1998: Tanzania
David, Kate and Rosie’s adventures in Tanzania Sept-October 1998 on a sponsored trek for NSPCC
David first: Climb Every Mountain
The arrival
We touch down at `Kilimanjaro International’, an unassuming but friendly airport on a dusty plain in northern Tanzania, with the few arrivals and departures scrawled on a blackboard. I anxiously wave goodbye to Rosie and Kate who go with the trekkers, and we pile onto a ramshackle Toyota bus, and as the whisky is passed round we head off into the night, past dusty villages which seem to be mainly bars. As the road turns into a track we pick up an escort in a four-wheel drive, armed against buffalo and elephants, and then suddenly we abandon even the track as a bridge ahead has been washed away in the rains. We bump off through the bush, apparently driving at random under the bright stars, backtracking when we come to impenetrable clumps of trees. Jeremy (our gallant leader) and the guards get out and run ahead and we finally reach the track again, to relieved cheering. It is difficult to believe we were in Cambridge that morning.
We start the climb
In the morning we can pretend we’re officers in the Boer War, getting up from our camp beds in our substantial walk-in tents, sitting on little verandas with thick green canvas washstands filled with hot water, and enjoying the last toilet seat for eight days. A hot and dusty drive on dirt roads, meeting a busload of guides and porters in what, to our eyes, seems a desperately poor village. We are approaching the west of the mountain, although cloud will obscure the summit for another two days. Finally the bus can go no further and we have to start to walk. The luggage comes off the roof and is added to the large heap of gas cylinders, bunches of bananas, tents and other equipment. We conscientiously put the rubbish from our picnic lunch into a cardboard box, but it is immediately tipped into someone’s potato patch so that the box can be salvaged. We start walking up a hot dusty track, pleased to be moving but going so fast that we are soon sweating and filthy, following our armed escort who will stay with us until we are out of the forest, protecting us from who knows what. We soon learn not to go so fast, and mutter pole pole to each other (Swahili — `slowly’).
The porters
Ignoring the years of research that Karrimor and others have put into designing backpacks, the porters tend to strap on extra stools, packs, vegetables and sometimes stick the whole lot on their heads. The fact that this is considered a well-paid and enviable job does not stop us feeling guilty when they overtake us, sweat pouring down into their sandals and greeting us with Jambo ( `hello’), hurrying to set up camp for us. The head porter Julius is a different matter: always cool, a serious businessman. Heaven knows what he think of us. We all take a shine to Danny, his young and beautiful assistant who gets all the bum jobs: guiding us on pointless little excursions, bringing hot water for washing, teaching us bits of Swahili. After they have carried heavy loads for hours — and pitched our camp, dug the toilets, collected firewood, fetched and heated our water, cooked our meal, washed up — they stay awake for hours wrapped up and squeezed around their fire, laughing and talking and smoking something that seems to make them very jolly. We must seem so pathetic.
We climb higher
Our first camp is in a clearing in the forest (8000 ft, 2440 mts), and the porters have to hack down the undergrowth to clear a space for the tents. Fresh elephant tracks are just up the path but we are undisturbed. We continue up through Tarzan country until the trees get smaller and we are out into steeply rolling hills covered in giant heather (Camp 2, 10000 ft, 3050 mts). Then up, brushing through fragrant herbs and admiring the views back over the forest to the plain, onto the open moor that is the Shira Caldera (Camp 3, 11500 ft, 3500 mts). That evening, after a severe hailstorm, we see the peak for the first time, and it is intimidating. It’s as if we have climbed up onto a large upside-down soup plate, only to find an inverted basin has been stuck on top (in fact the peak increasingly come to resemble a Christmas pudding covered in white sauce). The next day we trek across the plateau, some of us detouring to `Shira cathedral’ which gave us an extraordinary view down onto eagles flying above the clouds that obscured the plain (Camp 4, 12200 ft, 3700 mts). A reasonably short walk on to Moir Hut (Camp 5, 13775 ft, 4200 mts), where vegetation has essentially disappeared. The porters sleep in the hut, which is an odd construction of waste wood looking like a large space capsule, while we have two nights here to acclimatise. Many of us clamber up to the Lent group (15340 ft, 4700 mts), which initially looked like an impossibly daunting climb and so managing to get to the top is much-needed encouragement. In spite of the sunshine, the altitude and the increasingly brutal landscape is making us all wonder what is in store.
