Kilimanjaro and Tanzania

The Kili part of the trip started, as I am sure many journeys to Kilimanjaro start, with a group Pilates class. We had had a few days without exercising, and in light of the fact that we would be carrying our day packs on our backs for the next six days, Hayley suggested we should mobilise our backs with a few simple exercises. She led us in an enjoyable class which must have made an unusual sight to the staff of the hotel in Marangu as we worked out beside the pool. Gary Barlow complained a lot about his back during the Comic Relief trip up Kili - I bet he didn't do his mobilisation exercises before he started his trek!

Packing my large bag with only the stuff I needed for the trek, taking out all the clothes and equipment I had taken for the Kenyan part of the trip, proved tricky. There were a few repacks required and some of the items I had brought for the trek didn't make the final cut. I eventually arrived for breakfast and announced that I had taken the St Mark's vision for the year of going ALL IN for Christ quite literally, as I had finally managed to get everything I needed ALL IN my rucksack. But then the smile was wiped from my face as  I found that my bag was 5kg over the 15kg normally allowed by the porters. Fortunately, a few of the others in the team had bags well under the limit, so I was eventually allowed to leave my bag as it was and not to remove anything. This was fortunate, as I was struggling to think of anything I could leave out. I'm pretty sure it was the inflatable camping mat which took the majority of the space and the weight in the rucksack. My porter, John, seemed to cope with the weight and I did give him a decent tip at the end!

Tabitha had fallen ill the previous evening and was in a bad way as we drove to the mountain. We stopped on the way so that Emma could get her some antibiotics. Being the youngster of the group, Tabitha seemed to recover pretty quickly and was soon back to full performance, which as our premier worship leader was important. She quickly proved why 'Grit" is her middle name.

In Kenya, we had seen a matatu (shared taxi / minibus) with the phrase "Fear Less, Dominate More" painted on its side. This became our motivational maxim during the course of the trek - with a grunted "Hoorah!" added to the end for extra motivational power.

The first day of trekking up the mountain was relatively straightforward. We were trekking up the Rongai Route. The weather wasn't too hot. The countryside was green and pleasant. There were fields of maize as we walked up. Nothing too steep to start with. As we set off, there was a group of young children walking up with us, going back to their homes along the path.They all grabbed the hand of one of us and we began our journey holding the hands of these local children. Later we gave them a piece of chocolate which seemed to satisfy them as they ran off to their houses.

We got our first view of our campsite which our porters had managed to rush ahead and set up - it was an impressive operation. We had our own private toilet with flush, and a large and comfortable-looking mess tent in which the team met to chat and eat.

We had our first acclimatisation walk that late afternoon - this was a short walk, only about 25 minutes further up the mountain on that occasion, during which we briefly experienced a higher altitude before going back down to the campsite to eat and sleep. The maxim to help acclimatise to the high altitude is to 'Walk High, Sleep Low' and so this was the reasoning behind the acclimatisation walk.

We then experienced one of the highlights of the trip for the first time - something we had been told in great detail about before, but we didn't know the full excitement of until we had experienced it personally - that was the phenomenon of 'washy washy'. This involved each of us being given a washing-up bowl of fairly hot water which we were able to use to clean ourselves in whichever way we wanted to. All the ladies in the group hid themselves away in their tents and obviously found their own techniques. The boys all used the same technique, it appeared, but some were more extroverted about it than others. This technique was to strip down to the underpants, lather up and wash the whole body before stepping into the bowl to clean the feet to finish. Paul was the one who was the most outgoing during his washy washy times - his routine was strip off in an exhibitionist way while singing "You can leave your pants on", a song of his own composition which did bear more than a passing resemblance to "You can leave your hat on" from the Full Monty film. This routine was only interrupted if he caught one of the girls trying to film his performance, whereupon he became a bit more shy!

Each evening we met in the mess tent, sang some worship songs, had some prayer and testimony which Emma expertly led, we normally sang grace before we ate a delicious three course meal (with Paul leading the female part), and had a great time of chatting and learning more about each other. It was a really lovely time. It just showed how much fun you can have getting to know each other when there isn't the distraction of mobile phones. We had six days with very little internet access and phone reception - I didn't bother to turn my phone from airplane mode for the whole six days, mostly because I was worried that, even with a camera with two fully topped up batteries and two mobiles with full batteries, plus a solar power pack to recharge my phones and watch, I would run out of juice at the summit and not be able to take a photo to document any achievement of reaching the summit. We also had a time of discussing our 'roses and thorns' for each day - which were our highlights and any negatives of the day.

The night time also provided an opportunity to see something we don't see a lot of in London - stars! The night sky was amazing from the mountain, getting better and better the higher we ascended. There were so many stars, so bright and so clear. I had checked before we arrived in Africa whether we would have a chance to see the International Space Station going past during the days we were on the mountain, and sadly the answer was no. But there was so much going on in the night sky without this that it didn't really matter. I just wished I had a better knowledge of the constellations - there was Orion, and the Plough, and the Southern Cross, at least I thought there was, but other than that, I was struggling!

