I REDISCOVERED the shining snow-capped slopes of Kilimanjaro on the dusty
100 road from Nairobi, more than from Uhuru Peak, the goal of my dreaming for the previous five years.
I was with a group of 25 Terra-cotta Ramblers who had taken on the Great Kilimanjaro Challenge as a fund-raising project for the Richmond Brain Research Foundation and the National Council for the Blind of Ireland.
My romance with Kilimanjaro had begun about a year after my wife's death when I had seen a TV documentary about the mountain. I fell in love with everything about Africa's highest mountain, its glorious name, its stately volcanic peaks, but especially the dream of traversing all the globe's climatic and vegetation zones on the way to the top.
I had signed up with the Ramblers the previous October. Over the following months the general pressures of life and fund-raising bad dimmed the lustre of my original vision.
Now the majestic peak of Mount Meru was looming in front of us, with some of our number who had been sleeping wondering whether it might not be the sacred mountain we were seeking. I knew that Kilimanjaro was away to our left and had some hopes of seeing it in spite of generally hazy conditions.
Suddenly the shimmering slopes could be seen above the cloud cover. It was a pyramid with no base, soaring to the blue African skies.
I was with the Rhino team, the second of four groups to go on the mountain. We were privileged; most of the others in the 76-strong Terracotta Ramblers never saw the peak until they climbed above the clouds at 10,000 feet.
DAY ONE
THE morning started badly, with one of our party so ill that she had to be brought to the local hospital. Fortunately she recovered and was able to trek half way up the mountain two days later.
That left 24 of us to sort out our gear for weather conditions which we had been warned could vary from 35C at the foot of the mountain to an effective temperature of 40C at the summit.
There was a tremendous bustle in the hotel courtyard as 42 guides and porters were organised to carry up our food and excess baggage. We were introduced to Emanuel Gitaz, our head guide.
A lithe man in his mid-50s, Emanuel had a wrinkly smile of almost infinite charm which belied a character of sinewy resourcefulness and hard-won wisdom. The fact that he had five sons among the guides suggested a tradition of benign patriarchy. Emanuel was to be our spiritual father on the mountain.
There was more than a touch of disquieting old-fashioned paternalism about the organisation of the support team. Ironically the most disturbing aspect of it was a tough "Mama" who stood at the hotel gate with a cane, berating and occasionally beating back the 30 or so locals who had arrived, hoping to be taken on as porters.
It was misty and dank as we began our trek at a height of 5,600 feet much like a muggy Irish day, in fact. As the day warmed up, it reminded me of a spell of prolonged incarceration in the hothouses of my local Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin. The blazing African heat that I had dreamed about on dreary Irish days was proving very elusive.
Our team leader had appointed a sweeper to stay back with those going slowest. Until lunchtime I stayed with the last group, which consisted of the sweeper, my companion Margaret Gleeson and Teresa Morgan from Longford. They were going at a snail's pace but they were blissfully happy.
The going became progressively steeper and more rugged in the afternoon, with the forest giving way to giant velvety heather.
The huts at Mandara (9,000 feet) and Horombo (12,000 feet) are wooden chalets built by the Tanzanians with the assistance of the Norwegian government. All 24 of us were piled into the upstairs of the refectory chalet, where the various groups of climbers were fed in relays by their team of guides and porters.
DAY TWO
THE effects of the altitude were immediately more apparent as we ascended for an hour and a half through the remainder of the dense vegetation.
We had by now climbed above the cloud cover and the Equatorial sun was blindingly hot, but the reward when we reached the clearing was another sighting of Kibo, the main crater of Kilimanjaro, with its broad band of permanent ice. Some climatologists prophesy that this permanent ice will disappear in another 50 years as a result of global warming.
The vegetation now consisted mainly of smaller heathers and bracken. The only wildlife we saw were voles, lizards and birds. The human fauna were interesting though. One descending American stopped us to inquire where we were from.
"Oh, you're Irish. Fantastic. I'm from San Francisco. I'm sorry my country sent back Jimmy Smith," he boomed.