Walking
Most of the time we go in single file, with Julius in front and Danny at the back, keeping us to a steady pace. Some talking, a lot of farting, frequent stops for swigs on water bottles. We are under strict instructions to drink 4 litres a day and, as the iodised water is not exactly Perrier, most of us try to shove down as much as tea, coffee or Milo as possible at meals. One of the effects of Diamox, which many are taking against altitude sickness, is to make the tea stay in the body for about 10 minutes, so at every stop there is a boys’ side and a girls’ side of the path, and everyone dashes behind a rock or just stands and wees meditatively at the mountain.
The camp
As soon as the sun goes down around 6pm the temperature plunges and we shove on layers of clothes and stand around the fire. Then Julius blows his whistle and we run to the mess tent, scrubbing our hands in a doomed attempt to stay sanitary and then squeezing into a big circle of camp stools placed around a groundsheet. Our appetites are supposed to lessen as we get higher, but we shovel down everything in front of us except the fried yams, which even Captain Scott would have had second thoughts about. We are amazed to get chips on one occasion, and water-melons are carried all the way, but after a week a certain sameness is apparent. Our thoughts run to steaks, spicy Thai meals, and pints of beer, but Jeremy has banned us from talking about imaginary meals so we can only whisper `chicken jalfrezi’ to each other and nod understandingly. Later we return to the fire with our head-torches, looking like a miners convention, until we climb into our sleeping bags either fully dressed (if, like mine, your bag is designed for sleeping on Greek beaches) or in a flimsy negligee (if you have some sense and have a decent bag). We are cheerily woken by Danny coming round with tea at 6. There is frost on the tents and we get up, hugging ourselves in the cold and watching with eager anticipation the arrival of the sharp line thrown by the morning sun.
Health and cleanliness
You have never seen such a collection of pills, ointments, sprays, bandages, powders and potions as is going up that mountain. There is almost no trouble with feet and muscles, so headaches and bowels become the main topic of conversation, particularly at meals. Inevitably, my guts let me down. One day I start doing foul belches, then feel nauseous, and then start throwing up with great energy. This continues through the night, noisily heaving outside the tent, and then the diarrhoea starts. There are two toilet holes, each inadequately protected by a canvas shield, and everyone wonders who will be the first to fall in (fortunately it wasn’t me). Two nights are spent running in the pitch black and subzero temperatures to the hole, then curling up shivering in my bag and moaning pathetically to myself. Jeremy brings me hot soup and is a good mum.
The final assault
After six nights we are ready for the final assault. We spend the day climbing up to Arrow Glacier camp (15700 ft, 4785 mts), feeling serious. It is now very cold, with streaks of ice amid a desolate moonscape, all wreathed in cloud. Jeremy has given us final instructions on what to wear (everything we own), and I go to bed at 4pm wearing 3 layers on my legs and 6 layers on top. At 10pm we are up and putting on yet more waterproofs outside and some soup inside, and then we are off up the Western Breach at 11.15pm — a 3500 ft climb to do overnight. Fortunately my guts seem to be sorted out, and I can appreciate the bright moonlight, the lights of Moshi down on the plain, and the bizarre spectacle of us clambering up the mountain behind our guide. We plod on, hour after hour, making frequent stops as the altitude really starts to tell. People start gasping and vomiting, helping and encouraging each other. Everyone is relieved at the gentle pace, although it means the crest hardly seems to get nearer, particularly in the two cold bleak hours after the moon goes down. One foot in front of the other, scrambling up rocks, ten steps and then stopping, until the dawn light shows we are on the last desolate stage.