The food we were given up the mountain was very good. James was the head chef and provided some great meals. We had been warned by the group who went to Kili four years ago that the porridge was inedible, so most of us had brought various toppings - chocolate, jam, golden syrup, honey, protein powder - to make the porridge bearable. But in fact, the porridge was very tasty - we all wondered what the other group were complaining about. Each lunch and evening meal was a three course meal, the first course was always soup, then a hot main course, and then fruit or cake for dessert. We had been told on many occasions that one of the keys to overcoming altitude sickness was to eat lots and drink lots (of water), even when we didn't feel like it. One of the symptoms of altitude sickness is a loss of appetite, so this is when you have to force yourself to eat. I didn't suffer this problem other than on the fifth evening when we were already descending the mountain, but Hayley did suffer for a few days on the way up.

The second day started with another popular institution - 'bed tea'. We were woken up by the porters and offered a choice of tea or coffee in bed, then we had 20 minutes or so drinking it in our sleeping bag before we had to get up. Each day at breakfast, we learnt a 'memory verse' from the Bible, to remember and think about and pray over during the day. The second day was a long day - we were walking for about eight hours. The porters carried the kitchen tent and the mess tent and set it up halfway along the route, and so we had a hot lunch. That was such an amazing sight to see after walking for four hours. The morning walk was relatively steep too, so we were a bit exhausted by that time. The second day was also the day when I lost control of my faculties - firstly I managed to damage my hand on a tree trunk as I jumped off a rock. This required a plaster, and also meant I received a 'I was brave today' sticker from Tabitha. Then later on I stepped on a rock which moved as I trod on it, so I fell over. I tried to put my hands out to break my fall, but the walking poles I was holding got in the way, so I ended up banging my head on a grass verge. I was very close to hitting my head on a rock though, and things could have been very different if I'd fallen a few inches to the right. I slightly grazed the area around my eye, and grazed my finger, which required another plaster. Luckily Jackson, the chief guide, had a well-stocked first aid kit! I was particularly touched at the end of this second day, as the rest of the team mentioned my fall in their 'roses and thorns' for the day - they were genuinely concerned and worried about my welfare and well-being. Fortunately my head was ok, or at least no worse than usual.

Our route on the second day naturally took us to a higher altitude than the campsite so we didn't need an acclimatisation walk on this day. So when we arrived at camp, it was straight to washy washy, to hearing Paul sing in his pants and then go to the mess tent. When we arrived it was still reasonably warm, but as the sun went in, it got properly cold. The temperature overnight was below zero, and in the mess tent in the evening, we did all require hats and gloves.

One of the things we had been told about beforehand was that we were only required to carry a small backpack, a daypack, each day. Our large bag plus all the tents, the toilet, the kitchen equipment, the water purification system etc. would all be carried by the porters and assistant porters. Before we went, this sounded slightly weak, but when we were on the mountain, and already feeling some of the symptoms of the altitude by the second or third days, it was completely understandable. If we'd had to carry our own equipment, none of us would have made the summit. At least we had a good chance of summiting in this way. This is why there was such a large group with us - there were 11 of us, which included Ben, then there were 6 guides, including Charles who was the chief guide dealing with the local guides and Jackson who was the chief chief guide and who ate with us and oversaw the whole project. There was James the chef, and Raphael, who served the food and cleared up. With all the porters and assistant porters, there were 43 (I think), so a whole little village going up the mountain. We left before the porters each morning, they packed up the tent and everything else, put it on their backs or heads and overtook us, then they set up the campsite in the new area before we arrived. It was so easy for them, they did not look out of breath. Despite carrying around 20kg of equipment each, they were not particularly large or muscular, just fit and toned. They all got a good tip from us at the end which was well-deserved. Many of us had had our daypacks carried by one of the guides at one point and they offered us some good advice and were good to chat to during the walks. John, my porter, got a tip despite regularly being seen wearing a Watford FC jacket!

The sad thing that we found out during our chats with the guides was that the numbers of tourists doing this trip had been dropping off over the last couple of years. This is because the Tanzanian government had increased the daily rate and the tax on the daily rate for being in the National Park. The guides said that this increase was said to be for conservation of the mountain, but that in reality the park had not seen a huge amount of this revenue. The costs were putting Western tourists off coming to the mountain, and now the guides said they generally didn't know when their next trip was going to be, so were having to find other ways to earn money during the times when they were at home. We found out that becoming a guide took a lot of training, some exams and a physical challenge - to get from base camp to the summit and back in less than four hours. All the guides - Jackson, Charles, Brown, Warrior David (not to be confused with our very own King David), Raphael and Brown - were so helpful to us and even taught us a new song:
  "Jambo! Jambo bwana!
  Habari gani? Mzuri sana!
  Wageni, mwakaribishwa!
  Kilimanjaro? Hakuna matata!"

