Kili Tweets!!!

Well, we made it to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro!! It took us 7 days to get up and down, and was an experience we’ll never forget. It’s tough to describe how we felt when we finally reached Uhuru Peak at nearly 6000m above sea level (mostly we felt cold). We’ll go into much greater detail in a separate post next week (we also still need to describe the awesome week we had in Kampala, Uganda the week before our climb), but we’re heading out on a Tanzanian safari tomorrow and we’re too tired from the climb to type any more!

While we were hiking we came up with 1 or 2 “tweets” every day. Basically, it’s what we were doing/thinking at random snapshots of our trek in 140 characters or less. We wrote these down in a little notebook we brought along and then typed them up below. Hopefully, you’ll find these at least slightly entertaining 🙂 If something doesn’t make complete sense here either a) we were suffering from moderate/severe altitude sickness, b) we’ll explain it in more detail in our next post, or c) I tried to be cleverer than I actually am. Either way, on to the lamest form of social media since Friendster…

Day 1:

Erin (Dinner time): Dinner day 1 and I already can see my breath and can’t feel my toes. It’s only downhill from here. Actually it’s only uphill (get it?).

Brian (Dinner time): Day 1, feeling good. King Kong ain’t got shit on me!

Day 2:

Brian (Morning): E’s idea of a good day isn’t making it to the next camp or avoiding altitude sickness, but if there’s popcorn at evening tea.

Brian (Evening Tea): Altitude is starting to take effect on E. Spent 15 min walking back down mount. looking for glove that was in her pocket!

Erin (Tea): Todays highlights: woken up w/ cup of coffee in tent, exotic scenery, popcorn at tea. Lowlight: losing my glove… in my pocket!

Erin (Dinner): More highlights: pico served in avocado bowl, watching sunset over mountains from tent, perfect view of moon over peak, ginger soup.

Day 3:

Erin (Lunch): “Lost” my glove… AGAIN! Very forgetful lately. Like J. Foxx says: Blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-altitude.

Brian (Lunch): Climbing Kili is giving me a glimpse into old age. I’m always tired, always grumpy, and have to pee every half hour.

Erin (Dinner): Note to self: holding breath to go in outhouse is NOT a smart idea at high altitudes!

Brian (Dinner): Note to self: make sure all of Erin’s gloves are attached to her jacket from now on.

Day 4:

Brian (Lunch): Remember that movie Cliffhanger with Sly Stallone? What a great movie!

Erin (Tea): Good news: don’t need to hold breath to use outhouses at this camp. Bad News: it’s because they have no doors!

Brian (Dinner): We’ve learned a lot about each other on this climb. Most importantly that E can change any song lyric to include Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Erin (Dinner): It’s freezing! Should have invested in one of those two people sleeping bags!

Day 5:

Brian (Dinner): Now this is how climbing Kilimanjaro should be… 2 hours hiking, 8 hours napping.

Erin (Dinner): Just finished dinner. Breakfast’s in less than 5 hours. We signed up for this??

Brian (Breakfast/11pm): Well after a few hours sleep now it’s time for a 9 hr walk straight up then straight back down… seems slightly pointless.

Erin (Breakfast/11pm): FML.

Day 6:

Brian (6am/Summit): Trying to reach the summit of Kili is like walking on the beach. Only it’s -17C, with a 45 deg incline, howling wind, and you’re holding your breath.

Erin (6am/Summit): Wait… there’s no elevator down to the bottom??

Brian (Lunch): Ugh… going down sucks too…

Erin (Lunch): Contrary to what I was convinced of hours ago, my toes and fingers suffered no permanent damage from the cold!

Day 7:

Erin: We made it! Time to set sight on new goals: hot shower, cold beer, flat (indoor) bed.

Brian: As Shania Twain made famous and Erin is constantly singing: “Looks like we made it, look how far we’ve come my baby.”

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Last Few Days in the Village

Over the last few weeks in Nyeihanga we were very busy. One of the major items we wanted to get finished before we left was the building of a new barn/church/community center near the school. Things moved muuuuuuch slower than we would have liked. Jackson (the pastor) and I went to pick up wooden poles (literally chopped down trees that we picked up from the forest), piles of sand and gravel for the foundation, and bricks. The last day we were in the village we were able to see the ground breaking… only about 20 or so more days and it will be done!