The summit
At 6am we come over the crest and are blinded by the sun coming over the glacier that runs across the crater on the summit (19000 ft). Everyone seems light-headed, and we all madly photograph each other amid hugs and tears and headaches. The wind has cut deep narrow trenches in the ice that still covers the floor of the crater which makes walking painfully slow. Some of us climb to Uhuru point (19340 ft, 5895 mts) but, although we try to amuse ourselves by bobbing up and down and taking it in turns to be temporarily the highest person in Africa, we find it grim and dirty and the mood drops. My morale sinks further as headache and nausea start, and we grimly hobble over the corrugations. It is a great relief to start down. Just below the summit I am helped to make a cairn out of volcanic rock in memory of Danny and I say a few bits from his funeral, with a staggering view onto the clouds surging around Kilimanjaro’s other peak. I feel privileged to be with these people.
The descent and back to civilisation
We almost ski down 5000 ft of loose scree, and keep plodding on to our final mountain camp among small trees (11500 ft, 3500 mts) having been on the go for 17 hours. We look back at the Christmas pudding peak, hardly able to grasp that we were staggering over the ice just that morning, and joke knowingly with each other. The next day we rapidly descend through the forest down to Mweka gate, to the first beer for nine days. The gang of porters is waiting patiently for their tips, and we distribute surplus clothes to them and sweets to the kids who surround us as we walk to the buses. An extraordinary sunset and we return to showers, clean clothes and more beer, but after such a powerful shared experience, there is an odd ambivalence about being with each other in `normal’ surroundings.
Dedication
I have kept stories about other people out of this account, although of course those are the best bits and provide the best memories. But this is dedicated to those who: shaved their legs at 14000', smoked a cigarette on the summit, took a suitcase, made me laugh, distributed tablets and TLC, got in touch with the energy of the mountain, trod in the honey, showed that Yorkshiremen can have hearts, kept going even though they thought they couldn’t, provided massages, suggested the place for Danny’s cairn, and communed on life, purpose, and the state of one’s bowels.
Meanwhile for Kate and Rosie:
Camp stirred with the early light, around 6am and we would pack up our possessions before breakfast. At first I struggled to keep my own and Rosies’s kit in our respective rucksacks but eventually gave up, settling for filing all the dirty washing in Rosie’s bag which got fuller and fuller, while mine got emptier and emptier. There were `day-packs’ to load; a camera each, binoculars for Rosie, goodies to keep R going (fruit pastilles and Werthers Originals) and a packed lunch. We carried our water in a contraption called a platypus — a PVC bag with tubing with a clever valve on the end; you loaded it into your rucksack and dangled the tubing over your shoulder so that you could suck on your water supply as you trudged along. By the time the water had been sterilised with iodine tablets, the whole arrangement looked decidedly urological. Breakfast was a big responsibility: ugi (porridge) being the staple, followed by toast and an egg, if you had room. Then it was boots on, 15–18 miles most days.
We fell naturally into two groups for walking — one, rather `British’ group who turned up for breakfast on time, all clean, well informed and ready for action and another group who didn’t. We fell in with the more `African’ group, 10 of us. We would set off at about 7.30 with Jackson, a Masai guide at the head of the line and Remi as `sweeper’ at the back. Jackson and Remi (sound like hairdressers?) had different qualities: Jackson had a great smile but no interest in the notion of a straight line and a method of measuring distance by time and time by distance which got very circular and only applied if you were a Masai anyway. Remi’s job was to walk as slowly as the slowest — which by the end of the day was always us: he was the expert on wildlife so he and Rosie would have long conversations about birds and heebie-jeebies.
The first two or three hours walk were pleasant because the sun hadn’t got too high. The terrain varied, high prickly acacia gave way over the first days to low scrub with black volcanic sand underfoot as we walked down into the Rift Valley proper. Very dry, recent fires. Masai graze their cattle and goats in this land and we would often see groups of one, two or three red figures progressing across the emptiness. The landscape became very dramatic, vast and flat with symmetric silhouettes of volcanoes varying in size from pimples to the vast Oldongo Lengai, the Masai’s mountain of the gods. You could feel that man’s origins were there. We would stop for short breaks quite frequently, for a drink and to allow stragglers to catch up and have a longer lunch stop later.
