I didn’t want to turn 30. I didn’t want to be old, and I did not feel like an adult. Yet, this marked the end of my youth. Worst of all, I haven’t made it yet. So I decided to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain on the African continent and the tallest free-standing mountain in the world. Every year about 1000 people are evacuated from the mountain, and approximately 10 to 30 people die. I was going to turn 30 on the roof of Africa or die on my way up, in my twenties. I meant it.
In Tanzania, at the foot of the majestic cone towering above the vast African savanna, I met my Tanzanian guide, Zawadi. The two of us would mostly be alone for the next 8 days. The moment he heard that I was from South Africa his eyes popped and he lowered his voice: “Do you know any Boers?” he asked. I sighed. “Yes...” I paused. “I am a Boer.” I didn’t elaborate because I was tired of defending myself against assumptions based on my heritage. He looked at me strangely, and up we went.
Zawadi was 35, married with four kids, and was doing a great job at being an adult. He provided for his family by being a mountain guide and he spent his days engulfed by the beauty around us. To me, he had it all and I felt a jab of envy.
We chatted all day and arrived at the campsite by dusk. There were people from all over the world, Netherlands, Italy, America, and Scotland. I don’t know why I had the expectation that I would be alone. I was a bit bummed about that.
The toilet was a hole in the ground with a U-shaped wooden structure around it. The floor was wooden slats nesting together from the entrance to the hole. It smelled horrific and for some mysterious reason, the floor was always wet.
At high altitude, you pee a lot. In the middle of the extremely cold winter’s night, my brain refused to let my body out of the warm snuggly sleeping bag. Eventually, through the interrupted sleep, my bladder declared victory and I tackled the cold. Struggling to find the flashlight, gloves, shoes, dealing with a stubborn tent zipper, swearing at the anomalies that tripped me, freezing, disorientated, why are the slats wet, where is my tent again? Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Dawn.
The porters slept with four to five people in one tent. One morning, I was up early to watch the day arrive. One of the porters crawled out of his tent with a big basin full of liquid. He slumbered over to the toilet and aimed—from outside!—trying to follow the path of the U-shape toilet, to get their nightly bodily fluids around the corners and into the hole. The basin is their make-shift chamber pot. They were not brazing the elements five times a night. Now, I knew why the floor was wet. From that point on, I went in the bush not caring who saw my naked butt.
Five days later, we arrived at base camp and started to prepare for the summit. By this point, breathing has become a bit of an achievement. Many people have turned around and one of the seasoned porters had to be carried down on a stretcher. Altitude sickness does not ask for a resume. I was worried, but giving up was not an option.
At 11:00 p.m. Zawadi woke me to start the summit. I was cold and tired and not impressed. The aim was to get to the summit for sunrise. It was the most numbing experience I have ever had. The landscape was alien, nothing but darkness, gravel, and random piles of ice and snow. Dark boulders and rocks were aimlessly scattered and showing indifference to my existence. The 8-hour climb was at a varying 35-degree angle in gravel. Google says on winter nights it can be -20 ºF. I wouldn’t know, but the cold came, parked in my bones and put the clamps on my joints.
At one point there was this very soft-looking flat rock. I went to have a laydown and Zawadi nearly had heart failure. “You have to keep moving,” he said. “No,” I replied. He tried again but I closed my eyes. “I just want to rest for a little bit,” I mumbled. This was a very boring conversation. “You have to get up!” he raised his voice panickedly. “Just 10 minutes please,” I begged while telepathically trying to hit his snooze button. Then softly, in a matter of fact way, his voice reached my brain. “You will die if you don’t get up.” I suddenly thought of all the idiots in the movies that didn’t listen to their friends and died of exposure and hypothermia just because they wanted to sleep for a bit. I don’t like being an idiot. I got up and trudged on.
After seven hours of slogging gavel, we reached Stella Point at the dawn of my thirties. The rising sun tinted the African plains stretching below the clouds. The continent felt at peace. Then, my water froze as if the thermal insulation wasn’t even there. Zawadi saw my alarm and offered that we could go down. “You will get a certificate that you summited Stella Point,” he said. “Nope,” I stated. “Uhuru Peak is the highest point.”
We set off, calve deep in snow on the ledge of Africa. I could see the Netherlanders in the distance, but no one else. They either turned around or peaked at Stella Point.
