We already knew that Jambo meant hello and, from working with the BBC Swahili service, I knew some other phrases.  Some were useful, such as ‘thank you’ and ‘thank you very much’, some not so much, such as ‘news’ and ‘what is RSS?’.

Note: Originally posted on https://colossalkiliclimb.wordpress.com Nov 2010

So we woke at the crack of dawn and I managed to squeeze in one last hot shower.  We put our trekking gear on (warm day, so shorts and one t-shirt), our comfy socks, our sunscreen and our smelly 100+ DEET insect repellent.  We packed all our final bits and pieces into our rucksacks and trudged our way downstairs.

We’d been told to fuel up before our first day so we met the rest of the group in the breakfast room.  I got some cereal and toast, however was soon feeling incredibly ill.  I felt nauseous, faint and hot and at one point had to dash from the restaurant to get some fresh air.  Simon (our group leader) came to check on me but once I got to a seat by a door I felt much much better.  We both decided it was just nerves so I headed back to try and force some food down me.

Then, before I knew it we were piling into the minibus again and were off! Eeek! We had a 60 – 90 minute journey to Machame gate and the start of the climb.  We passed the time discussing A&E horror stories with our trip doctor Hannah, and discussing Steve and Melv’s former lives of male modelling, viagra dealing and secret agenting (note: none of these stories were true. Nothing Steve and Melv said could ever be taken that seriously). We finally pulled into the gate – it was starting!

After a quick cup of tea, we filled our camelbaks and had a restroom break.  We then went to the foot of the hill and were shown all the porters getting ready to take everything up the mountain.  There were 97! It sounds shocking but when you think they are carrying not only our 15kg rucksacks, but all the sleeping tents, mess tents, food for all meals, water and even camping toilets, you can see how so many are needed.  We were given instructions to move to the left whenever ‘Porter’ was shouted so that we could carry on walking and allow them past us.  Only the direction we went was changed every time a porter passed us, so the rule was a little bit useless! Not great when you sometimes struggle with your right and left…

We all took part in a group warm up session.  This was the first of many embarrassing sessions, however we still had some inhibitions at this point so was more embarrassing than the others that were to come later when we’d already given up all our inhibitions and our dignity.

We were then introduced to our guides, and Stacey, Fitz and I would get to know these guys very well over the next few days as they helped us out on countless occasions.  There was Emanuel, our head guide and Moses, our assistant guide.  The other guides introduced themselves as Ben, Geoffrey, Joseph, Jackson and Godwin.

We put on our backpacks, strapped up, got our water tubes in position and we were off!

The first day of trekking was through the rainforest.  It was lush, green and warm.  We were sheltered from the sun by the thick canopy of trees over us.  The walk up was steady and relatively steep.  We had quite a few little stops – for the toilet, for water or just to have a bit of a rest.  The group spread out quite far as we were allowed to go at whatever pace we felt comfortable with.  I was a BIG fan of the ‘poly poly’ (slowly, slowly) approach as I couldn’t see the point in tiring myself out on the first day! Plus it gave us the chance to have a chat with people and get to know the people that we would be sharing the biggest challenge of our lives with.

We had the luxury of toilets for this day.  Well, I say luxury, but in actual fact a lot of us chose to ‘go wild’ rather than use them!  They weren’t pretty.  We creeped on, slowly but surely up the mountain throughout the morning.  We stopped for lunch, and it gave us a taster of the amazing food to learn to expect up the mountain. There were picnic tables set up with bread, ham, fresh veg, cakes and juice.  We sat and ate in the open air as it was warm and reasonably dry.  That would be the last time we’d ever want to sit in the open and eat – it was simply far too cold after that point.

After lunch we carried on going… and going… and going… We walked into camp and I was shocked – I thought we had at least another hour of walking! It was a welcome surprise to get into camp at a decent time.  We were camping at just under 3000m and already I could feel the difference in the temperature.  We went to sign in at the ranger lodge and we learnt some more Swahili…

We already knew that Jambo meant hello and, from working with the BBC Swahili service, I knew some other phrases.  Some were useful, such as ‘thank you’ and ‘thank you very much’, some not so much, such as ‘news’ and ‘what is RSS?’.  Throughout our first day though, we’d also had a lot of the porters say ‘Mambo’ to us.  Thinking this was another way of saying hello, we repeated ‘Mambo’ back at them and generally spent the day going:

Porter: Jambo!

