Uhuru peak
23/7/2008
I wouldn't do it again, though... Gorgeous, undeniably, but for me it was too big an ask.
Horombo to Kibo hut
22/7/2008
We've been going through quite a bizarre world today - a desert, and not just in the technical sense of "place where things don't grow" (or whatever), but in the classical sense. Sand stretching out, sun cracking our lips (I really did go for the sunglasses today!), the feeling of your mind playing tricks as you get no closer to the destination that looks so near. I didn't expect that would be one of the things I'd get from Kilimanjaro, but I now have that experience to look back on too.
But for what? The friendly Dutch couple we met earlier on the trek made it to Kibo hut, where I am now, but felt like shit and left straight away. I'm feeling pretty shit myself (tho I suspect not as bad as them), with no appetite, a nasty headache, and pissing like it's going out of fashion - as I'm sure you wanted to know. And it turns out I'm at 4700m ASL, rather than the 5100 I thought Kibo hut was at, so we're not even as close as I'd hoped. Still more than a kilometre of UP to go. We'll wake at 11:30 this evening, and climb in the dark for around 7 hours, as is the norm. Apparently that way you can't see how far you've got to go, which makes life easier, and then you can hopefully watch sunrise from the top.
But I WILL make it. Everyone seems to make it to Gillman's point, on the rim of Kibo crater, so I wont be able to admit defeat before there. And once you've made it to 5685m, with only a jaunt round the rim on what can't be particularly big altitudes left, what the fuck would posess me to give up 90 minutes and 200m short of Uhuru? Trust in music. With the right sounds in your ears you can endure anything for 7 hours...
Later note: the above has been reconstructed from bullet points - I was too cooked to actually write properly the day we got to Kibo.
Horombo to Zebra rock & back
21/7/2008
I woke up today to a surprising realisation: I'm not scared anymore, just excited. This may not be a good thing, of course...
The other thing I woke up to, which may explain my excitement, was this:
That's kibo, and somewhere at the top of it is Uhuru peak, 5895m, the highest point in Africa. That's where we're aiming. And this morning the clouds lifted for long enough for me to see it for the first time. The lower peak of Mawenzi, all cragged from being hit on the head with a spoon by her sister Kibo, if you believe one legend, was also visible for a few minutes. Unfortunately, almost as soon as I'd turned round from taking that photo the mist rolled right back again, so you'll have to take my word for it.
Today being our aclimatisation day, although we climbed around 500m to Zebra rock, we came back down again to sleep at the same altitude. Horombo was slightly depressing after that, since (counterintuitively) I'm certain it was warmer higher up - it wasn't just because we were moving. Indeed I came perilously close to putting on my sunglasses, for what would have been almost the first time.
After that we had a full afternoon off, with little to do but marvel at what must be the least hospitable building site in Africa:
It seems that too many people want to stay at Horombo, so a new common space is under construction. In all, I think I'm quite glad I was working in Yamba, though I suppose if I'd spent 10 weeks on site at Horombo I'd be well prepared against altitude sickness...
From the start I predicted that this evening I'd be feeling quietly confident, but tomorrow it would really start to bite (making summit day, Wednesday, all the harder). The first part of my nostradamus work has held true. I guess tomorrow will go a long way to deciding whether I make it.
Mandara to Horombo
20/7/2008
I write to you now from the ridiculous position of being 3.7km above sea level. People skydive from lower altitudes. So far, things remain pretty manageable: the walk was a bit tougher, but still not a patch on the trickiest DofE days; the temperature has (of course) dropped again, but it's fine as long as you're eating; I had my first altitude headache earlier, but it was very minor and has gone away with the aid of an ibuprofen.
Today the porters have been high in my mind. We woke up to find that, even if you're half way up a mountain, in Tanzania you go to church on Sunday. I suppose since the porters are up here so often they either hold a service here or nowhere. Then at the end of the walk, just before we reached Horombo hut, we passed a mound of the fronds of one of the shrubs hardy enough to grow in the Alpine moorland at this height. Our guide, Aloyce, told us that they mark the place where two porters died some four years ago.