Reaching Uhuru Peak, 19,341 feet above sea level, Zawadi sat me down on the snow and drew a big heart around me with his heel. He sang Happy Birthday in Swahili while he danced around the universal symbol of love and clapped his hands to the rhythm. I cried. I cried because my new friend gave me a very special birthday. I cried because I was exhausted. I cried because I missed the people I loved. I cried because the surroundings ice glaciers were overwhelmingly beautiful. I cried for the porters and guides who have to go through this ordeal bi-weekly to make a living. I cried for myself, my country and my continent. Zawadi knew the ice cap was melting. He grew up in the valley and has done this for many years. He is afraid that when the ice cap is not there anymore the money that feeds his family will disappear with it. He didn’t know why it was happening. Our arguments back home were his reality.
Decent was torture. Same gravel, same 35-degree slope but it was fast and it was hard. Every single step was like somebody took a bat to my toes. Took a bat to my knees. Took a bat to my back. I lost six toenails. Probably half-way down my body collapsed. Memory has its own truth. I remember collapsing into the gravel and it felt like half of my body was engulfed in it. I sat there in complete astonishment: So this is what it feels like to hit 100%.
I couldn’t dig deep, I couldn’t get my mind right, there was absolutely nothing I could do to make my legs move. “Must I get a stretcher?” Zawadi asked me. “No just give me a minute,” I half-whispered. “I will get a stretcher,” Zawadi now firmly stated. “No! Just give me a minute.” I looked around. There was only stupid rocks and gravel in any case. As if reading my mind he said: “There are stretchers all over. We carry lots of people back into base camp.” I glared at him: “I will not be carried into base camp in a stretcher.” Zawadi got frustrated. “I will fetch someone to help me. You do not have to be ashamed, we carry men on stretchers into base camp too.” I rolled my eyes and laughed. “I am a Boer, remember. You do not carry a Boer on a stretcher into any camp.”
He gave me my minute. Or what felt like a minute. Somewhere my legs connected to my brain again. As we continued the torture, I asked myself; how much money must someone give to me to turn around and do this again? I tried to come up with an honest answer. Every amount I thought of wasn’t enough. So I asked Zawadi. He through on it for a while, also trying to give an honest answer. “$100,” he said.
Back at base camp, as I collapsed in my tent, Zawadi stuck his head in wanting to know what I was doing. I just stared at him blankly. What did he mean what was I doing? “We need to leave now. We clear base camp for next group. We walk five hours to next camp,” he explained. “There is no way on God’s green earth that I am getting up,” I said to him very determinedly as I laid my head down. His brain raced, then he sighed. “OK, you can sleep for two hours.”
True to his word, after two hours he woke me up. We packed up, but we did not walk to an overnight tourist camp, that was now too far away. This “camp” was just a clearing. It was only me, Zawadi, and five Tanzanian porters who didn’t speak a word of English. If you can speak English, you become a guide. If you can’t, then you carry heavy loads up and down the mountain. From inside my tent, I could hear them talking around the fire while they were drinking. More men that I didn’t know joined and drank and got louder as the night went on. I was petrified. I tried to be invisible and didn’t leave my tent. The next morning it was my turn to secretly discard the contents of my make-shift chamber pot.
The next day was bright and the greenery increased with every foot we descended. Now a party of seven, I asked if there was a place nearby to get something to drink. Zawadi changed our direction and after a while, this unsystematic structure built from branches and leaves appeared underneath a tree. Inside it was bigger than expected, and it smelled like dark rich soil, hops, and freshly cut wood. I could feel the eyes of the local people on me. This was not a tourist trap. I got us all a round of beer and we sat down to cheer our weary bodies up.
I took a sip and looked at the people around me. Here I was, a female Afrikaner Boer, drinking with six Tanzanian men, in the middle of Africa. We were swapping stories and laughing. I was 30.0027 years old. Not only was I still alive, I was living. Zawadi went from being my guide and my lifeline to being my friend. He no longer saw me as an oppressor from the south, but as an ordinary, maybe too stubborn fellow human. There were no more preconceived prejudices on either side. We were just people, being together.
At the start of this journey, it felt like my life was over. At the end of it, there was the promise of countless new beginnings. I learned that if I’m still able to move a body part, then I am not done yet. I now know that I will make it, and the definition of what that is is my decision, not society’s.
Zawadi in Swahili means “gift”.