Chasing Ms. Africa (Kilimanjaro - Day 1)

I arrive in a tiny dusty airport with a handful of other passengers in Arusha, Tanzania. Stepping outside, the immediate chorus of “Taxi madam? Excuse me, Taxi madam?” Greets me. I forgot about this part, the overwhelming concern bestowed on my transportation options by enthusiastic taxi drivers. Ever so confidently, I say "No thanks, I have pickup”, and for once thats actually not a lie.

My fellow travelers get whisked away by different cars immediately. Mine is nowhere in sight.

Well maybe I'm early. I'll wait.

5 minutes pass. 10. 15.

A security guard wraps a chain around the metal door handle behind me and clicks a lock. The airport is closed.

I suppose I should call someone.

It turned out the travel agent who organized my trip was waiting for me… at Kilimanjaro Airport. An hour and half away. Another lesson for clear communication and triple confirmation.

Well with taxis so plentiful, it’s not a problem. He coordinates for a taxi for me to meet him halfway.

The taxi is a beat up old chunk of steel, sin even a cassette player. The driver is a young guy with few English words. He immediately introduces me to the other African perk - the most chaotic driving in the world. My driver nearly runs over the scooter that’s blocking our path, coming within inches of the unfortunate driver. That's not even the first brush with death over the next hour. I furiously and automatically press the non-existent brake pedal on the passenger side. If I had been sleepy before, I no longer am.

Its cloudy, no mountain in sight. We drive by vast fields of sunflowers, coffee, banana, corn, among others. The mammoth sunflowers make me smile, thinking about how when they can't find the sun, they turn to each other. Pedestrians all along the road, some ambling by, carrying bags on their head, others waiting for the bus. Life transacts on the side of the road - buy, sell, trade. A particular peculiarity is the numerous sofas in plain sight, under the roof of every hut, in ever color and fabric imaginable. They look so out of place here. I'm relieved to see not too much trash, not too many kids running amok. No signs of despair.

I make it to my accommodations for the night. It’s another one of those quaint, beautifully landscaped "budget” jungle lodges. I put budget in quotes because in America this would be many hundreds of dollars a night, here it's merely ~$30. Palm trees dot the landscape amidst a series of huts. The banana palms look like a fan of feathers. I want one of those. All kinds of parrots flit about between the trees, entirely engrossed by the complexity of the social life of their kind. I want one of those too. A seed, already planted in my mind from my time in the Brazilian Pantanal, grows a tad deeper. I want one of these lodges.

I meet my crew who is going to guide me up to summit Ms. Africa - ie Mount Kilimanjaro. The troop is composed of Hunter and Sam as my guides, Ussen the cook, plus several porters. It feels silly, so many people for just one person. But we have to carry everything with us and we need extra hands in case anyone succumbs to altitude sickness. Pre-covid, they were doing 3 trips a month. I’m their first client in over 6 months - so maybe they are bringing a few extra hands to split the commission.

It’s my last night in a real bed. I'm a little anxious about this - 6 days to summit, no cell service, no facilities, medical aid a few hours away at the least. I’m once again in a strange land, all alone, entrusting my life to a bunch of strangers whose loyalty to me is a bit out of human goodness and mostly the not-insignificant sum I’m paying for their services.

—

The next morning I’m picked up around 6am. We drive 40 minutes to the Machame Gate, the beginning of our trek. Registration takes a couple of hours and finally we are on the way.

I look up at the gate - the route already starts out steep. The air is thin, clouds are low. I still haven’t seen the giant - I won’t see the mountain until we are above the clouds. I feel the faint thump thump of a headache coming on. Elevation and I are not friends.

I recall my encounter with the Cotopaxi volcano in Ecuador. Stepping off the broken down bus in the parking lot of the trailhead, greeted with the biting cold, thin air, and a wicked headache, I panicked. Entirely unprepared and under-clothed, I needed to get off that mountain, to a richer oxygen supply. Ditching the trek to basecamp I hitchhiked a ride back to town. Not my proudest moment.

At the gate I pause. For a split second I think about bailing. Instead I take a deep breath and cross the gate. No going back now.

The first day is a breezy 7 miler through the rainforest, taking about 5 hours. The trail is steep, air is thin. My headache will be a mostly constant companion for the next week. The trees are covered in moss, their branches reminding me of hairy tarantula legs. Sounds of monkeys are all around and some cross my path. I love the silence of nature, the clarity of thought it brings. Why is it that you have to go so far to find stillness?

I get my first glimpse of the giant through the heavily leafed rainforest. Stark in contrast - an alternating pattern of snow and volcanic rock. It looks so far away, stoic, unmoving.

That night, I'm reunited with my beloved African night sky. I've yearned to be back here since Botswana two years ago. Try as you might, you just can't take a photo of it to fully capture it. I guess you can’t take a picture of a feeling - of smallness, of wonder, of what else is out there in that twinkling Milky Way lighting up the sky. It doesn't look like this anywhere else on earth. I know, because I keep searching.

There's something pure and fundamental about Africa, something genuine. It draws you in, steals a bit of you every time you come. The beauty, the spirit. Maybe people here are more in touch with nature. Maybe our complex system is too complicated for our own good, and the real answer is here, in simplicity. Sure they are poor, but you don't feel the despair in the air as in other places. They have hope. And hope is enough to climb any mountain.