By afternoon there was no escape from the heat (say 37, sometimes more) and the trek became more gruelling. Unlike the Kilimanjaro climbers we had a cop-out possibility — without which I would not have dared take Rosie. By early afternoon on most days, a four-wheel drive vehicle was heading back from camp and would mop up anyone on the edge of failure-to-cope. For the first few days, Rosie took this option, quite matter-of-factly and putting no pressure on me to go with her. (Only once was she the only person to get in.) This meant that she usually got into camp first and had usually bagged us a good tent and when I arrived she was sitting with a drink writing a detailed diary of the animals she had seen that day (each one was named… Pinky the warthog etc). She increased her range day on day and on the last day she managed the whole of a very grinding trek that some adults didn’t manage. By then she had got hold of the concept of a challenge and had become very determined: she made the group promise to stand in a circle around her if Mike tried to get her to get into the jeep. Most days, we would reach camp between 3 and 5 and flop with a cup of tea, and — bizzarely — a large bowl of popcorn. Until the ice melted there were even cold drinks so that Rosie only had to go to the `pub’ and say `can I have a Fanta for number 13?’. By this stage we were amazingly grubby so there was washing to do — ourselves and our many, many, many socks (8 per day, each with prickles to pick out). The rest of the camp would listen to screams and recriminations as I poured a bucket of water over Rosie in the `shower tent’. Darkness came fast and then supper and bed. I settled Rosie down in our little tent, tired but still wanting to gossip. It was great for to us have the monopoly of each other during these days. Walking hour after hour in this expansive landscape puts you in touch with yourself even when you are eight and all sorts of thing came up as we talked: lots about Danny, about how grown-ups behave — `why do men have to be heroes?’ — and towards the end, worries about how David was getting on. This was the pattern of our lives for 10 days.
On the route we saw animals — giraffe, zebra, ostriches, baboons and someone nearly trod on a warthog. It really is quite something to be able to say `look Rosie, there’s a giraffe’ as you are walking along — and the constant possibility of seeing wildlife really kept her going. I have long known how besotted she is about animals (militant vegetarian etc) but what was so wonderful was how her interest did not seem to decrease with the size of the creature — she would have time even for the creepy crawlies and flies. There was a night-watchman — with a spear — looking after camp as we slept; one night a herd of zebra thundered past. Despite the obvious proximity of wildlife we didn’t feel paranoid — though it was the sort of place you would tip your boots out before putting them on in the morning. I found the idea of lurking scorpions and snakes less worrying than the ticks — I had tenuous memories of parasitology lectures and diagrams with arrows and figures-of-eight linking ticks and animals and humans and queer diseases: ticks burrow painlessly into your skin and have to be `unscrewed’ so no head parts are left in (I mention this to suggest that we deserve our sponsorship money).
I found the Masai the most fascinating element of the trip — the women magnificent with their broad bead necklaces. For some reason many recently circumcised boys were roaming around wearing black and with dramatic white patterns painted on their faces. They would just turn up and stare at us as we pottered around the camp in the late afternoon. The Masai were generally reticent about photographs but one day, as the most blistered feet were being ventilated under a tree at lunchtime, three Masai warriors came up to view us with their long spears over their shoulders. They were statuesque, their hair immaculately plaited and plastered with red mud. They took a shine to Rosie (as did all the women we met, many of whom good naturedly tried to kidnap her) and Rosie showed them Jambo, the small furry lion she was carrying in her rucksack. They hunt real lion with spears and had never seen anything so funny as the toy and good naturedly posed for the cameras.
Rosie managed very well — but it was only once we were there that I realised what a high-risk venture it had been to take her. If she had not been so positive about almost everything, if the group had not been so accommodating, if either of us had got ill, the atmosphere could have been ruined — and not only for us. In the event she carved her own furrow, making her own relationships with other treckers. The `crew’ were good to her — for them I had no separate identity, being only `Mama Rosie’. She only had one `wobbly’ towards the top of a hard climb; having struggled almost weeping up the side of a volcano, eyes stinging from the dust, Jacob piggy-backed her up to the top of the crater but too late to avoid tears of defeat with `I can’t go on’. We were a long way from base but morale did return and we made it. We were good to each other in a way that we aren’t at home. Rosie made friends, especially with John and Bhavna who put up with an amazing amount of inconsequential chatter and Diane was so thoughtful, forming a reception committee for us on the very last hill of the very last day. She also recorded our togetherness with lots of photos which made me cry when they arrived in a big packet once we were home.