Which all makes it feel the more odd that we haven't actually met our porters yet. I don't know through what slight of hand they've avoided us, since they pick up our main bags each morning from our hut, and drop them off for us in the afternoon. I do sometimes get the impression that, for whatever reason, Aloyce is trying to keep us apart. We've met our cook, Michael, who I think is also a porter, simply through dint of him giving us food three times a day, but it took quite a push to get Aloyce to reveal the guy's name. Surely we wont go through all six days without being introduced to the men who're making this possible - turning what would be for us an impossible trek into a merely very difficult one. Are we?
Marangu to Mandara
19/7/2008
And so it begins. If all the walking were as easy as today there'd be no trouble - cool but not cold, gentle inclines and a pace about half that at which I'd have gone. Of course it wont be - it's a ridiculous idea, really. I'm also very conscious that it's not only the walking which'll cause trouble: altitude sickness is a sport that awaits us yet, and perhaps more even than that will be the cold. As soon as we stopped walking, even today, we started to feel it, and that's at 3 in the afternoon, at only 2700m (less than half the way up). Mind you, 2700 is still twice as high as Yamba, which was often in the cloud belt - and about the same distance above Ben Nevis, just for perspective. We started walking today about 600m above Ben Nevis...
As yet there's still time to enjoy the sight of 26 Korean climbers, all kitted out in matching bright yellow gear, with equally bright green bags. I'm not sure I'd still see the funny side if all their cameras come out on summit day, though: I guess I need to accept that this isn't wild. There's enough of a challenge there anyway that I shouldn't need to invent extra hardships that aren't really there.
And it really is cold.
NeverLoseYourSenseOfWonder
A sense of impending doom
18/7/2008
Is what you're supposed to feel when you're having a heart attack. It's also a good description of your state of mind when it finally hits you that this Kilimanjaro thing is actually quite a big deal.
I didn't write anything yesterday, simply because I had nothing to say - you wont be surprised if I tell you that a day in Arusha hardly inspired me to wax poetic. Today all I've got is this mounting terror. The odds are that I wont reach the top, that I'll suffer from some level of altitude sickness (at least a thumping headache, apparently) and that in a few days I'll hate myself for deciding to try it and want to die. Those are only the liklihoods. The possibilities range from the operator not turning up tomorrow and running off with our money, through serious injury to death.
I'm scared.
Not ready for this
16/7/2008
The activity of the last few days has happened in such sudden stages that I haven't really noticed it properly. Even today, undeniably the end of VA for me , Ele, Tom and Miranda, we were whisked away at first light to catch buses from Segera. Indeed another puncture kept us in a rush which prevented dangerous levels of reflection all the way to the bus stop.
I first noticed that something was amiss when we got off the bus for a few minutes to stretch our legs (at a service station which may have been called Liverpool). There suddenly seemed to be all these people around with light skin. Somewhere under the dirt and brick dust I suppose I'm not so different, but that doesn't make it feel any better to be surrounded by tourists. Then came the realisation that that's how it's going to be for what's left of Giles' grand adventure in Tanzania. Climbing Kilimanjaro for fun would be a pretty alien concept to your average Yamba resident, and Arusha (where Ele, Miranda and I'll be based when we're not on mountains) is apparently the tourist capitol of Tanzania. I really hadn't prepared myself for such a crunching gear change.
Arusha didn't give a first impression to dispel my fears, either. First thing off the bus half a dozen people started trying to sell me a safari or get me into their taxi, fulfilling all the stereotypes of flycatchers that I so dreaded when reading the rough guide for the first time (which feels like a ridiculously long time ago, now). In the end we found ourselves dropping our bags in a hotel before beating as hasty a retreat as we could from the wazungu world, finding a back street with a local food house ready to provide us with the escape we needed. And a chip omletter :-) Tomorrow, I think we brave the town.
NeverLoseYourSenseOfWonder
My body is a canvas, Dahling
15/7/2008
I'd never imagined myself getting a tattoo, but today I decided that perhaps I might, and that rural Tanzania was the perfect place to get it done. Before you tell me that I've taken leave of my senses, and that I'm sure to contract AIDS, relax. All Victor did - and with quite a visible artistry behind his eyes, I might say - was to outline in pen, fill in with the milk of some plant I didn't recognise (to act as a binding agent), then cover with wood ash. After all, Ele had 'MILI' on her right arm, so I'd have let the side down rather if I'd refused to have 'YAMBA' on my left.
