Anatomy of a Success (between the rain clouds)

I remember my first year of graduate school in Seattle. It was the only time I ever lived there, and in the winter of 1999 it rained for 90 days straight. It was the most continuous rain they had had from what I understood. I remember a weatherman saying that the following year could be worse! (I was trying to imagine what could be worse than 90 straight days of rain?..90 straight days of tornadoes??)

I am recalling that time now because we are experiencing something similar in what is normally the dry summer season here in Tanzania. I reported on the unusual weather over a month ago, and I am sorry I have to bring it up again. It is unnerving at this point, and most unwelcome, even for farmers who are now completely confused about when to plant corn. Normally the planting season is mid-February just before the big rains in March and April. But we have had no pause at all between the short October rains and the expected rains of March. Usually the rain starts in the evening and falls heavily through the night. There are brief showers during the days as well.

Sadly, the rain has interfered with the work of some of our partners. Step-by-Step Learning Center, the school for severely disabled children where our volunteer Jessica works as an OT has not been reachable by bus because the road going into it is a muddy swamp. They have had to cancel many days of school or try to get the children there with great difficulty. Last week teachers actually piggy-backed children over the muck to get to the schoolhouse. (See photo)

I am currently sitting in a hotel room in Karatu. I am up here for a training being done by one of our health partners. The training is for health promoters for our EbOO project in the Ngorongoro crater region. The topics are focused on early childhood development, to be shared with the aid of flip-cards by care group volunteers who will, in turn, teach mothers in their neighborhoods. The women gathered here are a mixture of traditional birth attendants, nurse midwives, and a few men from the partner NGO as well. There was an amusing discussion around the role of men in early childhood development.

The men who are participating seem quite open to male involvement in child-rearing, but the women generally complained that most of the traditional Maasai men in the community do not participate actively in the development of their young children, (often of several wives). During a hands-on demonstration of how to stimulate a young child, the men, taking turns with a bundle in a blanket brought peels of laughter from the onlooking women. I will be here for two days before returning to Arusha tomorrow night.

The past two weeks have been fraught at times, but not because of any further frustration with government bureaucracies. (for those who read the last entry). In fact, I have titled this entry Anatomy of a Success, because of Oren's accomplishment last week.

Many of you know that Oren went on a trek to summit Kilimanjaro as an option for his school activity week. Despite some reservations from Rebecca and me, as he is only 14, we did give him permission to go and encouraged him in his choice to try it. He was back by last Thursday and we asked him to recount the experience. Here is his story:
(as recounted to his mom)

To get us ready for the trip, they had us take a practice hike up a mountain called Longido which would only take one day. They claimed that the one-day hike would be harder than any single individual day on Kilimanjaro (except for the summitting day). Their score on that is 0% correct. Every single day on Kilimanjaro was worse than that day.

An accurate description of climbing Kilimanjaro would be the physical strain of a soldier combined with the stress of being sent to the gallows, combined with the hunger of a peasant farmer, combined with hospital-worthy illness and a normal winter’s day. In addition, you’re miles away from civilization.

The first day, we had to hike through a wet rain forest. It was a pretty steep incline. We started off all cheerful and happy – little did we know what was coming. Me and da boyz stayed in a cabin and laughed until very late at night. And then we went to sleep. And then someone woke up in the middle of the night and started yelling because he was cold.

The  second day, we hiked through a hilly area with large shrubbery. That day was worse than the day before because we had to walk for a longer time (more than 8 hours). It was cold and that was the last day I was able to eat an adequate amount of food. That was the day I learned that if you sit stationary, the temperature seems to drop by half within the first five minutes. It was much, much colder than the day before. We passed the time walking by talking to the people in the immediate vicinity because we were pretty spread out.

We stayed in cabins at Horombo Hut. It is one thing to lose one’s keys; it is another thing to lose one’s keys to one’s cabin on Kilimanjaro, with wet socks on, during the rain. The possession of the key was given to me by my cabin mates because they claimed I was the most “responsible.” In the end, people had to break the latch to the door because, if the spare key existed, it was part-way down the mountain and had to have a permission form to have it be carried up the mountain to our camp. Due to altitude sickness, I was unable to eat well that night. There was good cooked food on the trip – I was just too sick to eat much of it. Bear in mind, we were still only two days in.

The third day was walking through a cold, depressing unending hellscape of rocky ground and cliffs. Kilimanjaro was so huge it could have declared its independence as a country. It contains massive valleys, smaller mountains upon the central mountain, hills, deserts, rainforests, savannahs. On this day, however, we were going through the desert, and not the happy, fun, yellow and red, bright colored sand kind of desert. Oh no, no, no. This was the communist-grey color scheme kind of desert, containing rocks and rocks and rocks and rocks. This was the day that we learned, even if something was only ¾ of a km away, it could take the best part of an hour to get to it. The incline was not even that steep. I have no idea why it took us so long to reach our goals. We had to take frequent breaks. And by this time, my back (which had given me trouble on the second day) was really getting to me. By this point we still had enough positive morale in us to have some conversation with other human beings. It is truly amazing what just three days on a mountain could do to some happy people – how it could completely turn around some unknowing happy person’s spirits. By this time, my appetite was almost dead and I was walking on a completely empty stomach. I barely even wanted any of the Hershey’s chocolate which was packed for me.