From our tent one night, we heard Catherine playing `Danny Boy’ on the tin whistle and got very sad. Danny had been on our minds a lot — somehow you experience the `circle of life’ with a particular directness out there. The next day we found a special spot on the edge of a crater above the camp and Rosie chose two very particular friends to come up and help build a little cairn for him. We said the Blessings together as we always do, pleased to have found such a beautiful place. Coming down, we had a laugh that the trip would not have been Danny’s cup-of-tea at all!
The very last days walk brought us to water — lots of it running cold from the mountain. We walked into camp, picked up a drink and went straight down into the river, with all our clothes on. You couldn’t actually swim but if you lay with your back very straight, you would be carried gradually downstream without bumping your bottom; this was a special kind of bliss after the hot and the dry. Someone found a plastic can and by that time, Rosie, John and Bhavna were not being very sensible and it was very hard to get them outof the water. That evening we went down to Lake Natron, one of those improbable soda lakes in the middle of the Rift Valley where the flamingos gather. The `pub’ truck was driven down near the lakeside (too near as it turned out) and we sat in a long line on our canvas stools, drinking warm beer and watching the sun go down as the flamingos picked over the shoreline in front of us. Real `Out of Africa’ Africa. Some little Masai children had kept the walkers company (a 2 hour stroll for some children who could not have been more than four or five) on the way down so about 50 people piled into the truck for the journey home. We set off in a mood of hilarity, people festooned all over the inside and outside of the vehicle but ran aground in the swampy mud after less than five minutes. We were seriously stuck and it was getting dark. The shambolic heaving and shoving that ensued only made things worse, so Mike set off in the jeep to fetch `International Rescue’ while we got the stools out again and sat in groups telling stupid stories and trying to remember cheering up songs for difficult circumstances … very British. After an hour or two, (I had abandoned my watch at the beginning of the trip) help came in the form of the landrovers which had just arrived to transport us out of the Rift to Tarangire National Park the following day. They too got stuck, but we managed to get them moving again and arrived back at camp hungry and ready for bed.
The next day started with a long and uncomfortable trip in the landrovers. They needed four wheel drive for much of the first few hours and our bones were pretty painful by the time we reached our destination 6 hours later. We had heard nothing of the Kili climbers for eleven days and I was anxious for the rendezvous. We headed into Tarangire Park, the landrover’s roof up so that we could stand inside like the Pope does. Just getting to the hotel in the middle of the Park, we saw lions and lots of elephants, zebra, wildebeest; Rosie could hardly contain herself. Arriving was a bit of an anticlimax because there had been some unspecified hitch in the Kili group’s journey, so Rosie and I were in our room, testing out a proper bed and feeling a bit withdrawn when we heard footsteps on the stairs and David burst in, full of hugs. Everyone was elated and with so much to tell. We had another safari ride together that evening, then a proper bar, a celebration dinner and the atmosphere changed. It was difficult to keep connected with any sense of challenge or hardship after that. The following day we travelled back to Arusha, out to the airport, flight to Zanzibar, another bus ride before being installed in another hotel. This was the sort of posh hotel that had to sit in a compound with a fence around it to keep the poor at a discrete distance. But the sun / sea / sand / food / palm-tree / swimming experience was complete so I shouldn’t complain. A choppy boat ride away was the best snorkelling we have ever seen, better than the Barrier Reef. Rosie was like a prune by the time we eventually got out. She really conquered her fears, having started by swimming cautiously arm in arm with both of us but diving and showing us conger eels by the end.
It seemed good to get home (hard to believe this as I write it now). We phoned the Jaffas from Stanstead airport — I had a secret dread that the whole experience would be wiped out by news of some catastrophe concerning the rabbit that had been left with them — but no. Gik was at the station to meet us and the house looked briefly immaculate and welcoming. Great trip, much recommended to anyone — we will happily sponsor you.