Usually such designs last a few days, I'm told, but at the moment I'm glad of anything that marks me out as one of Yamba. Though going from picturesque tea shop to picturesque tea shop to street corner tattoo merchant was pleasingly unlikely, there's no ignoring the fact that I'm leaving the project altogether tomorrow. My upper arm is just another way to keep living here a little longer.
NeverLoseYourSenseOfWonder
Not for tourists
14/7/2008
Leaving happened so quickly that I haven't really noticed it yet - I wont come to terms with it enough to express real feelings for a while yet, I don't think. I'm still in the space where I think of today as just another odd trip to Mili - after all, tonight will be the third night I've spent here (each time in a different bed: I'm close to the full set).
With that attitude in mind it seemed quite normal to just go for a random wander with Ele after lunch, and as is the way with random wanders, we found ourselves on paths we'd never seen before. On one there was a point where Upenda (one of the children following us) was very insistent we shouldn't pass. The boys seemed happy enough to pass, and all we could see was a large log fixed in the branches of a tree, but she was clearly bothered by it. In the end end we all ran past, one at a time, myself and Ele not knowing why - the closest suspicion I had was that perhaps there was a hornet's nest or somesuch in the log.
If only it were that simple. That's where they hang people. It doesn't often happen that the village takes the law into it's own hands to that extent, but it's seen use recently enough that 8-year-olds fear to pass it. A journey like that leaves one reflecting that it's undoubtedly only one face of Mili and Yamba that we've seen, and no society exists that doesn't have a darker side to hide. I get the distinct impression, though, that even in two years Caroline has only seen the smiling face, and I doubt whether a mzungu would ever see the other reality. I chose my words there carefully, because I don't doubt that what we've seen is entirely real. All I now realise is that it's not everything.
That in turn, though, reminds me simply that there's a great deal on every side of life that I've not seen in ten weeks. After all, ten weeks is an absurdly little time to think you'd seen all a place has to show, even as small a place as Yamba. It seems that absolutely any stimulus at the moment leads me back to the leaving blues...
NeverLoseYourSenseOfWonder
While it was yet dark
13/7/2008
Tomorrow I'll have to get up before daybreak and steal away from Yamba - to all intents and purposes I've seen the village for the last time. I've filled scores of pages writing about it, but I realise now that I have never, and can never really, really describe it. I've twice filled my camera's memory card with photos of Yamba, but I could never capture it. In twenty years' time I'll have strong memories of the last 10 weeks, but they'll never be as sharp as they are today, and that's something I'll take a long while to accept.
I've been signing off with NeverLoseYourSenseOfWonder, and I'm pleased that I've largely managed to practice what I've preached. In truth, though, that's more down to Yamba and its people than to me - my challenge will really begin in around a fortnight. I may have to work a little harder to maintain that sense of wonder once I get back to an everyday life.
Yamba has given me resource for a while of wonderment yet, though.
NeverLoseYourSenseOfWonder
One
12/7/2008
Is it getting better
or do you feel the same?
Will it make it easier on you now
you've got someone to blame?
You say one love
One life
When it's one need
in the night.
One love,
we get to share it.
Leaves you baby if you
don't care for it.
Did I disappoint you,
or leave a bad taste in your mouth?
You act like you never had love,
and you want me to go without.
Well it's too late
tonight
to drag the past out
into the light.
We're one,
but we're not the same.
We get to carry each other
carry each other.
One
Have you come here for forgiveness?
Have you come to raise the dead?
Have you come here to play Jesus
to the lepers in your head?
Did I ask too much,
More than a lot?
You gave me nothing now it's
all I've got.
We're one
but we're not the same, well we
hurt each other then we do it again.
You say love is a temple,
love the higher law.
Lover is a temple,
love the higher law.
You ask me to enter,
but then you make me crawl,
and I can't keep holding on
to what you've got,
when all you've got is hurt.
One love;
One blood;
One life you've got to
do what you should.
One life
with each other;
sisters,
brothers.
One life but we're
not the same, we get to
carry each other.
Carry each other
One life
One
NeverLoseYourSenseOfWonder
Who's next?