This hut (Kibo) was the highest hut we were going to get to before the summit. It was an entire 1,100 below the summit, which would be a 6 km walk, going at a 45-degree angle from where we were. That night, we were told that we were going to be woken up at 3 am and had to depart at 4 am.

Day 4: We were woken up at 3 am, got on our heavy layers and went to breakfast. The only breakfast I was able to eat was a cup of hot chocolate and a single biscuit, before climbing to the top. In the end, I started to ascend the highest peak in pitch darkness, with an empty stomach, nausea, recurring throbbing headaches, very low spirits, a heavy daypack, cold weather and very low energy to talk to anyone. The landscape between the third hut and the top of the mountain is even worse than the previous desert landscape. Unlike the desert landscape, there is not even a single scrap of grass in existence. It is just grey rocks for kilometers. I was in the front group and spent 3 or 4 hours walking up the mountain. After the three or four hours, at 5,150 m (16,800 ft), I decided it was not a wise idea to go all the way to the top.

The descent of the mountain was much, much faster. The 3 – 4 hours of hiking up was all undone in about 20 minutes of descending. Everyone in the second group was thoroughly scattered in different places up the mountain and I passed them on the way down. When I returned to the third hut, I packed my bag, and with two other people, hiked down to the second hut. The descent was kind of fun because of how fast it was in comparison to all the other days of climbing. When I returned to the second hut, I got to ride in the back of a pickup and get down to the gate. I was then taken back to school by a school car. My parents picked me up that evening and took me to Pizza Hut, where I had a large pepperoni pizza and a soda. After being in a completely barren oblivion for a few days, it was very nice to go back to civilization and see things like buildings, roads, people, vegetation that reached over a meter high. And breathing in oxygen which you don’t have to struggle with.

If you want some logistics, we had two bags –our daypacks (the stuff we would need during each day) and another big bag (containing everything else we needed for the week). We carried our daypacks, while the porters carried our big bags. You would be wrong to think that the hikers, the guides and the porters would all walk in the same group. The porters walked at their own pace, usually arriving way ahead of time. The hikers and guides hiked in a different group. The guides were very nice people, helping us and making us keep going along up the mountain. We had food prepared for us at each hut – it wasn’t bad food, but it’s just that I couldn’t eat much of it due to altitude.

I don’t feel much different about my life – I’m pretty unchanged. It didn’t really change me much in terms of confidence. I wish I could have submitted, but you know. I did what I could do. 

We were quite proud of Oren's effort and his ability to tell it as a ripping yarn! About half of his school group made it up. I was a bit concerned that they had taken a route that reaches the summit in about 3.5 days which gave little time for acclimatization. He is not a huge fan of 'the great outdoors' so it was a big step out of his comfort zone. (sorry, no photos, but he said his hands were too cold to take off his gloves to try to get the camera out of the bag and operate it. Hopefully his teacher/chaperones will send some later.)

I talked to him about the success of shooting beyond your reach. I remember doing that on a trek in the Himalayas in High School. We were hoping to summit a very high peek (Bundar Punch) but were not properly equipped to summit. We stopped at about 18,000 feet. I realized though that I had surpassed many lofty goals of others who would not even attempt such an ascent, even in failing to reach my final point. I would always encourage anyone to fail upwards, rather than downwards.

While Oren was gone, Rebecca and I took a day off from work together and had a very nice afternoon taking a hike to a place just outside of Arusha, heading up Mt. Meru called Themi Falls. It is the source of the Themi River and there is a very nice restaurant at a point just above the falls. It was a bit easier to take care of stuff at home with only one child going off to school each morning. It seemed like a fairly relaxing week for us, although admittedly on the day Oren was summitting I got up at 4am myself and found myself worrying and praying until late afternoon when we got the call he was coming down.

The weekend following Oren's return we had a huge game of ultimate frisbee. We try to do this monthly with moderate success, but this week there was a fairly large group of guys from New Zealand staying on the compound for a short-term mission trip and they all joined in, as well as 3 families who were with us at the Brackenhurst retreat. It was a very exciting and aggressive round-robin with three teams rotating in 15-minute heats for an hour and a half. Amazingly, we did not get rained out! After the game, several families stayed around to play board games. Oren and David traded sleep-overs with our friends the Taylors that night as well.

Despite the rain, we are kept spiritually buoyed by our small group and involvement in the church. I am still leading the Sunday School program which is quite rewarding. Also many of us at MCC are involved in music, both in the choir or leading morning worship. Sharon our Country Director and Jessica led worship last Sunday as you can see.

Bonus Frisbee Photos