Day three started with the usual routine - bed tea, washy washy, breakfast - and then we set out from 3,600m. This was a lot shorter walk than yesterday - only took about four hours until we reached our campsite by a tarn at the foot of Mawenzi peak. This was one of the steeper climbs so far. We had risen to 4,330m and I, along with one of two others, was starting to feel the altitude as I had a headache coming on as I arrived at the camp. Of the eleven of us, nine had decided to take Diamox to mitigate the effects of the altitude sickness and Ben was a regular at the summit of the mountain, so didn't require any. Cardine was the one who wasn't taking the medication at that stage, and she was really struggling with the effects during this day. She started taking the Diamox from this point onwards and soon recovered.

The acclimatisation walk this day was up to a narrow ridge further up towards Mawenzi peak, overlooking the tarn and our campsite. This was an amazing walk - there were fantastic views, but importantly it did the job it was supposed to do as I felt so much better as I came back to the campsite that afternoon.

We had been warned about the day four walk before we began our trip - that it was a long walk over the 'saddle', a flat ridge in a lunar landscape, that we walked over this saddle for four hours, with the green roofs that topped the Kibo Huts which signified the Kilimanjaro Base Camp, in front of us and in sight for the whole time, that these roofs never seemed to get any closer, that the landscape was flat and featureless, and this was all true. But the walk was never as long and as tedious as we'd been led to believe. The grey and black dust with occasional rocks was still a striking sight. as we walked 'pole pole', ('slowly slowly') as we had done every other day. This was another way to mitigate the altitude sickness and help the acclimatisation process - to take everything slowly. The roofs of the huts did eventually get closer and this marked the end of our day four walk.

This also marked the beginning of a strange set of sleeping patterns - we all knew that later that evening, starting at midnight, we would be commencing our attempt to reach the summit. We had lunch when we arrived at base camp, then went to bed for a few hours. Then we had an early dinner at around 5.30pm, then back to the tents to sleep again. Then up at 11pm for breakfast before the summit night.

I had been variously excited and terrified in the days and weeks before the trek, and now the evening of the ascent was nearly upon us. We had been told that another of the symptoms of altitude sickness was being unable to sleep, but I wasn't suffering from this at all. I managed to get a good few hours' sleep that afternoon and another few hours between dinner and breakfast, despite my worries about the climb to come. The following day, I did become rather ill in the evening, but we all went to sleep at 7pm, and I slept pretty solidly for 12 hours - like a big fat baby!

I don't think I was the only one who was feeling the anxiety as we lined up at midnight facing the peak. We had taken to telling Becky in the few days beforehand that she was going to be snatched away by crow-like vultures or 'crultures' which stalked the campsites, in an attempt to take her mind off her concerns, but now we were all worried and silent. We turned on our head torches. We put on the final of the many layers of hats, gloves, down jackets, buffs, scarves, and contemplated the mountain ahead. Many people turned their i-pods on and put in their earphones. We numbered ourselves in order - I was number nine - then it was time, and we started trudging towards the slope.

We zig-zagged up the mountainside. The terrain was mostly scree, which occasionally did slip back as you trod on it. The reason for commencing the attempt at night is that the scree freezes over and becomes easier to walk on. Even so, it was still hard-going. The gradient was steeper than anything we had encountered to date on our trek, and I was having to concentrate on breathing in and out deeply to get enough oxygen. We hadn't been trudging for too long when we found ourselves behind another group of trekkers. Even though we were walking pole pole, the other group were going far too pole pole for our guides' liking, so we zoomed past them as though they barely there. This was the point when I felt a lot more confident about our attempt on the summit, we were all feeling bad and yet we had easily overtaken this other group. It was a wonderful feeling!

We had been told that the time taken to get from base camp to Gilman's Point, the first point on the crater rim at 5,685m, would take around six hours, so we were prepared for a long and slow trek in the darkness. The guides broke up the walk into sections of about 40 minutes, whereupon we stopped for a quick break before continuing the trek. On our breaks, most of us were tired and breathless, but otherwise in generally good spirits, as we passed around the mints and sweets to each other to keep us going. Before we reached Gilman's Point, there was a trickier section called Jamaican Rocks - so called because 'Jamaican me crazy' (copyright King David). We put our walking poles away at this point, and concentrate on using our hands to help us navigate this difficult part. Extra exertion was required here, and I was certainly breathing heavily and the heart rate was fairly high at this time. It wasn't that long a section though, and very soon we had passed this.