11/7/2008
I know very well who, and that makes it even worse, because it's me. 3 weeks ago Sybil left, and Carol began a 2 week holiday, so 6 of what I might call my originals became 4 - only Tom, Miranda, Vic and I were left. But that didn't feel anything like as weird as today when 5 (after Carol's return) became 3 - and this time without any promise of a return. I guess part of the problem is that whereas before we had new arrivals - Maya, Darren, Roger - who we knew we'd have for a few weeks to get to know, Wednesday's arrivals we may well not. We don't talk about the 16 GCSE students who arrived today for an exhaustingly intensive stay of... a week.
The real problem, though, is that Vic and Carol going marks what I can no longer pretend isn't the beginning of the end. I know I'm the next to leave Yamba, in perhaps 50 hours time. Though perhaps I've been here too long now - I distinctly heard someone call me Giles today - not Jayros or Jar-lez-i, but Giles. That can't be right at all.
NeverLoseYourSenseOfWonder
Time is over
10/7/2008
I love the way people talk about time out here. A couple of days ago a chap called Bahati wanted to tell Darren he'd catch up with him later, and chose to phrase it "I will see you after time". Put me in mind of the restaurant at the end of the universe (hitchhikers' guide) immediately, which made it a little tricky to keep a straight face. At the end of work each day either Paulo or Freddy will usually tell me "hello Jayros: time is over", which before has always seemed a little melodramatic. Today, though, my last day on site, it didn't seem so over the top.
I guess a jolt like that helps to remind you that the time you've got here is limited and precious - I was certainly drinkin in Yamba more this afternoon than I have for a while. It helped as well that we had something of a role reversal this evening - the wazungu played housegirls for the night, and invited the girls round for a thankyou dinner. In about 4 days time I'll have to say goodbye to the girls. Oh 'eck. I'm going to miss them, especially Clemencia, more than I can say.
NeverLoseYourSenseOfWonder
Desensitised
9/7/2008
For some reason, today I've got a chronic case of the munchies. I suspect in fact that it's quite straightforwardly explained, since I had an intensive day's work, before walking to Mili (took the car on the way back, though ;-)). So after a good supper, with Carol's chocolate brownies as an extra pudding, I didn't have any difficulty munching some of the cooking chocolate (left-over fudge ingredient) then coming home from Mzizma and demolishing a few digestives as well.
I went through all that and it's only now that I'm starting to feel guilty. It would be an exaggeration to say that there are hundreds of starving children outside my window - people in Yamba (as I guess must be the same for almost any stable settlement) seem to have just about enough to eat, even if it's never well-balanced or exciting. That doesn't get round the fact that there are a thousand people in this village alone who need that food more than I, and I just plough through it without needing it, and worse without even considering the wrongness of the situation. I never thought I'd become this.
Ant Safari
8/7/2008
I've just spent a quarter of an hour picking at least a hundred ants off my clothes and skin - even as I write I'm still feeling worrying tickling sensations. This, though, was in payment for something quite remarkable:
The ants out here are like none I've ever seen before - it's common to see great motorway-esque trails, with thousands pouring across a path guarded on either side by a solid wall of police-ants. I'd never before seen them experimenting with abstract art, though.
NeverLoseYourSenseOfWonder
Saba saba
7/7/2008
Today was, or maybe wasn't, a public holiday in Tanzania. Apparently some years it is and some it isn't, so you listen to the radio in the morning to find out whether you're going to work that day. Without the luxury of a radio, we just got a nice surprise at 8 o'clock when no-one else came to work.
It felt a little odd to celebrate a date the only significance of which I'd previously been aware of was the London bombs of 3 years ago. After a weekend of heavy Tanga-based partying (heading back to the glorious Club Chica among other things) it was just what we needed, though.
The lapse from my labours today made my mind up on the full day's work idea, and all: Tuesday and Thursday I'm blocked by accountancy, and wednesday I mean to go to Mili. My aim at first was to see India's family, who were to arrive that day before leaving with her on Friday to Mt Meru and then Zanzibar - she's spoken so glowingly of them that I'm quite interested to meet them. But fucking malaria's reared it's ugly head again. India came out of hospital (her second trip) on Friday, enjoyed Friday and Saturday of freedom, then felt crap on Sunday, got tested and told she still wasn't clear. She's back in hospital, which makes her family's Mili visit somewhat moot, though I think she'd still like them to see it. I've just heard she may be flying straight home. So uncompromisingly pervasive - Malaria gets into everything.
