Reaching Gilman’s Point on the Kibo crater rim didn’t feel like much of an accomplishment at all. Hands frozen and trying to grip the mug of tea the guides prepared for us, I squinted at the rickety sign indicating that I had reached the rim of Africa’s highest mountain, and Congratulations.
But without skipping a beat, my eyes turned westward across the giant crater rim. Along the narrow spine of a dinosaur’s back I spotted hikers slowly making their way. Pole pole - slowly - now more than ever as air was dry and painfully thin. I traced the tiny hikers around the rim until I spotted a cluster of them, and then a precipitous drop-off: the summit, I thought. There it is.
My stomach, devoid of any traces of appetite for five days now, turned inside of me. I stumbled around the people resting on the rocky stopping point to check in with each of my eleven students. None of them were doing very well, some unable to even respond to me, but still strongly indicating that they wanted to keep going. I briefly spoke with Makekei, our chief guide. Would it be a bad idea to take Jake even higher in his compromised condition? Would some of my students’ determination for the summit get the best of them?
“No,” Makekei reassured me. “Let’s go on, pole pole.”
I trusted him greatly. In broken English, he had mentioned cavalierly that this would be his 213th time reaching the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro. He knows his stuff.
So I rallied the kids to push on. Some needed help getting up, most could no longer carry their daypacks and had to give them to our guides, a few couldn't speak clearly, but all had a glimmer in their eye indicating the unshakeable conviction that they could reach the top.
We stumbled our way around the rim. To our right, ash plunged down to the bottom of the crater, forever away below us. To our left was the last evidence of snow on Kilimanjaro – a dramatic cluster of ice skyscrapers.
“You bring your children, no more snow then,” Makekei warns me. Global warming is not disputable in Tanzania – it is right before their eyes.
As we get closer, the summit sign is no longer in view. Hikers descending – Germans, Australians, Japanese, and British – remind us that we are close and to keep going! One guide shakes my hand. “You are ten minutes – not ten minutes – from the sign! Kazi nzuri, dada, kazi nzuri!” Good job, sister, good job.
As we crest over one last small hump, there it is. A crowd of Kenyans are posing in front of it and shrieking. We did it. “You did it!” I remind students breathlessly, but most remain silent. We try to arrange ourselves in front of the sign and silently wait while the guides fumble with our fancy cameras. Most photos are off-center, blurry, and tilted. Forced smiles.
A quick glance around before we descend, and the reassuring feeling that there’s nowhere but down all around me. Altitude symptoms will only get better from here. Deep breaths await us at the bottom. A lumpy blanket of clouds covers the land below and Mt Meru pokes through to the west. Aside from that, it’s light blue sky all around. Quiet. The sound of my labored breathing fills my ears.