A little farther on, the sign signifying Gilman's Point appeared in view and we were there - at the top of the volcanic crater. It was only 4:40am when we got here, so we were making surprisingly good time. Many people use this point as the point they turn back - when the altitude sickness kicks in and they feel they can't go any further. Ben was warned us that if one person chooses to turn back here, then often other people follow, rather than deciding to take on the two and a half hour round trip around the crater rim to Uhuru, the summit. We stopped here for a sit down and the guides produced hot tea for us all - even though it had sugar in, it was well-needed and much appreciated. Nobody seemed to be considering turning back - we had an unspoken agreement that we would all continue. Hayley had been suffering loss of appetite for a few days, but she seemed fine. The guides surreptitiously checked us all out and everyone was good to go. We got back into our walking order and strode out towards the summit.

At that point, the weather became a bit nastier. Snow and sleet started blowing horizontally into our faces. We pulled up our hoods and our buffs and trudged on. We could see snow beneath us and the glacier to the side as we walked round a fenced detour. The section from Gilman's Point to Uhuru is relatively flat, as we only gained a couple of hundred metres of altitude traversing the rim. We passed Stella Point and then the sun began rising. Suddenly we were warming up, which as the temperatures were down at around -10 degrees C was good news! Also though, we started getting fantastic views of the glacier, the volcanic crater and the countryside around as they were bathed in sunlight.

We climbed over a few more ridges admiring the sunrise and then there it was - the summit at Uhuru peak! I slumped down on a rock beneath the sign. Tim went around hugging everyone. Hayley sat with her head in her hands, feeling pretty bad at this point. But SHE HAD MADE IT! WE HAD ALL MADE IT! A few tears were shed. Lisa didn't have her earrings on, but still looked effortlessly glamorous. King David got his SLR battery from one pocket and took some wonderful snaps of the view. From another pocket he produced a hip flask of whisky and had a wee dram. Tabitha's ukulele had been carried up by Charles, and he now handed it to her. None of us were able to sing though - the ukulele merely formed an interesting prop to our summit photo! Even a few weeks later, I don't think the full enormity of what we had achieved has sunk in. I did have a tear in my eye a week or so later, when I saw Becky's video diary, as she sobbed to the camera, "I flippin' made it to the top." The guides later told us that no group had ever all made it to the summit together - so we were unique in that regard. We had pushed each on and all motivated each other to this great achievement together. Together we had 'feared less' and 'dominated more'. Hoorah!

We were at the summit for around ten minutes, the cold and the high altitude meant that we didn't want to stay up there for long. Paul was struggling a bit, and he rushed down as quickly as possible with Tim in tow. We were able to see Stella Point and Gilman's Point in the daylight as we walked back around the rim. We climbed over Jamaican Rocks and then we were back on the scree which had now thawed out. We 'scree skied' down the mountain - I had been worried about this as my views on normal skiing are well documented, but in fact it was ok. You just had to allow your feet to slide down a bit as you stepped down. I soon worked out a method and was feeling the warmth of the morning sun combined with this bit of exercise. As we neared the bottom, we saw people walking towards us from base camp. And then we realised, it was our porters! They had come to relieve us of our daypacks! What an amazing gesture!

Although we had gone up to the summit in a group, we came down in dribs and drabs. I waited at base camp to applaud the last finishers back to camp, and then we went back to our tents for a nap. At this time it was 9.30am on a Saturday morning. We had climbed to the summit and back to base camp before most people are out of bed on a Saturday. It was just surreal. On the way down, both Tabitha and Emma had started to feel the effects of the altitude sickness and both now vomited as they arrived at camp - but on the plus side, both earned themselves a sticker of a unicorn vomiting a rainbow!

Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of the walking for the day. After lunch, we still had to trek another three or four hours down to the next camp. Tabitha showed that her middle name is Grit, by storming off as quickly as possible. Emma took things a bit more slowly, veering off into the bushes regularly but only being able to dry retch. The campsite was back down at 3,720m and the effects of the altitude sickness were passing for most people. I did feel a bit unwell that evening, shivering in the mess tent and not being able to eat, but it was probably just exhaustion, and the 12 hour sleep made me feel as right as rain the following morning.

It wasn't only strange sleeping patterns and loss of appetite though that were a struggle on our bodies - most of us suffered some kind of 'digestive problem' during the trek. My stomach was still a bit funny for about a week after returning. I don't know if it was the food - which was very tasty, but maybe different to what I normally eat in a week back home - or perhaps the cocktail of tablets I was taking - malarone as my anti-malarial tablet, diamox for the altitude, paracetamol for the headaches. Some of the others were taking various different drugs in addition, like the antibiotics that Emma had picked up from the pharmacy. Most likely though, it was the general dirt and dust from being outside that was causing the diarrhoea. We all had a pack of wet wipes to clean ourselves as best as possible, also in most cases we were using plenty of alcohol gel to disinfect our hands, but these in addition to the 'washy washy' weren't enough. I had to rush off into the bushes for an al fresco poo at one point. Lisa very proudly announced that she was the first to do this on the second day, high fives all round! She also claimed a second award for the highest poo on the crater rim and still looked glamorous immediately after! The cold temperatures at night meant that many of us didn't fancy a night time rush to the toilet, so we experimented with a 'pee pot' in the porch of our tents. I think the second and fifth nights were the coldest, and these were the nights I tried out the pee pot, but it wasn't as easy in the middle of the night as I had anticipated and I often ended up going out in the cold anyway.  

