Last year, my high-maintenance mother and I decided to put our already volatile relationship to the test by choosing to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro together. This meant braving almost 30 hours of flying and sleeping in a tent in below-freezing temperatures for seven straight nights while living off of Cliff bars and porridge and not showering (just let that last one sink in — baby wipes just do not cut it). Needless to say, there were tears and fighting. Lots and lots of fighting.
Born and raised in New York City, I’m a city girl through and through. I find chaos calming, I’m afraid of the dark, I hate bugs, I have tried convincing people that I am allergic to grass, and I once even called the police when I was alone in a house in the country because it was too quiet — but I am an adventurer, teetering on the edge of impulsive. When my mom called me to ask if I would be interested in climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro with a group of men from her business I said f*ck yes! knowing my coolness points were going to skyrocket with that Instagram of me at the summit (terrible, terrible motives, I know). Little did I know what I was really signing up for.
After canceling and rebooking the trip four times, I essentially bought an entire REI store with things ranging from water bottles to pee funnels and hunting knives (completely unnecessary). My mom even slept in an oxygen deprivation tent for the six weeks leading up to the trip. I got my hair braided in cornrows because of the no-shower situation (my mom got her braids done at the Bergdorf Braid Bar in Manhattan — I'm not kidding … high maintenance) and we flew to Tanzania. There were 15 of us climbers and the team called itself AFLC (literally "Africkin' Long Climb").
The trip itself was a blur. We woke up every morning at 6 or 7, had breakfast, and would just start trudging along for at least eight hours. The porters would clean up camp and then literally run past us with bags on their heads and beat us to the next campsite. My mother cried at least twice a day, complaining about the food and how cold and miserable she was and how she couldn't sleep (one night she took four sleeping pills to no avail). Each night we would sit huddled together in our tent, airing out our smelly socks while using baby wipes to "wash" ourselves.
The lack of oxygen changed people physically and emotionally. We became so primitive. There were fights over snacks and food and people stopped sharing things. We had medical checks twice a day and there were competitions to see who had the lowest resting heart rate and the highest oxygen content (I'm happy to report that I was usually in the top three). Digestive systems were out of whack, the conversations stopped early on because it was too difficult to breathe and talk, people stopped eating (I ate only toast), and I hated everyone.
By now, I've probably completely turned you off from doing this. But despite the seemingly terrible conditions, when I look back at what I gained from this trip, all I can really say is that it was worth it. Here's why:
1. The Bond
Somewhere along the way between listening to Shaggy's "It Wasn't Me" (and creating a lovely duet from that with my mom, may I add) and spooning at night to stay warm, something changed between my mom and I.
While my mother did not actually go to summit (I went by myself because she was too sick), she waited for me at the last camp after I had been hiking for 16 hours and had lost all of my toenails, crying and feeling like I was a soldier coming home from war. We then skipped dinner and talked like friends for the first time in my entire life.
2. It's really not that physically difficult
I didn't train once. I broke my boots in by wearing them to work at the restaurant I used to work at and occasionally, you might have spotted me sporting them around Rice's campus (fashion faux pas, I know). You just have to be able to walk, so maybe this is where my city-girl status came in handy.
3. The View/Scenery
There’s something extraordinary and unpredictable about the “wilderness," something I had never experienced before. I saw sunrises and sunsets, I saw the stars every night. We were above the clouds after the first day. That's pretty cool.
A sunset captured by an AFLC Team Member while hiking Mt. Kilimanjaro
4. The Summit
The five minutes I spent standing on the top of the tallest free-standing mountain in the world was the most emotional five minutes of my life.
Quick side note: My dad died suddenly from a heart attack when I was 11 years old, something that only really hit me later on in life. He is the one who instilled the love of adventure in me and is the true reason behind why I decided to climb Kili.
I had heard that people take things to the top of Kilimanjaro and leave them there as a part of the grieving process, which is exactly what I did; I decided to carry a small cat chocolate box that my dad had given me when I was a little girl. The day we went to the summit, we got up at 2 a.m. and started climbing in the dark because the guides don't want you to see what you are hiking (when we descended was when we realized how scary it all actually was). I put my headphones in and stuffed my iPod in one of my body warmers underneath my 11 layers and just clicked shuffle so I would have no idea what I would be listening to. The last five minutes of the hike, when we were on the ridge of the summit, my dad's favorite song, "I Did It My Way" by Frank Sinatra, came on. I listened to it as I placed the box under the sign.
Me at the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro
5. Weight Loss
OK, I had to add this part. You burn something like 20,000 calories a day, and when you're only eating a piece of toast a day because the altitude makes you sick, you come off that mountain looking dirty, but also very skinny.
It took only 72 porters, no showering for eight days, a 2 a.m. wake-up call, going through four temperate zones, scaling a rock wall, learning all kinds of songs in Swahili, and losing all of my toenails. It surely was 'Africkin' Long Climb.
Will I hike again? Probably not. But am I glad I did it? Hell yes.