I can't even say that if you go a day without thinking about it you're doing well, since that could only mean you'd spent the day ignoring whichever of your friends is fighting it at that point, which is hardly something to be proud of. Fucking SHIT.
Blimey, that's a strong feeling. I guess it's re-learning the severity of it, after having grown to think of it as relatively run-of-the-mill. If India does go home that would be a pretty big jolt. Ro leaving was just as serious, perhaps moreso, but with the best will in the world, having barely met her, it was never going to hit me so hard (emotionally, if not intellectually). India, on the other hand, I would count as one of the best friends I've made here, and that's against stiff competition. Again, FUCKING SHIT.
Smoke
3/7/2008
We seem to be in the shamba burning season. (A shamba is a farm, and they're clearing away unwanted vegetation in the quickest way they can). That has some downsides, particularly when the wind swings round to send the smoke acorss a path - for minutes at a time you can be struggling to breathe. Art shines through as ever - a snatch of poetry from a glance up the mountain and I'm in a magical place.
'Fire on the mountain...'
NeverLoseYourSenseOfWonder
Resolution
2/7/2008
In the end I didn't work a full day today. And by God am I glad I made that decision. Instead of shovelling concrete I went for a walk with Miranda up past the football pitch (a sight in itself). We were rewarded first with the most stunning view I've seen since Irente, and then with something even better.
A little under a month ago Martin (the Mzizma watchman) told us his wife had just had a baby. Since he's really Tom and Vic's watchman first, and it was a boy, he's baby Tom. Today as we were staring out over Milingano and beyond, Martin appeared and invited us into his house to meet the month-old Tom. He's simply gorgeous. I want one. Now. Baby's fingers are always particularly entrancing, but at such a tiny tiny stage...
There exists somewhere a photo of me holding him, which contains altogether too much Giles and not nearly enough Tom. I fear I'll have to make do, though - I certainly wont need a photo to remember how beautiful he is.
NeverLoseYourSenseOfWonder
Uncertainty of principles
1/7/2008
Roger's started workin after lunch, erasing the strange imbalance in our working hours (we're expected to go from 8 til noon, while the locals stay til 4) which so bothered me early on. Darren, fresh in today, has embraced the idea too, leaving me in a strange quandry. Today I hadn't any choice in the matter - after lunch I was accounting - but I have to admit to a certain reluctance. I came here to build, and it still doesn't seem right that I should only trade in half days, yet there's a strong part of me resisting a change. No doubt part of the problem is a sort of laziness bred by having got used to this format, and part perhaps is that I'm no longer as excited by every workday as I was. Since I'm finding myself doing the same things I did 6 weeks ago at Kwemshi the novelty factor, at least, is gone.
My best excuse is neither of these, though. You'll have to decide whether or not to take my word for it when I say that I believe this to be genuinely a large part of my reluctance. I'm acutely aware tthat I've got very little time left in Yamba, and though it's only a village of a thousand people, there's a great deal I still want to do, many places I want to go and people to meet. My gut feeling is that really what's going to be most important to me is the people, and we're often told that to Yamba residents how you behave is much more important than how good a builder you are, so presumably that inclination cuts both ways.
This afternoon I was walking over to Caroline's for accounts at the same time as Clemencia was walking to her house for lunch. As we passed her front door she invited me in. I popped my head round the door, only staying for a couple of minutes since I had to get to work on the books, but I realised that this was the first time in all these 8 weeks that I've gone into anyone's house. And that's not for want of invitations, either - one gets so many earnest 'Karibu's that it would be criminal not to experience that properly.
That's only one thing on a list that could probably fill a page of things I want to cram into my last fortnight. Which is why I hope you wont think me too feckless for admitting my reservations over building in the afternoons. Having said all that, I'm certainly not yet decided - there's a lot to be said for really throwing myself into building while I still can, so 1 o'clock tomorrow may find me back on site. I'll sleep on it, and get back to you.
NeverLoseYourSenseOfWonder