“Jambo! Karibu! Habari Gani? – Hello! Welcome! What’s the News?”

by Debra P. McGill

We gathered in the dining tent at 10:30. Inside, light from the lanterns illuminated our tired but excited faces. Outside the glow of the lanterns through the canvas competed with the stars that shimmered in the otherwise impenetrable darkness of the night.

We were served hot tea and Dickson, our guide, ever smiling and confident, gave words of encouragement and instruction before we began the final climb to the summit . . . in the dark. The hope being that we’d make it to the summit to watch the sun rise above the clouds spread out like an ocean below us.

That was the hope, but in my heart of hearts I knew that the reason we were making the final climb to the summit in pitch darkness, was that if we could actually see what we were doing, we wouldn’t do it!

“We were thinking of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro for our honeymoon,” my daughter Violet had told me some time ago. Perrin, her beloved and my soon to be son-in-love, was standing next to her, both of them wearing huge, toothy grins, “and we were wondering if you would like to come with us?”

They had spent two wonderful weeks with me when I had been living in Botswana and though I had been back in Canada for two years, I hadn’t been able to shake the dust of Africa from my sandals. And so an opportunity to return to Africa! “Yes! Absolutely yes!” I said.

We spent the rest of the weekend talking excitedly about climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, but on Sunday morning as they were preparing to leave, I said to them, “This is your honeymoon . . . you don’t want your mother sleeping in the same tent as you!”

“That’s okay, we were thinking it would be more like a holiday.”

“No, really. That’s very thoughtful of you. But it’s your honeymoon and you’ll never have another honeymoon. I want you to talk about it on your way back home. I am so grateful for the offer, but you think about it.”

The drive from Barrie, where I was living, back to Guelph University where they were both students, was two hours and almost to the minute, my phone rang and a very tearful Violet cried into the receiver, “your right, it’s our honeymoon, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s okay.” I said, trying to comfort her.

Violet and Perrin booked the climb through G-Adventures, but not enough people signed up for the trip and so the Mt. Kilimanjaro climb was cancelled. They honeymooned – without me – in Machu Picchu – which turned out to be one of those “it didn’t go quite as planned” honeymoons, but that is their story to tell.

But when they returned and recovered from their Machu Picchu adventure, they called and asked if I would like to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with them next year. The honeymoon was over and so “yes, absolutely, I would LOVE to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with you!”

On August 23^rd, 2011, backpacks strapped over short sleeved shirts, gaters zipped over our lower pantleg and hiking boots firmly laced, Violet, Perrin and I stood with twelve other adventurers, three guides, three cooks and twenty-seven porters who carried our gear, tables, chairs, dining tent, food, pots, plates, utensils, washbasins, toilet tent, and water . . . on their shoulders, heads and backs . . . and one after the other, we walked through Machame Gate into the hot, moist Enchanted Rainforest that is Kilimanjaro National Park. Hakuna matata. Karibu! (No worries. Be My Guest!)

“Porters to the left! Porters to the right!” I lost count of the number of times I confused my left and my right as I turned my body to let a porter pass by me, checking to see if my fire engine red duffle bag was one of the bags stacked on his back.

After much walking and talking and getting to know each other, and the passing by of the porters, the mud floor morphed into packed dusty earth and the lush canopy and ground cover transitioned into thick, dry brush as we climbed up and out of the rainforest.

Every once in a while, through the branches, I would catch a glimpse of a distant rounded mass of grey rock with tendrils of glacial snow imbedded in its crevices. The snows of Kilimanjaro.

In the months before leaving for Moshi, Tanzania, I trained as much as is possible when there aren’t any mountains to climb. I took aerobic classes at the Y, I ran and rode my bike up overpasses, which is as much altitude as there is in Barrie.

Years after reading it the first time, I reread Ernest Hemmingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”. When I told people that Violet, Perrin and I would be climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, people inevitably asked me if I had read Hemmingway’s story. I had. And knowing the plot, that the “hero” was merely hallucinating, I wondered silently, “Had you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I did read it.”

And now I’m peering through branches, catching glimpses of the glaciers

that during Hemmingway’s day, covered the entirety of the summit and which now today, have almost entirely disappeared. But she was still beautiful and majestic, the sun turning her into burnished gold as it reflected off the rock as we made our way into camp.

Six hours, eighteen kilometers of walking with an upward climb of 2,980 meters, we shuffled into Machame Camp to find our tents set up between groupings of trees with our bedrolls rolled out and our duffel bags set inside, the toilet tent and dining tent were erected.

Our chef greeted us as we entered the tent, a white towel draped over his arm, an entertaining smile on his face and bowls of Chakula cha jioni (hot cucumber soup) and plates of roasted potatoes on the table ready for us to devour. And devour we did. Fifteen ravenous and grateful climbers, tastebuds savouring every bite, mouths full of food and compliments. “Ladha sana!” Delicious. “Asante sana!” Thank you, chef.

Violet and Perrin shared a pup tent . . . just the two of them. And because I didn’t have a partner, I was assigned a tent mate, Beth Hallowell, a young woman from Britain. We were well paired and being that we were sharing a very small space, I was grateful for that.

The sun set gold and night came quickly and very, very dark. And stars! I never thought I would see stars again as magnificent as when I was living in Botswana. And now . . . the night sky was filled with uncountable shimmering glints of star light.

I fluffed my sleeping bag and then with socks on to warm my feet and a hoodie over my long johns, I wormed my way into my sleeping bag, pulling the zipper up close under my chin, and wiggling my hip, found a sweet spot on the rocky ground beneath me. Usiku mwema. (Goodnight).

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Note: All photos by Debra, except for the tents under the stars, which was taken by Chinese Canadian climbing companion Xi Zhu.

Debra P. McGill retired for a whole four months after twenty-five years as a United Church of Canada minister. Now, for the nine months, she’s been serving and learning at the St. Clair United Church with the Aamjiwnaang First Nation community in Sarnia, Ontario.

Growing up in a Canadian Air Force family, Debra has been blessed to experience many adventurous opportunities, including this story, a short chapter of a much longer story. Debra has two daughters, two sons-in-loves and three grandsons. She dabbles in photography and very much enjoys putting pen to paper in the hopes of sharing stories that others might find affirming as they stir up memories for reader.

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