for Harambo camp, and resolve to continue all the way to Mandara if possible so that we can hike out early on Saturday and catch the bus back to Nairobi on the same day.  The 10 km to Harambo pass quickly, but even the descent is tiring.  There we “take tea” once more and rest for half an hour, then set out again.  My feet are very sore, especially the toes.  The shoes fit well, but my feet are swelling up from the altitude and from the abuse they  have endured, and descending always mashes toes against the front of shoes.  I’m worried that I may be doing myself an injury by going on, but we’ve decided to push on and hope to reach our destination by 5:30 or so.  But the trail is longer than expected—Godwin told us 10 km, but in fact it’s 12, with many steep rocky sections.  Not long before we hoped to arrive, thunderstorms move in.  And for the rest of the way—still an hour to go, an hour that never seemed to end—I’m once again drenched below the waist and coping with waterlogged shoes.  But there’s a consolation, as the rain lets up:  a magnificent rainbow stretches from horizon to horizon over the eastern slopes of the mountain.

6 pm:  We arrive at Mandara camp, with little light left.  The porters have all preceded us, having beat the rain.  But even though there are only three other hikers at the camp tonight everything seems to move very slowly.  Dinner isn’t ready til after 8 pm, when we’d have liked to be asleep.  Clothes are soaked, the paths very muddy—I have just put on my only remaining clean and dry pants when I slip and fall in the mud.  Fortunately not much distance remains for the morning.

Sat., 6 Mar.:  I really can’t believe what we did yesterday:  climb 4000 feet to Africa’s highest peak, then hike back down about 8 km to our base camp and 22 km more.  We must be insane.  But in a good way.

The hike out to the gate is shorter than either leg of yesterday’s grueling journey, and the trail is dry.  But my feet are really complaining, and I have to pick my way very delicately, using my two hiking poles (actually Susan’s—I usually use just one), down each of hundreds of rocky sections.   Still, since we started out at 7, we are back at the gate well before 11.  We organize a little speech and ceremony to thank our guides and porters, and distribute tips.  (Jim and I had endless discussions about what would be appropriate, and got wildly conflicting advice; we ended up distributing about $100 and everyone seemed pleased.)  Then we all pile back into the same van to travel the two hours to Moshi (no mechanical breakdowns this time), where we catach a bus to Arusha and change there for Nairobi.  The bus ride home is hot and dusty and bumpy again, but a little quicker, and the border crossing goes far more quickly.  The young men preying on tourists have no success with our bus this time.    

And riding a public bus in East Africa is always an interesting adventure.  Next to me in the very back seat (more legroom) sat a very smartly dressed young man, a Pentecostal pastor returning to Nairobi to continue his theological studies after a weekend at home.  In front of him was a young woman with her two-year-old, who spent much of the ride flirting with the pastor.  (The two-year-old, not the mother.)  In front of me was a elderly man, a retired accountant, who had lots of questions about Daystar.  A little farther forward sat a woman in her 20’s with very striking features and a great mane of nearly white blond hair—I think her passport was from Denmark—wearing a stylish outfit with a skimpy shell top that exposed one shoulder.  In the Arusha parking lot she had bid a very fond farewell to a Tanzanian boyfriend, and she alighted at the international airport on our way into Nairobi.  Just in front of her was a rather disheveled and portly South Indian man and his wife, who was swathed in black from head to toe with only her eyes showing.  I wished I could have read the thoughts of each woman about the other.

Postscript, now that it’s nearly a week later:  I had indeed done some serious damage to my feet, for which I got medical attention at the Daystar clinic on Monday morning.  Both big toes, and a few other toes, are still very swollen and discolored, and it appears likely that I will lose a few toenails by the time the blisters drain and the swelling diminishes.  But the bruising of heel and other foot bones that made walking very painful on Sunday cleared up by Monday afternoon, and I’m confident that there won’t be lasting effects.  Still, I don’t regret the adventure for a minute.  I had not planned it this way, but this proved to be a terrific way to mark the approach of my 60^th birthday in June.  And I’m not sure which makes Susan happier:  that I made it to the summit, or that she didn’t have to suffer that altitude.  She sent such encouraging text messages during the short intervals when I had coverage on the mountain!  But she and Mia (who spent much of the week at our flat) agreed that an expedition like ours requires not only courage and stamina but also a toxic oversupply of testosterone.
BY DAVID HOEKEMA (but posted from Susan's account)
For photos please go to http://picasaweb.google.com/dhoekema/DavidSTrekToTheSummitOfMtKilimanjaro?authkey=Gv1sRgCMSB8o2et5TozwE&feat=directlink