Us: Jambo!

Porter: Mambo

Us: Errr…Mambo

Porter: Poa!

Us: Yeah, er Poa…?

Turns out Mambo means ‘How are you’ and ‘Poa’ is the standard response meaning ‘good’, or ‘cool’.  So we’d spent the whole day in a conversation that went on these lines ‘Hello, hello, how are you, how are you, good, good’.  No wonder there were a few sniggers!  I asked what the Swahili for ‘bad’ was… and they were quite reluctant to give me the translation, I think they thought I’d never want to answer anything other than ‘good’…

This was the first night that we met our new home, our tent.  We had some warm water to attempt to have a wash with and we tried to settle into our tent.  We had a briefing and then went back to our tents to sort out what was needed for the next day and to try and unpack and repack slightly.  We got changed into more comfy clothes and headed to a mess tent for dinner.

And what a dinner! I don’t think anyone knew what to expect.  We started with some tomato soup and bread, which was delicious.  We  then moved onto fish, with veg and potatoes and again, everyone was suitably impressed.  The temperature had really dropped but luckily due the number of people in our tent (and the amount of hot air that was coming out of our mouths!) it soon got very warm and cosy in the tent.  We all ate to our heart’s content (there was certainly no rationing up the mountain) and feasted on some fresh fruit for dessert.

We also had to have our pulse and oxygen levels taken.  This was done every morning and evening to monitor trends, to help the doctor and the leaders if something were to happen to us.  Oxygen levels were roughly around 95 – 97% as a whole.  Our pulses, however, were a different matter.  When it came to my pulse,  I was slightly disturbed to see it racing at 120bpm! Especially as no-one else had a pulse near this level.  When it came to Fitz, however, she was a similar level, and I believe Stacey was (although she was in a different mess tent).  The doctor told us not to worry about it as everyone is different and our bodies were probably just getting used to the altitude.  So we tried to put it out of our minds.

It was Pauline’s birthday and the group leaders had arranged for a little something special for her.  Everyone piled into our mess tent and the porters approached the tent doing the ‘Cake dance’ (a dance whilst singing ‘cakey cake, cakey cakey’).  We were amazed when this lovely chocolate cake entered the tent, complete with candles and icing saying ‘Happy birthday Paulli’.  Everyone helped themselves to a slice and eagerly bit in… and then spat back out again.  I can only speak for myself, but all I can remember is thinking ‘That’s such an unusual taste, I recognise it… what is it?’ And then it came to me. MUSTARD! They had written the icing in mustard! A general murmur of amusement and confusion rippled around the tent before we all just burst into laughter.  It’s the thought that counts!

People drifted off to bed and to get settled in in their new homes.  Fitz, Stacey and I decided to stay up and play a game of cards until 9pm (our designated ‘Camp Silence’ time).  Simon introduced us to a new game… that completely baffled us.  We struggled to get the hang of it and eventually drifted off to bed at 9.  It was a nice distraction though and great to take our minds off the walk the next day.

We got in our tent and tried to get comfy. We’d been advised to wriggle around a bit before getting into our sleeping bags so that we exerted lots of heat when we got in and therefore would be kept warm. I forgot. So, I did a little wriggling in my sleeping bag, and seeing as my sleeping bag was bright orange, strongly resembled a wriggly worm, an image that will likely stick with Fitz for life. Fitz and I snuggled up in our sleeping bags and tightened our hoods over our heads… and drifted off to sleep.

Well, tried to anyway.  The tents were incredibly thin, so every noise in the campsite was magnified and hard to ignore. So some persistent snorers were nice and loud – at one point I woke convinced it was Fitz who was snoring and tried to figure out how she could make so much noise!  I was very envious of what sounded like a very nice sleep.  Because we had wrapped up warm, and because this would be our warmest night, a lot of us also woke up absolutely boiling in the night.  Hoods were thrown off, arms were stuck out and socks were wriggled out of in an attempt to cool down.  On top of this, I kept hearing my pulse in my ears and thinking of how high my pulse reading was earlier, and therefore started panicking a bit. Which pushed my pulse up further. It was a vicious circle.

All in all, not one of my worst nights sleep on the trek, but not the finest of my life… the 6am wake up wasn’t a welcome sound!

CatDog xx