We Made It!!!

 

First words to say: We did it! We made it to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro! And let me tell you, the view was definitely worth the pain! Our adventure started out flying out of Douala airport and making a pit stop in Rwanda (24 hour layover). Kigali, Rwanda is a beautiful city with rolling hills dotted with light brown houses. We made a new friend from Canada who was our “couch surfing” host. He was kind enough to take us out on the town that night. It is amazing how much Rwanda has recovered from the Genocide. It is difficult to think that something so terrible was going on when I was in elementary school. Yet I must remind myself that atrocities like this are happening all around the world every day. We visited the Genocide museum which surprised me with its similarity to U.S. museums since we are still in Africa and I have found so far that no matter how much something reminds of home, there is inevitably something that reminds me that I am still in Africa. The museum brought fresh tears to our eyes but it was a good reminder of what really happened in Rwanda despite its beautiful face today. The country has many rules and even though the small shacks tucked in behind the tall buildings show a similarity to Cameroon, Rwanda is different in that there is a cultural rule to not sell street food or eat food on the streets. Meaning that no matter how hungry I am, I cannot eat my pastry while I’m walking. And the guy we bought omelets with naan from off one of the side streets is completely illegal. Oh and one great food item on our trip: naan. It’s everywhere and it’s delicious.

Rwanda

On to our next destination: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Unfortunately, I don’t have much positive things to say about the city except that we found an awesome barbecued chicken place near our hostel that I can almost compare to the Argyle Firehouse chicken back at home (don’t worry Dad, the firehouse still cooks the best chicken in the world). Other than that though the city reminds me of parts of NYC that I don’t like to visit. Dirty and many people begging for money. Except these people are wearing the same outfits as my neighbors in Cameroon and they sit against the cement building walls with their feet stuck straight out into the sidewalk as if they were in their own mud huts back in my village. Luckily we didn’t stay in Dar long and proceeded to take the bus to Moshi, Tanzania. We passed fields of what looked like pineapple plants and the mountains can taller as we changed from city to countryside.

Bajaj in Dar es Salaam

Moshi is my favorite city we visited. It is smaller than Dar but bigger than my city, Ngaoundéré in Cameroon. It is a tourist town since it right next to Kilimanjaro, but it is still quaint and peaceful with coffee shops and good places to eat. We stayed with another couch surfing host, a Tanzanian family that gave us bread and spicy tea for breakfast. Our guide company (Gladys Adventures) for Kilimanjaro was amazing. I’m hoping to go back someday and do a safari with them. They helped us check our gear, we rented some warm sleeping bags and off we went to climb the tallest mountain in Africa. Right from the beginning our guide, assistant guide, cook, and porters were so helpful. We drove past areas covered in pine trees and were told that carrots were grown on the hills surrounding Kilimanjaro. And sure enough as we reach the starting point, we passed people next to bags and bags of carrots. When we reached the entrance gate we started hiking in the jungle on a path that wound us through trees covered in shiny green moss and past fields of ferns. Two kinds of monkeys joined us: Colobus and Blue monkeys. The Colobus were more laid back and I think liked the attention. During our first night of camp we met an older American couple and while chatting with them in their tent, we saw a Colobus monkey take a leak on someone else’s tent. Guess we were lucky we weren’t set up under a tree. So while our hikes were a lot of work, our camping was pretty close to luxurious. We had 13 porters that carried everything including the tents and food. We just had to carry our daypacks (which really just held our water for the day) and they set up everything before we got to each site. We had two small tents to sleep in and a tall green tent for meals. We received tea and snacks when we arrived at camp and then dinner was usually soup and something amazing. I ate better on this hike than I ever did in Cameroon or to be honest, at home. (sorry Mom, although Dad’s steak would have been nice). In the morning, they gave us hot water in a bowl to wash up and I could have eaten the cook’s oatmeal breakfast for the rest of my life. Yet the farther we hiked, the more I realized we kind of needed this “glamping”. By day two we were out of the rainforest and into moorland with large shrubby trees where the moss still covered the limbs like silver icicles. Then the lava landscape (Kilimanjaro has been dormant for years) which reminded us of the scenery from “Lord of the Rings” or even “Star Wars”. Our guide knows “Lord of the Rings” really well and we all chose characters along with deciding where we were in Lord of Rings each day. He also could do the voice of Gollum (Smeagol) very well which did not help my heartbeat when he snuck up on me from behind a boulder. He did take great care of us though and stayed positive throughout the whole trip. He even gave us nicknames in Swahili; mine was butterfly. The trek was long but filled with laughter and singing of Celine Dion songs.

Day 1: The Jungle

By day 5 we were already 4250 meters high after we climbed over the Great Barranco Wall. It was more like rock climbing than hiking which was a nice change from the step by step walking in a line for days. We were already noticing that it was becoming more difficult to breathe as we got higher. Thankfully none of us showed any signs of altitude sickness which for me, I am glad I was taking Diamox to prevent it. We didn’t even realize that it was the 4^th of July until Gretchen went to write in her journal. We then proceeded to sing the National Anthem very loudly in front of all the other hikers during lunch. A woman from Ireland asked why we were singing and after I told her, she said the most sincere “Happy Independence Day!” All of the people we met on the hike were friendly and awesome: A couple Americans, a bunch of Canadian guys, Germans, Irish, Dutch, Chileans, Russians, and British. I couldn’t believe how many people climb this mountain and I wonder why they do it. I began to really question myself why I wanted to climb to this mountain in the first place, especially when we got to base camp. It was cold and windy. I felt like I was on the moon and the mountain stood over us like a giant waiting to be attacked. I just kept reminding myself that this was my dream, my dream for a long time. We had started reading out loud “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” every night before bed and now I was thinking that the story of the character’s thoughts before death were similar to mine on this mountain. The first few days were normal hiking, like near my home in the U.S., but when the air decreased and the temperatures got colder, I had so much time to think. To think about my life choices and why I am always living for others and what actually makes me happy in life.

