Last October an email dropped into my inbox which stood out from all the others and immediately made me sit up and take note. It was looking for people to be part of a STW Strategy and Regulation team to climb Mt Kilimanjaro. We had two weeks to think about it and send off our reply. I think it took me two hours to send mine. A resounding ‘yes please’. I then received another email a few days later saying that I had been chosen to go. Oh my God! J
Now, anybody who knows me well knows that I like a challenge. And this was one hell of one. I’d never been up a mountain before (didn’t even own any walking boots), never camped outdoors and needed to raise a substantial amount of funds to make the trip a success. Where do you even start?! Well for me, it was dressing up as a tap in New Street station collecting funds (much to the amusement of children, annoying BlackBerry-addicted teenagers and stag dos) and making copious amounts of rocky road. My first taster of what the trek would be like was a team weekend away to Snowdon in January. It quickly became very apparent that I wasn’t a natural mountaineer and also highlighted how woefully ill equipped I was. All of a sudden it seemed like I now had two mountains to climb...
After several months of preparation and nervous anticipation we finally boarded the long flight to Tanzania. What struck me when we first arrived was how flat it was. Apart from this huge, imposing mountain in the distance, which however you tried, you really couldn’t get away from and that was to be my home for the next week. Before we started the climb we spent a very humbling but extremely rewarding day visiting two projects which had directly benefitted from WaterAid’s assistance. The first was Qash village which had recently received a water pump enabling each household to obtain approx 20 litres of clean water a day. This doesn’t sound a lot, given that the average daily British household consumption is probably more than fifteen times this, but the difference this had made to the villagers lives was immense. They were so welcoming and when asked what they would like if money was no object, they simply replied ‘another water pump for the village’.
The second visit was to a school which had recently had a block of latrines installed. These enabled the children to have access to proper sanitation facilities for the first time – something that we in the UK take for granted. The children were so happy and well behaved and seemed to genuinely want to be there. Many had ambitions to be teachers, engineers and doctors and when we asked about their favourite subjects, they simply said ‘all of them!’. It was a very emotional but rewarding day that would stay with me for a long time and I knew that it would definitely keep me going when the going got tough-which it would undoubtedly do.
So, onto the climb... My resounding feeling is that it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. There were parts of it that weren’t great – the latrines (enough said), three of us being squashed into a leaky two man tent which often had ice on the inside, the maize porridge that resembled a cross between frog spawn and wallpaper paste and the vegetable sauce/pasta combo that we were forced to eat copious amounts of pretty much every day, trying to sleep on a 45 degree angle slope with boulders under your sleeping mat, the constant packing and repacking of your equipment at 6am every day, being unable to shower or wash my hair for the entire time I was there which led me to resemble Worzel Gummidge, the constantly changing temperatures meaning you were contemplating frostbite one minute and getting sunburnt the next, the sheer terror at the thought of the summit and the ever present threat of altitude sickness hanging over us.
However, these things seem pretty trivial compared to the positives which outweighed them ten fold over- the amazing landscapes and views that made every day different, the fresh air and crystal clear star-strewn night sky, the great camaraderie in the camp and knowing that there were people around to give you support if you needed it, getting to know colleagues as people rather than just somebody you see at work, the brilliantly supportive team of porters and guides who were with us every step of the way, knowing that our fundraising will make a real difference to people’s lives and most importantly, feeling literally on top of the world when standing under the iconic ‘congratulations, you’ve made it Uhuru Peak’ sign knowing that over the previous seven hours you’ve sweat blood and tears in the pitch black in temperatures of -15C and been so exhausted you’ve contemplated giving up. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such an amazing sense of achievement on only my second time on a mountain and it’s an adventure that I would recommend to anybody. So, who’s with me on Everest...? Eva :-)
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