The final morning arrived and it was time to say goodbye to the porters, as they would carry our bags down to the gate and leave them there. There was a fun ceremony before we parted ways - all the porters, assistant porters, guides, chef, kitchen staff got together and sang and danced in front of us. They did sing the 'Jambo, Jambo Bwana' song. We then presented them all with tips for their hard work and support over the six days.

The final descent was actually our longest walk - it was about 13 miles. However it was a reasonably gentle gradient on fairly easy terrain. The rule about pole pole didn't apply to the descent, so Ben ran the 13 miles back to the gate. Cardine's feet were in pretty bad shape by this point, so she opted to take a car down to the gate. The walk was mostly in rainforest and was fairly pretty. We saw some colobus monkeys in the trees as we walked down, then some blue monkeys, including some little baby monkeys! We stopped for a final lunch where we met a lovely group of local deaf and mute guys who wanted to have photos with us, and then we sang and danced to Tabitha's 'Positive Mental Attitude' composition for the last time. Cardine met us at the gate with Kilimanjaro beers and cold cokes - which was very much appreciated by all. As we reached the gate, there was a sense of relief that we had made it down safely, but there was also a sense of sadness that the exciting trip had come to an end.

There were some highlights in the last couple of days of the trip - the chief one being that hot shower when we got to the hotel in Arusha after six days on the mountain, but also the awards ceremony and dinner that evening, sitting by the pool in the sunshine the next morning, the trip to the Maasai market to get artistic souvenirs, the rush to get our minibus into the Kenyan immigration control queue before the 52 seater bus full of vicars and nuns - but really the highlight was the mountain. We had been reasonably lucky with the weather, we had seen some great sights, we had made it to the top as a team, we had got to know each other so well during those few days, we had felt the presence of God keenly over the six days. To coin a phrase, "We flippin' made it to the top!" We had motivated each other with the mantra "Fear Less. Dominate More. Hoorah!"

I had been told that being at such altitude would improve my cardio fitness and so on my return home I went for a run anticipating that I would be sprinting round the 5km course like Mo Farah. Sadly, I was slower than before I had gone away. So that means I'll have to go up Kili again soon - to see if it helps next time!

Kenya

The taxi driver jammed in the final piece of our sizeable baggage around Tabitha's head and slammed the door of the boot shut, and that was it - we were on our way! The excitement was palpable as we sped towards Heathrow on our adventure.

We met up with the other half of Team Kili as well as the Mission Team, who were going to visit the Compassion project in Mariakani for a few days longer than the Mountain Team, at the airport and then we were off to Nairobi. We didn't spend a lot of time in Nairobi so I can't really give much of an opinion of the sights of the city. Among the highlights of the brief trip to the city were having to share a bed with King David. That was before his coronation though, so he was merely David at that point. He was a good roommate and tentmate over the course of the trip, both before being crowned and after. He didn't let becoming monarch go to his head.

Just outside the airport was a scanner which x-rayed the whole bus. We all (other than the driver) trooped off the bus, walked through a metal detector, then the driver drove the bus through the scanner, and we all got back on the other side. Genius security measure there. We drove from the airport to our hotel in the evening and then in the morning back in the other direction. The morning view from the hotel was of the sun rising over the highway, with other hotels, industrial and retail parks in the distance and the plains stretching out beneath us.

It was on the next flight from Nairobi to Mombasa that many of us got our first sight of Kilimanjaro. I however was sitting on the wrong side of the plain, next to someone who wasn't in our party and who didn't look keen to be disturbed, so I sat there looking out to the left at my inferior view, as the rest of the party excitedly took photos of the mountain top poking out above the clouds. I figured I would have enough opportunity to see the mountain at a later stage from a much closer viewpoint, and so I didn't mind too much.

On our drive from the airport to the hotel in Mombasa we saw the standing water which showed how much flooding the area had had in the weeks before our arrival. Some of the children we would be meeting in the following few days had been rehoused as their homes were flooded. This was a sad sight.

Our moods did improve when we got to the hotel and saw the beautiful view across the large swimming pools to the beach, with various thatched buildings in sight. Food was ready when we arrived too, and this was great. We had a buffet-style meal every meal at the hotel, which did mean multiple trips to the counter to try all the possible options. The barbecue grill we had one evening was the best of the many good meals!

