Photos From Kilimanjaro

Well, after months of planning and anticipation, the deed has been done! I will write more about the trek later, but for know enjoy some of the pictures from the mountain!

First a few notes: Kilimanjaro used to have three sister volcanoes: Mawenzi, Shira and Kibo. Shira and Mawenzi both erupted years ago and are no longer active, in fact Shira was leveled when it blew and doesn't really exist anymore. Kibo, now the tallest and most famous volcano, is still active. We climbed up to Mawenzi then across the saddle to Kibo, which we summited.

Shots of Kibo, Kilimanjaro
Notice the one from the plane window...we flew from Nairobi to Kilimanjaro in a large prop plane that flew at 19,000 ft...340 ft below the top of Kili! So we got some shots of the peak as we flew past

Shots of Mawenzi

Sisters!
Though we were part of an excellent team of 12, I couldn't ask for a better hiking partner than Sarah!

Hiking
Though the photos portray mostly rocks and desert, our trail took us through plains, moorland, rain forest, and high desert. The summit was mostly scree until we hit rock and ice.

Above the Clouds
I never got used to the wonder of unzipping the tent to a sea of clouds. They rolled and furled, swallowed the plains, lapped the mountainside and at times enveloped us in icy mist.

Gilman's Point: 5,681 Meters ASL

Yes, believe it or not, that really is me in the big ski goggles. Perhaps it's unfortunate that I'm barely recognizeable, but I was grateful for the block against the wind and the blinding sun reflecting off the snow! With me are Rodney, my fellow trekker and Straton, our fearless guide.

Uhuru Peak: 5,895 Meters ASL.

There are those goggles again! You'll notice that Sarah isn't with me, which was a huge disppointment! She made it to 5,000m before the guides made her descend to camp because of serious altitude sickness. I think she puked more than 20 times!

The Snows of Kilimanjaro
Fantastic glaciers, jagged plains of wind-swept snow...though the snowcaps of Kili are rapidly diminshing due to global warming, what still reamains is spectacular!

Views From the Top
Photos will never do justice to the panorama of a mountaintop. The clear sky, lakes of clouds, glistening snow, jagged peaks, glimpses of the plains beneath...Beautiful!

Into Thin Air

19,336 feet (5,895 m)....


The tallest free-standing mountain in the world...


Third-highest peak in the world...


6 days of rugged wilderness and raw elements...


The least-traveled route on the mountain...


The trek of a lifetime...



That's right folks, the countdown has begun! In T-minus 10 days, my awesome sister, Sarah, and I commence our journey up Mount Kilimanjaro - Tanzania, Africa - "that which cannot be conquered" in the local Chagga tongue.

We will traverse the northeastern side of the mountain following the Rongai Route which is described as one of the quietest routes on the mountain and heralds a real sense of "wilderness" yet unspoilt by the high traffic of other routes. We'll take a short diversion to the slightly shorter peak Mawenzi before traversing back up to Mount Kibo and the Uhuru Peak, which is the highest point in Africa.

Sarah and I will fly to Tanzania on July 7, meet the team and attend briefing for the trek on the 8th and start climbing the 9th. Here's the outline of the climb:

Sun 09-Jul-06: After briefing we’ll head to the National Park for registration then drive a long, rough road to the Rongai trailhead. Our day’s trek will take us through farmland and forest to the Moorland camp.
Mon 10-Jul-06: We’ll start the morning early and trek across the rising moorland to Kikelewa Caves, where we’ll camp for the night
Tue 11-Jul-06: From Kikelewa Caves we will take a diversion to Mawenzi Tarn and ascend Mawenzi, camping for the night at the Mawenzi Tarn Flycamp
Wed 12-Jul-06: This day’s trek includes an alpine desert traverse across The Saddle from Mawenzi to Kibo and the School Flycamp
Thu 13-Jul-06: Today’s trek will be the most grueling. At midnight, we'll begin a night time ascent up all the way to Gillmans’ Point, which sits at 18,635 ft. Technically one can say they have mastered the mountain at this point. But, we will continue on and climb up around the crater rim to the Uhuru Peak. After watching the sin rise over the African plains, we will commence a grueling 5-7 hour descent to Horombo Flycamp.
Fri 14-Jul-06: We will finish the gentle but painful descent via the Marangu route and back out to the Kibo Hotel, where we’ll shower and SLEEP!