Most of our group looked bemused, either because we'd forgotten who this alleged IRA man extradited to Britain was, or because of his naive assumption about our political allegiance.
In the meantime our Derry representative, Brian McCaul, a former Irish League footballer, had me mesmerised as he chatted gaily with his porter. Most of us were holding our tongues, paying attention to our breathing and preserving our energy. Brian to the contrary interrogated young Emanuel (no relation of the head guide) about the Swahili and Chagga (a local dialect) words for a whole range of topics, all the time swinging his walking sticks animatedly about him. Behind us the casualty list was mounting, with many struggling to get to the ridge where we took lunch; the mountain was taking a heavy toll in terms of sick stomachs, headaches and dizziness. My friend Margaret Gleeson was suffering from severe dizziness. Her stomach had been upset since her arrival in Nairobi, so she had taken very little nourishment over the previous five days. She had already accepted in her head and in her heart that she was going to have to say goodbye to the mountain.
The chief guide Emanuel pleaded with her to try to walk on to Horombo. If necessary, she could then be brought down on a stretcher the following morning.
At Margaret's pace it was a painful three-hour walk, with stops every 20 steps and, towards the end, every 10 steps. It was a real heroic endeavour on her part to keep going at all. She was hailed as a champion on her arrival at Horombo, as the light was fading.
The other hero of the second day was Pat Nugent. Pat had been very severely injured in a car accident a few years ago just after returning from a stint managing the IDA's operations in Hong Kong. In his own words, he "was nearly a goner several times" during his recovery and had been left with brain damage which impaired his walking and speech. Pat was a veteran of Terracotta Ramblers' challenges.
Officially Pat had been meant to descend after the first day but his cussedness and barbed wit ("Jesus Christ on a bike with the windows down" was typical of his store of Offaly exuberances) had meant that he was allowed to continue to Horombo with his quota of three guides.
DAY THREE
We were taking the slightly longer but more spectacular route on the third day, a steep three-hour ascent to the saddle between Mawenzi crater and Kibo, followed by a four-hour walk across the saddle with another short rise to Kibo hut.
By this stage we had become accustomed to the densely-layered sea of clouds beneath us, but the marvels of the landscape were unlike anything any of us had previously experienced. It recalled the terrain of black-and-white horror movies I had seen as a child, where plants with huge orifices opened up to devour the invaders. Giant senecio and lobelia gave us a sense of the uncanny to match our increasingly dizzy bodily sensations.
We were now on the broad back of the mountain, with the full majesty of Kibo crater before us. As we sat down to lunch, I cried tears of joy. Kilimanjaro had been my chimerical but nourishing dream for several years; it had become a beacon of hope for me after the death of my wife and I had celebrated it in a poem.
Now I felt incredible happiness just to be on the mountain. The strain and effort of climbing the mountain didn't matter any more; it was enough just to be on the mountain, to love and enjoy it.
I knew that many others in our party had carried their own dreams and obsessions to Kilimanjaro - a relative who had had had a brain tumour, a battle with illness or contact with blind friends.
We had a three to four-hour walk yet to reach Kibo Hut, but it didn't seem any problem as we set off across the rock and lava strewn desert plain of the saddle. As the ascent to Kibo Hut began, however, I began to feel so terrible that I was barely able to talk to a group of descending Lions. They told us that five of their original 15 had made it to Uhuru, and another seven to Gillman's Point, the edge of Kibo crater.
I felt very sick when I reached Kibo hut. But fortunately after a rest and a tablet, I was restored in about an hour. I was even able to enjoy the warm stew, which I had to eat standing up in the bitter cold. We turned in about seven o'clock, putting on layers of thermals and fleeces inside our sleeping bags. However, the extreme freezing temperatures did not materialise, and the night was punctuated with the sound of clothes being peeled off in the unexpected cosiness of Kibo.