Once we'd unpacked, we went out to check out the pool. Our first afternoon was 'free time', so we were able to play a bit of volleyball in the pool, have a beer at the bar in the pool, and go swimming in the sea. This last part turned out to be a bit of an error, as Toby swallowed a lot of sea water and fell ill. He was bed-bound for the next couple of days. On the plus side though, he was the first to receive a sticker that Tabitha had made celebrating anyone who vomited during our trip. They were mainly to celebrate altitude sickness on the mountain part, but he managed to be sick even though he wasn't on the Mountain Team!

On the Saturday we went to visit Mariakani baptist church on their normal day of teaching, and on Sunday we attended their normal church service - normal other than they had set up the seating outside because the 20-odd extra people attending from the UK plus some extra local visitors who wanted to see us meant that there wouldn't be room in the normal church building. We arrived to a sea of excited children's faces. They were so happy and overjoyed to see us, which was very touching. One or two children did have smart phones and took photos as our minibuses turned into the field where the project was located, but the majority just stared at us with smiling and joyful faces. We were greeted by singing and dancing from the worship team. One of the early songs had lyrics which sounded like, "God, you are excellent, you are wonderful, you are more than White People say" but eventually we managed to interpret as being "God, you are excellent, you are wonderful, you are more than what people say" Although the first lyric was probably theologically correct, it didn't feel like the kind of thing that the locals would sing to welcome their mostly white visitors!

Our vicar Paul planted a tree and cut the ribbon to formally open a new office building which our child sponsorship had helped to fund, then we had a bit of time helping out with teaching the children in their normal classes. I learnt a bit about the parts of a plant before sitting in on an accounting class in which I picked up a few tips about income and expenses.

The next part of the day was arguably the highlight of my time among the children of Mariakani - we got the chance to visit the homes of some of the sponsored children. As my newly sponsored child was from Mata, about five hours away from Mariakani, and I would be meeting him the following day in our hotel at Mombasa, I went with Lauren and Naomi to visit their sponsored children's homes. It turned out subsequently that the children's homes were actually really close to the project, if you walked through the fields and took the most direct route by foot, but in the minibus it seemed a long way along bumpy, narrow, wet and muddy paths. There were a few times when the bus disappeared into potholes so deep that it felt that the vehicle was going to overturn, but somehow the driver managed to keep us upright. The only error he made during our drive was driving over a water main to avoid a goat in the road and damaging it, such that water started spraying up into the air. Fortunately, he had some gaffer tape in the bus, so when he came back, he had patched it up sufficiently.

The first house we went to was Faith's house. This was the more basic of the two homes we went to - it was a real mud hut, with one main room. The cooking was done outside the house. The mud was crudely daubed over a wooden frame, such that there were gaps in the walls. One of the walls had recently fallen in, so there was some corrugated iron propped up against the wall to keep the elements out. This was my first real view of the poverty of this area, but again everyone seemed to be content and happy. The local children were so excited to see us. Faith had a few siblings, but there were many other local children cramming into the doorway of the house to see us. Both Faith and Amina whom we met next were very shy to start with, and didn't say much during our time in their houses, but later on in the day and in the following day at church they became much more open.

Amina was Naomi's sponsored child, and her house was still made of mud, but it was a lot more solidly made. It was a bit bigger and had separate rooms with walls separating them. Amina was clearly one of the more popular children in her year, as when we arrived back at the project, the other children started chanting her name. So despite her initial shyness with us, as soon as she arrived she fell back into the middle of a sociable group of her peers.

Just before we had left the UK, we had prepared a little gift pack for each child, containing a plastic cup, some stickers, some fluorescent plastic stars, a lollipop, a short tract about Jesus, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and these were distributed during a ceremony that afternoon.

In the evening we had a meal with four people in their early to mid-twenties, who had grown up in the Compassion child sponsorship programme and had then moved on to the next level - the Youth Development Scheme (YDS). To get onto the scheme, you had to be a top-performing student and show that you had leadership potential. These children were sponsored to get through university, usually by a different person from the one who had sponsored them through high school. It was such a pleasure to meet these four graduates of the YDS. They were all well-spoken, confident, intelligent individuals. George on my table spoke particularly earnestly about his life growing up and about his plans for the future. It was amazing to see the fruits of the child sponsorship and the YDS programme.

Church the following day started with some Bible teaching, which we were able to get involved in, also with a bit of football, blowing bubbles and throwing a frisbee around. Then the main service started. There was lots of singing and dancing, and even many of the mainly British repressed white people got up in front of the congregation showing our dance moves. We also had to show our acting skills as Vicar Paul did an interactive sermon about the parable of the sower. My portrayal of a vulture will no doubt go down in the annals of great acting performances.