"Too often ... would men boast only of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen."--Anonymous

May we finish the trek boasting of the magnificent creativity of the great Artist in the land and people around us and not of our own accompliments...

-rjo

A time for everything...

It has been raining today, the kind of rain peculiar to Africa that stops as suddenly as it starts as if a woman were intermittently tossing out her wash-water after loads of laundry. It is cold, too, like a late October day that whispers warnings of winter with its frosty breath. But I sit on my veranda--cocooned in a blanket, laptop perched on my knees, computer cord snaking through the window behind me--and drink in the day. From here I can feel the dampness of the air and smell the wet earth and see the colorful blurs of passersby and hear the shouts from the nearby soccer field that commence and abate to the cadence of the rain. Someone is pounding nails into what I can only guess is his house, the neighbor kids are running around squealing and somewhere a little girl is singing an off-key rendition of Happy Birthday in Portuguese “parabens para você…” I prefer to consider my world from here than from the insulation of the concrete walls and glass windows of my house. I feel more a part of it, though I am still just an observer. It’s like I’m in uniform even though I am still on the bench.

Yesterday was Sunday the 25th of June. Independence Day. The day passed rather innocuously here in Chokwe for the birthday of a nation only seven years older than myself. Today, however, is a national holiday in observation of the event, which gives me some time to reflect and write.

The last several months have been full, and I haven’t spent more than four consecutive days at home since late March. My travels have taken me to Malawi, Maputo, Beira, Xai Xai, Chibuto, Chinhangane, and a host of other places whose names are hardly recognized by anyone other than their residents and neighbors. It is good to be home. But bittersweet as well, because the last three months have also brought with them the decision to return to the U.S. at the end of my two-year contract rather than renewing it. I leave “home” September 1st. I arrive “home” September 2nd.

It’s raining again, as though the clouds have decided to join in the waves of sorrow I feel.

There are many reasons for my decision to leave—the most accurate perhaps is simply that “it is time”—and many options to look forward to for the future. Though I feel an abiding peace in my choice, I still mourn the loss of this land, the friends it holds, and the “what ifs” I’ll leave unanswered.

Though September is still two months away, my time in Chokwe is dwindling—I leave again July 5th to meet my family in Kenya and to climb Kilimanjaro with my sister (yeah!). When I return the last week of July, it will only be to pack up my house and say my final goodbyes before moving back to Maputo for the month of August so I can train in my substitute. I guess it is for this reason that I am particularly anxious to be fully a part of life here, to the point of typing letters from a damp porch! I think, too, that when one’s life in a given place turns to days, the senses are heightened and you notice and hear and smell and feel with a different intensity. I think that’s a gift God allows us, like giving us a concentrated “fragrance” that we can encapsulate in our hearts like a little vial of rich perfume.

With Mary I am learning to pour even these treasures back on the feet of my Lord, and as they mingle with my tears I give him praise for all has done and is yet to do.

The New 'Do

Ok, so this is a totally frivolous, vain post, but a couple of you have asked for pics of the new haircut, so here they are. It's nothing dramatic (though I did toy with the idea of chopping it all off!) Mostly just some layers...

Drama, Hairstylists, and God

I have come to the rather amusing conclusion that I have a tendency toward the dramatic. (A brief pause to allow my family the opportunity to roll their eyes at my “epiphany.”) I mostly blame it on my mom, who has been known to tear around the house with cartoon-print underwear plastered to her head with little tufts of hair poking out of the leg-holes like floppy ears while she charges after squealing youngsters as her alter-ego, “Mad Muscles Mamma,” wrestling any unlucky captive to the ground with fits of laughter in true WWF-worthy fashion. I’d say it’s hereditary. And you just can’t fight the genes. So I’m dramatic.