Our tents at first campsite

We had decided to hike the final ascent in the afternoon to see the sunset. Usually hikers wake up at midnight and hike to the tallest peak to see the sunrise but it is extremely cold and well, everyone does that, we wanted to do something different. We were at base camp at about 4640 meters high and it was so windy that they had to take down our meal tent. After lunch, we started our climb to Uhuru Peak, the tallest point on the mountain (5895 meters). I have never been so tired, coughing up dirt/dust, my legs aching, and trying to keep from falling over as the wind swept dirt into my eyes. It was a slow, steady uphill hike that took us the afternoon to reach Stella Point and from there only 150 meters to the peak although it felt much longer. Tears came to my eyes when we reached Stella and then finally Uhuru. The sun was setting on the horizon as we clambered toward the wooden signs and looked down at the glaciers beneath the ledge. It was so beautiful and breathtaking. Never had I felt so much power that I didn’t deserve as we peered across the clouds. This is a view that you usually only see from an airplane. It was spectacular.

Me and the Mountain

After photos we had to descend quickly. We couldn’t stay there long since the sun was almost gone and it would be too cold. This is the part that I do not remember well. Gretchen and Aliz started going down, almost skiing on the loose rock and dirt. I started to go down and then, well, I don’t really remember except that my head started bursting with a migraine and my mind felt like I had taken too much Nyquil. Thank goodness our guide and porter were there to help me and well somehow I got to base camp. Some migraine medication, water, and soup later, I woke up in the morning mostly fine. All of us were still trying to wrap our minds around the fact that we had done it! We had climbed the tallest free-standing mountain in the world! It only took us one day to get down the mountain with a little rain to wash away our sweat and aching limbs. (It takes so long to go up the mountain not only because of going uphill but the path goes the long way around the mountain so we can acclimatize and not get altitude sickness). It only took us 6 days to climb Mount Kilimanjaro and we walked away mostly healthy. Success!

Me, Gretchen, & Aliz at the top!!!

We got to Moshi and rested for a couple days. I also met up with a fellow Peace Corps volunteer from Tanzania whose hometown is Salem, NY! I gave him some stuff that his mom had given me in the U.S. and it was kind of nice to meet someone who could verify to my friends that there really are more cows in my hometown than people. Even though I had a cough I couldn’t get rid of since we got off the mountain, we had a lot of fun hanging out with the Peace Corps volunteers from Tanzania. We then took the bus back to Dar es Salaam and met up with two Australian guys that turned out to be our best friends on the trip. They were going to Zanzibar too so we all caught the ferry the next day and headed to the island off the coast of Tanzania. We visited Stone Town, the main city of Zanzibar where the buildings are so close together that you can walk through little alleyways that make you feel like you are always in a maze. It is still Africa with a little touristic edge. Underneath all the beach tourism, Zanzibar still has the village life that resembles my place in Cameroon. Most of the people in Stone Town are Muslims and celebrating Ramadan so we tried not to eat in front of anyone during the day. We visited an old slave market and saw the basement holdings under a church where they used to keep slaves. Hard to believe that this beautiful island could be the main slave market at one time. After Stone Town, we took a bus to Paje, about an hour away. We stayed in this cute little paradise for a few days. I had never seen one of these beach tourist places before with makuti bandas and bungalows made of palm leafs with sandy floors. (All I could think of was the scenes from movies where people go on vacation to exotic islands). The beach was full of people from all over the world and the blue ocean was full of boats and people kite surfing. Thanks to my parents (who found my scuba diving certification at 5 o’clock in the morning) I was able to go scuba diving in that beautiful ocean. Other than getting a little seasick on the boat, once I was in the water, it was amazing. We saw seahorses, starfish, stingrays, lion fish, frog fish, banded snake eel, clownfish, crab and much more. It was so brilliant to be floating among life under the water especially since it was so clear compared to any other place I have ever dived. It was a good way to end the trip.

Walking through Stone Town

 

Unicorn Fish

 

Hanging with a clownfish

 
 

On the beach with friends in Paje, Zanzibar

We slowly made our way back to Stone Town, Dar es Salaam, and made another stop in Rwanda where we met up with Gretchen’s friend, a Peace Corps volunteer in Rwanda. By the time we got to Douala, a nice air conditioned room and hot shower was all I wanted. Even though this was a vacation, I was always reminded that we were still in Africa and some things were very similar to Cameroon. Besides, I had decided to do two things that I’m always afraid of: climbing very high mountains and diving in the ocean. Might as well conquer fears while visiting new countries and seeing different cultures! With a pit stop in Yaoundé to get some medicine for my cough (still could not bust that mountain cough), I am now back in my village.

I was really nervous about coming back after such an amazing trip and I will not be leaving Cameroon again until next year. I don’t have any more trips to look forward and need to buckle down to work. Yet I felt better after my neighbors greeted me with smiles and hugs. Annie the cat was so happy to see me that she practically slept on my face last night. There are a few good things growing in my garden of weeds including cucumbers. I am meeting with my work partner to plan the visits to soy project participants’ fields. With Ramadan over, people are eating again during the day and life goes back to normal with work and being a Peace Corps volunteer. But is life really ever normal in Cameroon? And gosh, what is normal after being on top of the world and then going to the bottom of it?