Then it was the exciting time, although the time I had been nervous about beforehand, the opportunity to meet my sponsored child. Four children plus their mothers had been driven over to our hotel from Mata, and they were waiting in the reception for us. Two of the children were from the Maasai tribe and their mothers were elaborately dressed in orange gowns with blue robes and lots of necklaces and bracelets. And it turned out that my child was one of the Maasai boys - bonus! Leiyan is his name, but he was very shy and overwhelmed by the whole experience. I tried chatting to him for a bit, but he wasn't very responsive. I did find out from his mum that the four year-old boy whose birthday was coming up a week after our visit, was actually seven and they didn't know what time of year his birthday was. I'm not sure that he was seven though, he did seem a bit younger than that. None of this really matters though - nor does the story I found out later than Leiyan's father had at least two wives. Hopefully Leiyan will be a bit more open in our future correspondence than he was during our meeting - I am looking forward to hearing about his life as he grows up and goes through his school years. His mother seemed lovely and happy to chat to me through our interpreter. She gave a gift of a necklace to Claire from Compassion, which Claire later passed to me as my gift for sponsoring Leiyan, so I now have a proper handmade Maasai necklace!

After we had chatted for a bit in the reception area, we moved out to the swimming pool and the beach area, as we thought that the kids would enjoy going for a swim. It turned out though that none of the children had ever been in a pool before, and the children and the mothers were naturally quite concerned about the situation. I did spend a long time holding Leiyan's hand as he sat by the side of the pool dipping his toes into the water. Eventually I did persuade him to get in fully, without wetting his head, and he did walk a circuit of the kids' pool before getting out and drying off. The major thing I will take away from the afternoon though is when the two Maasai mothers - Leiyan's mother and the other lady - were standing at the fence at the perimeter of the hotel, looking across the beach and out to sea. It turned out that not only had the children never seen the sea before but also that the mothers had never seen the sea before, and they were enthralled but also terrified by it. They asked questions like, "How far does the sea go?" and "What's at the other end?". I suppose if you live in a community which is in the centre of Kenya, why would you travel five hours to see beaches and seas which have no relevance to your daily life? They had only done so on this occasion because Compassion had brought them all this way to see us. There was a brief issue as King David was dragged away from his sponsored child at the swimming pool by three large and drunk South Africans and forced to drink beer at the bar, but Tim saved the day and rescued him by talking South African at them for long enough that King David could sneak away.

Having got this nerve-wracking meeting out of the way, my thoughts and those of the rest of the mountain team turned towards our forthcoming trek up Kili. The two days of meeting children at Mariakani and at the hotel had taken our attention away from this for a bit, which was a relief, but now our minds were fully on the walk. Ben, who was in charge of the trek, now took centre stage, and that evening happily answered questions about his previous trips and about what had gone wrong. He told us a long and terrifying tale about a lady who was underprepared for the Inca Trail and had fallen into a coma. Becky ran away prior to this story with her fingers in her ears as she didn't want to hear anything in advance which would add to her already high fear of the forthcoming trip.

We said our sad farewells to the members of the Mission Team who were staying in Mombasa for a few days longer and started our eight hour drive to Marangu in Tanzania. We were kept occupied on the journey by singing along to Tabitha's ukulele playing and by the sightings we were getting from the vehicle of zebras, giraffes, ostriches, camels, cows and springboks. The most impressive sight though was of about 100 elephants, all standing in a big group waiting for us to drive past. Jackson, our local chief guide for the mountain, said he'd never seen such a large number of elephants all in a group before, so we were particularly fortunate!

After a reasonably swift and competent transit through immigration, we were all safely allowed into Tanzania and ready for the next exciting episode of the holiday. My time in Kenya had exceeded all my expectations, it had been fantastic to meet the children at Mariakani, the graduates from the YDS, and my own sponsored child at the hotel, and I hope that our visit has really been a blessing to all the children and helped to enhance the link between St Mark's and the projects.

Preparations for Africa

I am writing this blog two weeks after returning from my holiday, which was one of my favourite trips away....ever...!

The trip to Kenya and Tanzania was hard work, very exhausting, but ultimately great fun. This has led to an excessive version of the very large problem which often occurs following a great holiday, namely that going back to 'normal life', particularly going back to work, is such a disappointment. Motivation on returning to the office was at an all-time low. Well maybe not an all-time low, I am just thinking of some other times, but certainly pretty low!

My journey as one member of a top team from St Mark's Battersea Rise, was for the purpose of trekking up Kilimanjaro for charity. I'd love to pretend that it was for altruistic purposes that I signed up for the trek, that raising money for charity was the main reason for my travel, but sadly this isn't the case. It was for the challenge of climbing Kilimanjaro that I put my name down - I wanted to complete a special challenge and therefore to have a great story to tell my friends and family. I wanted to be able to tell that same story for years to come. However, the prospect of visiting the baptist church at Mariakani, where so many of the children in the community are sponsored by members of my church in London, was an intriguing element of the overall trip. I certainly wanted to meet some of the children, see the area in which they lived and discover how their lives were in that part of Africa. But the prospect of going to the summit of the world's highest freestanding mountain was the main reason.