Another initiative we (read: Erin) were responsible for was starting a microfinance initiative which would lend microloans to small business owners. In order to kick off the initiative, they needed 20 people who were interested, qualified, and could bring the requirements for signing up. Getting everyone to meet on time and bring their requirements was quite the challenge, but by the day we left we had 19 individuals signed up! We are lucky that after we leave our buddy Blake is going to be coming to the village and will be able to keep all of our efforts going without losing any steam.

The biggest initiative we are involved in also required the smallest amount of effort (at least while we were in the village). Our “Kili for a Kause” campaign has been a huuuuge success! As of right now, we have raised over $1200!!!! We’ve reached our goal of $1000, but let’s see if we can hit $1500. Thank you all for your generous donations, and if you haven’t had a chance to make a contribution don’t worry. There’s still time!

One big adventure we had a few weekends ago was a trip to Kisoro to visit Mgahinga National Park. The first day we were there we went Golden Monkey tracking. Basically, it was Erin and I with a guide and an armed guard (to scare away any rogue buffalos along the way). We hiked up the side of a mountain for about an hour or so until we got to a huge bamboo forest where we met the three trackers who had found where the golden monkeys were that day. There was a group of around 30-40 monkeys spread out in the trees around us jumping all over the place and eating the leaves. It was really cool. We got to spend about an hour or so with them before we had to hike back. That night we enjoyed our first beers in over a month (the pastor frowns upon alcohol) and boy were they good… well as good as a Nile Special Lager can be.

The next day in Kisoro was big day and the real reason we wanted to do the trip. We went Gorilla Tracking. Uganda is one of the only places in the world you can track mountain gorillas (also Rwanda, and Dem. Rep. of Congo). This was awesome. It was pretty much the same set up as the day before with the armed guard and the guide, but there was also two other people in our group, a guy and a girl from the UK. The hike was a little bit longer today (about 2 hours or so) and for most of it we weren’t on a path… just hiking up the side of a mountain through the forest/brush/prickers/etc. At times it was pretty tough, but once we got to where we were going it was amazing. We were standing in the middle of a family of huge mountain gorillas. It got a little dicey at one point when the silver back started to kind of flank us, but he was just trying to get closer to a huge bush where he plopped on his side and started eating leaves. Most of the time the gorillas were pretty lazy, just laying around or eating leaves, but at times the little kid gorillas were hilarious. There was one who was about a year old who instead of walking like all the other ones would spin wherever he wanted to go. There were also a few young guys swinging in the branches above us. The whole experience was amazing. To be so close to such a huge animal in their habitat was really cool, and with so few of these animals left in the world (numbers range from 300-600) who knows how long they’ll be around.

The last day we decided to climb to the summit of Mt. Sabyinyo which is the mountain we’d been walking all over to find the monkeys the past 2 days. It. Was. Difficult. It was definitely good practice for our Kilimanjaro summit attempt. We climbed up over 1200m and walked over 15k in 8 hours. About a quarter of the hike was so steep you had to climb up these makeshift ladders. It was pretty crazy to climb up this ladder made of tree branches that are over 50 feet straight up with nothing really behind you while you’re in a cloud and can’t really see more than 100 or so feet in every direction. This climb was probably more difficult than any single day on Kilimanjaro, so should’ve been good practice. Sabyinyo was only about 3600m up, where Kili is about 5900, so we still haven’t experienced the altitude yet!

Our last week in the village was bittersweet. We are closer to getting home, but it was sad to say good bye to the people we had spent the last two months with. We had made friends, learned a ton about living in an African village and how far past our comfort level we can go, and hopefully done a lot of good work in the community. Our last day we told the community about our fundraiser and they went ballistic. Everyone was so grateful, but it was the least we could do after everything they had done for us. Many of the people also brought us awesome gift to take back with us (a few traditional Ugandan baskets, a banana fiber mat).We couldn’t thank them enough. It was just another example of the Ugandan generosity we’ve experienced during our entire stay. We’re sad to go, but I think we are leaving Nyeihanga different than how we got here, and for the better.

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