Home Alone

David left this morning to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.  This expedition came up rather suddenly.  We went to Hell’s Gate National Park with a fellow Fulbrighter, Jim, and his wife, Mia, on Saturday.  When Mia called and said she was eager to get out of Nairobi, I suggested this destination.  I was the only one of the four who had been there before.  David was eager to go because he had missed the hike in the gorge that our students took in January.  It was a good day, despite more unseasonable rain.  The rain did not cause a flash flood and wash the hikers out of the gorge; Mia and I, who only did the first part of the gorge, got to see lots of zebra, wart hog families, multitudes of antelope, and a giraffe; and we ended the day with a lovely tea on the veranda at Elsamere, overlooking Lake Naivasha, the home of Joy Adamson, author of Born Free, which is now a museum and B&B.

In the course of the day, we learned that Jim was departing on Monday for Kilimanjaro and Mia urged David to consider going along.  I encouraged David to consider it, too, because I wasn’t sure he’d ever get another chance.  We returned to Nairobi at about 7pm.  Jim called his guide and determined that David could still be added to the trek.  He then emailed David the itinerary, cost information, and packing list.  It turned out that the cost is a lot lower than the guidebooks and internet sites suggested it would be.  The guide, Wilson, said he could obtain a pack and sleeping bag for David, and we went about assembling the remaining items on the packing list. We had most of what he needed and knew we could get much of the rest at the supermarket,  but the shopping list included long underwear, wool socks, and a balaclava hat, items we were not sure we could find in Nairobi.

Sunday morning we were picked up for church by a pastor, Rev. William, who was, in his first career, an airline pilot, flight instructor, balloon pilot instructor, and air traffic controller.  He told us many amazing things.  The most horrifying were his experiences as a air traffic controller in Uganda when the Israelis raided the airport to rescue passengers on a hijacked plane.  The air traffic controllers working at the time were murdered by Idi Amin’s soldiers and William was asked to take over as chief air traffic controller and had to deal with Amin’s soldiers deployed at the airport.  After he and his family left Uganda, he attended Daystar.  Now he pastors and his wife serves as worship leader in a church in a slum a few kilometers up Ngong road, near Dagoretti Corner.  The modest church, which was filed with a wonderful spirit while we worshiped with them, shares a courtyard with a school and there are other projects we expect to learn about the next time we see them.  More on this in a later posting, I hope.

Sunday afternoon we shopped for Kilimanjaro supplies.  We checked several places for cold weather gear and were almost too late to shop at our last resort, an outfitters’ store in the YaYa Center, which is quite close to Daystar.  Fortunately, we arrived just as they were closing their doors and found what David needed. We had to pay a premium: wool socks were $21 a pair and the fleece tights he bought as a substitute for long johns cost a small fortune.  But David got lots of good advice from the Swiss proprietor.  And it was worth it to me because my biggest worry for David is hypothermia.  We’re hoping he does not encounter falling snow, but there’s a chance of it, given the early arrival of the rains. Funny that David is on an expedition to snow when our friends and relatives on the east coast are battling way too much of it.

We took a taxi early this morning to a hotel in the center that is the departure point for buses heading for Tanzania.  I started feeling bad about being left behind when I saw other couples, outfitted for hiking, get on the bus together.  I had not considered going along mainly because I tend to have a hard time with altitude.  For example, altitude sickness felled me at Purgatory in Colorado, which tops out at 10,000 feet.  Kilimanjaro’s summit is 19,341 feet.   David has never had a problem with altitude.  He is also in better shape than me and more likely to take on something like this at the drop of a hat.  I would want time to prepare.

In any case, David took off this morning and I stayed behind.  Mia and I had a lovely breakfast and then shopped for cloth. Because of the rain, the shops were almost empty of customers and I got some bargains.  David called at noon to say they had just reached the Tanzanian border and that he would not be able to call again until he returned to Kenya.  He’ll be back on Sunday.  Until then, I figure, no news is good news.

P.S.  Heavy rain last night gave our roof its post-repair test.  The good news is that no water came into the bathroom.  The bad news is that stains grew bigger and darker in the front bedroom and the hallway, along the wall we share with the neighboring town house.