So in the few months prior to departure, the majority of my time was spent thinking about the trek. The team, briefly known as 'Team Kili', met for a few meetings beforehand to discuss the trip, to learn about the trek, to find out what equipment we needed to take and, importantly, to bond as a group. There were three training walks during which we attempted to recreate the high-altitude and weather conditions that we could expect on Kilimanjaro by climbing up the mountainous Box Hill in Surrey, the steep and treacherous Guildford downs, and the extremely high Surrey Downs. Unfortunately the UK terrain and climate doesn't lend itself easily to recreate the conditions we were going to experience, but we did have a good time on the walks. The group definitely bonded during these training walks.

The conversations I had with friends and colleagues in the months leading up to the trip all took a similar course, in the following format:
Other Person: "So, you're off to Kilimanjaro soon?"
Me: "That's correct. Make sure you sponsor me on https://challenges.compassionuk.org/profile/311/gary-window . It's for a good cause - to help prevention and control of HIV and AIDS in the areas of Tanzania around the mountain."
OP: "Erm, ok, will certainly check that out. Are you looking forward to it?"
Me: "I am very excited to be going, but also a bit worried, particularly about the altitude sickness."
OP: "Yes, that's understandable. How's the training going?"
Me: "There's not really a lot I can do - England doesn't have any high mountains, ha ha. We've done some training walks among the hills of Surrey."
OP: "Ha, no I suppose not. But you are very fit, what with all those marathons and all the working out you do. You'll be fine with the altitude."
Me: "I've heard that fitness doesn't directly relate to how people cope with altitude sickness. It can affect different people in different ways."
OP: "Oh, I'm sure you'll be fine. Good luck."
<Conversation ends>

The altitude sickness became my major concern in the run up to the trip. I was quite keen not to have to use medication to get to the top, but as the trip got closer, my concerns about the side effects of the medication, and about the achievement of reaching the summit somehow feeling less impressive if I was on tablets, became less important. The rest of the team, along with some of the team who reached the summit four years ago, persuaded me that Diamox was the way to go. So I got a doctor I know fairly well to get me a private prescription. I tested them out a week before departure - I felt the tingling fingers that are one of the side effects, but didn't notice the other main side effect, of needing to pee excessively, being much of a problem.

There was another way I tried to train for the altitude - Becky, one of the team, had been a few times to a place in the city called the Altitude Centre, where you put on a mask to simulate hypoxic (low oxygen) air, so I thought I would give that a go. I signed up and only took a few of the sessions that she was hoping to sign up for! During my first session, I was sitting in the exercise chamber at 3,000m, with the mask on, taking me up to 4,000m, when a lady came into the room for her induction session. She was chatting to the instructor, but then started wobbling from side to side and then collapsed to the floor. I jumped out of my seat and helped the instructor carry the lady out of the chamber. The session up to that point had been going well and my confidence about the altitude had been increasing, so this event certainly knocked that new-found confidence. Fortunately, the lady was ok, and did turn up for an exercise session a few days later. It turned out that she had been feeling unwell in the few days prior to her induction, and hadn't eaten breakfast that day, so the collapse wasn't directly related to the altitude chamber. This event did reinforce the advice we'd been given previously - that to mitigate the effects of altitude sickness, it was important to drink lots (of water) and to eat lots, even if you didn't feel like it.

Other concerns included the freezing temperatures and living in a tent for five nights, so I bought, borrowed and hired various items of equipment, hygiene items and clothing to assist in this. There was a slight panic a few weeks before the trip when my old hiking boots fell apart, as a result of the treacherous conditions around Guildford, which necessitated a visit to the store to get some new ones. I then had to break them in, which meant a walk around the rocky outcrops of Richmond Park and a stroll to work one morning whilst wearing them.

One other last-minute panic was that I had to buy gifts for the young boy I had just started sponsoring in Mata, a five hour drive away from the project we would be visiting in Mariakani. I only heard a couple of weeks before we went away that he would actually be driven to meet us, along with a small number of other children from Mata plus their mothers. The task of buying gifts took a long time to get round to, but I finally achieved this a day or so before we left.

Work was quite busy in the run up to the trip, so I didn't have as much preparation time as I would have liked, but at midnight on the night before we flew out, I finally managed to cram everything (well, most things - I did have to carry an extra Sainsbury's carrier bag with me) I thought I needed, and then I grabbed a few hours' sleep before the early morning taxi arrived.

The last four years

I have failed in my task to keep this website updated for the last four years, and if I recall correctly, the majority of the posts in the few years prior to that were at irregular intervals too. I don't think the irregular / non-existent nature of my posts will change that much in the future either - life has got too busy to post regularly!

However, I really want to post about my fantastic trip to Kenya and Tanzania, so now I need to update you all on the last four and a bit years, so I can write about the big trek.

Aside from a bit of work, I have done some good things!

Been on a few holidays:

 Done a bit of running:

Been to some weddings:

Spent some time with Vanessa.

Watched some sport. Generally had a decent enough last four years.