While my dramatic flare never got me too far on the stage, it helped me live up to the stereotypical “angst” of my teenage years and made high school a never-ending soap opera, with new problems the size of mountains lurking in each daily episode.

Now, several years older, and (hopefully) more mature and self-aware, I still find that drama adds a little spice to my life—like a quick twist of the pepper-grinder. You know, the exaggerated pause in the middle of a story, or the unnecessary (but oh-so-satisfying) scream at the crunch of a cockroach under your feet. So when I walked into the swanky hair salon in Nelspruit this weekend to have my hair cut for the first time in (apparently) far too long, I rather enjoyed Honor, the over-the-top stylist who led me to my swivel chair. She struck me as someone who could be related to the Osbournes, with her burgundy-spiked hair and wild hand gestures. And as I yanked my hair out of its ponytail, she gasped.

“My girl, what have you done to your hair?!”

One hand to the mouth. Head Shake. Tongue click.

“Well, I live in Mozambique, and—“

(another gasp) “The water is horrible there! How ever do you manage?!”

Now I shake my head and click my tongue.

“I know…sometimes we don’t even HAVE water!” I figure a little drama can only be made better by more drama.

Sympathetic sigh. “And do you have to spend time, like, out in the middle of nowhere?”

“Girl, I LIVE out in the middle of nowhere” Now I am playing along like I was written into the script.

Another Gasp. More sighs. A slow head shake. (This is getting good).

She puts her hand on my shoulder, “this must really be a labor of love.”

(Well it’s certainly not for the money!) I sigh a long, theatrical, “yeah…”

We exchange a knowing nod.

“Well,” she says, suddenly brightening up, “Now I get why your hair looks like a dog chewed on it, living out in the sticks and all.”

She’s apparently been placated that I hadn’t intentionally allowed my locks to reach the state they had, and I didn’t intend on telling her that it was more out of pure neglect than any formidable outside force that had rendered my hair so shamefully noxious.

“Now don’t you worry, my girl, on my Honor (she laughed at her own cute play on her name) I’m going to take care of this hair of yours. You’ll see, everything is going to be just fine!”

A half-hour of washing, snipping, primping, drying, styling, gelling and oohing and ahhing later, I walked out with a great new head of hair and a few less dollars in my pocket. And she was right, everything was indeed “just fine.”

But in the days since, Honor has gotten me thinking about drama and hairstylists and God.

Sometimes I think that God sees my life’s dramas—the relationships and decisions and lessons and whatever that I agonize over—in the same humored way that I took Honor and her drama. In the end, we both know that the state of my hair is of such little importance, that dramatizing it is just pure amusement. I think sometimes He plays along, gasping and clicking and sighing, not out of mockery, but out of the pure delight in the fact that my drama is as “fixable” as damaged hair. I think if you were to compare Him with me and my self-righteous, “My life and problems are soooo important” drama, or Honor’s “My God, what have you done to your hair?!” drama, He would be more like Honor. Not because He is petty or condescending or flippant, but because I like to imagine that sometimes when I walk into His “salon” with my life in total disarray, he likes to gasp with a knowing gleam in his eye and say “Becca, my girl, what have you done with yourself?!” And then likes to lay his loving hand on my shoulder and say “Now don’t you worry, my girl, on my Honor, I am going to take care of this mess of yours! You’ll see, everything is going to be just fine.”

And when I yield to his comb and scissors and deft hands, he turns me around to the mirror and I see what a great job he has done and he gleams with pride, not just at his handiwork, but at me. Because, like Honor, He simply enjoys the opportunity to take an absolute mess and make it beautiful—make me beautiful. Yep, God is like the ultimate hairstylist for your weather-wearied soul!