Hot, sugared black tea and shortbread biscuits were served at midnight as we togged out for the ascent. We set off wearing our headlamps under the starlit sky to zig-zag up the rocky slope. On the last stage of our pilgrimage, files of walkers could be seen inching their way to the summit.
In wonder and beauty, Kilimanjaro had matched all our expectations. Now on this baleful scree it proved more horrible than we could have anticipated. It is regarded as the longest continuous scree walk in the world.
I was with a group near the front, going at a nice steady pace. Unexpectedly Teresa Morgan was with us but gradually she began to drift away, stopping more and more frequently. I knew that if I stayed behind Teresa, I would lose the rhythm.
I shouted to the group ahead and Nelson Gitaz, the guide, fell back to see what I wanted. I put on a spurt to catch up and that was nearly my undoing, being knackered for the first time that day when I reached the leading group. Then the deeply meditative steady putting of one foot in front of the other began again. I was walking behind Brid Trihy a young accountant from Waterford who worked in Guernsey. She was bitterly cold and completely exhausted. I began to encourage her with little chants and mantras. If she found them irritating, she didn't have the energy to object.
As dawn broke, Nelson sang the Kilimanjaro song for us and danced. It was inspiring but also a taunt to our gasping and rasping. As we approached the top, I began to feel the effects of breathlessness, leaning with mighty relief on my pole every 20 steps or so. The two others in our group, David Donohue from Dublin and Brian McCaul, had been finding the going rough for quite some time but the top was now in sight.
The celebrations at Gillman's Point were muted at first; we hugged and took photographs. It was deeply satisfying but too early to fully enjoy it. We could see the huge rim and hollow of the crater with vast tracts of glacial ice, and in the distance Uhuru (freedom) Peak.
I knew that we would be the only Rhinos with a chance of getting to Uhuru; the others were all too far behind. After a short discussion, only Brian McCaul and I felt able to continue. Brid was asleep on her feet and David decided to accompany her down the dangerous scree. The attrition of the mountain was obvious when even Nelson asked for a headache tablet.
My complacency was shattered when a chocolate bar I took at Gillman's upset my stomach. Even though the ascent to Uhuru was not very steep (you could even call it undulating), we were now near 19,000 feet and every step was a struggle.
Truthfully, the full splendour of the mountain (the turquoise coloured glaciers, the sight of Mount Meru in the distance to the West) was only revealed to those who went all the way to Uhuru, but equally truthfully, at this stage I was in no condition to appreciate it. Fortunately the images are indelibly etched in the memory.
My ultimate indignity came when we finally reached Uhuru at 9.20 and I sat down to sign the book which is kept there in a steel box. I fell asleep with the pen in my hand. We were barely able to summon up the energy to take the mandatory photographs. Even Brian was wilting at this stage. He was no longer swinging his walking poles with the same abandon.
Back down to Gillman's where most of our group were resting, while some were still struggling on the scree. I marvelled at the sheer determination which kept so many of them going. Whether it was fulfilling their pledge to their sponsors or some internal demon that was driving them on, they did the Terracotta Ramblers proud. All 22 who had set out from Kibo hut at one o'clock made it to the top of the crater.
The descent down the scree was quite treacherous, given our state of tiredness. "Skiing" was the recommended technique but it could be risky, as was evidenced by one climber breaking an ankle that day.
I reached Horombo about 6 p.m. As darkness fell, exhausted Rhinos continued to drift in and we had finally settled down to eat when Teresa Morgan arrived at 9.30. She had walked most of the way from Horombo in the dark with her guides. She had been on the go almost continually for over 20 hours.
Teresa had only signed up for the Kilimanjaro trip late in the day, so she hadn't been in a position to train properly. In addition, she had been plagued by blisters from the first day. She had been a true heroine of the shining mountain.
Whether it was our dreams of the shining mountain itself, our encounters with the people (Africa is more than animals and landscape) or the rigours of the huge land journeys we made in Kenya and Tanzania, the trip refracted back to us something different and strange, but something about ourselves also - which would leave a mark for ever.