by Various Orca
NINETEEN
I slurped down a little porridge and then stopped. I just couldn’t stomach it. Seeing it every morning didn’t make it any less disgusting. It still looked more like something that should have been coming out the other end of me rather than going into my mouth.
I took another bite of my breakfast “sausage” and took a sip of tea to clear my mouth of both the last of the mystery meat and the vestiges of the porridge.
This was our third breakfast—our third identical breakfast. Sarah had said it was going to be the same each morning until we were back at the hotel. One more reason to get through as quickly as possible. If I lost my appetite, it would have nothing to do with altitude sickness.
I had one more task to accomplish: onward to the toilet. I left the breakfast tent and immediately saw the three Finns. They saw me, waved and smiled. They were relentlessly friendly and smiling even though we couldn’t actually communicate.
I approached the toilet with trepidation. It was a small wooden building constructed over the edge of the cliff. It looked as if a strong breeze would blow it away. That was more than just paranoid thinking. Mr. Odogo had told me that two years ago one of these little shacks did tumble over, killing the man who was inside. Death in a falling toilet would have been so embarrassing. What would they say at the funeral that wouldn’t sound awkward, awful or just plain funny?
I pushed open the door. Of course there was nothing except a hole in the bottom to squat over. I didn’t expect anything more but kept wondering what people around here had against sitting down? Using just one foot, I stepped partway in and pressed my weight against the floor. It seemed solid. Hesitantly I put the other foot inside and tried to close the door. It was stuck. I pushed harder and it gave way. The entire shack shook and the door closed, trapping me inside. I had to fight the urge to jump back out, but I had business to do and the way my stomach and intestines were gurgling, it wasn’t going to take long.
I pulled down my pants and long johns, and then, bracing myself with a hand on both sides, squatted down. There was a cold breeze coming up through the hole that didn’t make it any more pleasant. I tried to focus on the matters at hand and not the hole or the breeze or the fact that I was standing on a little piece of wood perched over a cliff. Thank goodness I didn’t have to wait too long. It felt like the porridge was pouring out the other end. I didn’t look to see if it was still gray. I didn’t care. It was coming out. I just hoped most of it was hitting the hole instead of bouncing back at me.
Moving one hand to grab a baby wipe from the package in my pocket, I almost toppled over. Squatting was not part of my routine or my muscle memory. I finished up the paper work and somebody pounded on the door! I jumped straight up, grabbing my pants and trying to secure the door.
“Are you going to spend the day in there?” Sarah said.
“Are you going to make a habit of bothering me while I’m using the toilet?” I asked. “Can’t you bear being away from me even for a few seconds?”
There was a loud huffing sound and she was gone. I finished pulling up both layers of clothing. I realized that my legs were shaking, and I was sweating. Instant flop sweat. Instant fear reaction. She had scared me. I wiped my forehead with the sleeve of my sweater. I had to compose myself. I took a deep breath and realized that maybe the best way to get calm was to get out of the outhouse and back on solid rock.
The door opened, rubbing against the floor, slightly rocking the whole structure again. I jumped out and was relieved in a whole different way.
The porters were moving around the camp, working as hard as ants, disassembling the camp. The tents were coming down quickly, and my backpack was sitting on the ground, leaning against a rock where my tent had been. I noticed that the Finns already had their packs on. I went over and slipped on mine. Nobody—meaning Sarah or her father—could accuse me this morning of not being ready to go. I was ready, willing and at least semi-able. Not that I’d let them know that.
I walked over to Mr. Odogo, who was yelling out orders to the porters.
“I’m ready,” I said. “Maybe I could go with them.” I pointed at the Finns.
“Maybe you should just do what you are told. Do you want to get to the top?”
“Of course I do. They seem to be doing okay.”
“They have not yet come to the wall,” he said.
I’d heard about marathon runners “hitting the wall” when they had run close to twenty miles. I didn’t see these three hitting any wall, but I still wondered.
“When do you think they’ll hit the wall?” I asked.
“In about ten minutes,” he answered.
“How can you be so certain about the timing?”
He gave me a confused look. “The wall,” he said, gesturing to the cliff. “We are going to climb the wall this morning.”
“We’re climbing that?”
“Unless you know of another option.”
I looked at the wall. Here in the light of day I could look up, all the way up to the top.
“But—but that has to be two hundred meters tall.”
“Two hundred and forty meters.”
I tried to hide my feelings of fear and disbelief. He had to be joking, making fun of me.
“I don’t see a trail.”
“It is there. Some places it is very, very narrow, but there is a way up the Breakfast Wall.”
“It’s called the Breakfast Wall?”
“Some call it Barranco Wall because this is Barranco camp. I like to call it the Breakfast Wall for two reasons. One, we always climb it right after breakfast.” He stopped talking.
“And the second reason?”
“Many people lose their breakfast while climbing,” he said. “We will soon find out if you are one of them.”
TWENTY
I stayed as close to the cliff face as possible, keeping the width of the narrow path between me and the drop at the other side. The Finns, who had to stay with us through the climb, occasionally looked over the edge, laughing and pointing and taking pictures. I wasn’t looking, I wasn’t laughing and I wasn’t taking pictures. I needed both my hands free to cling to the handholds on the rock face.
The path snaked back and forth across the face of the cliff. At times it was almost level and wide, and then it would shoot upward and narrow until it was impossible to be away from the drop. With each step up, each meter of elevation gained, the drop got bigger. At this point, almost an hour into the climb, it really didn’t matter. Fall over the edge and you were dead, whether it was 50 meters or 150 meters…actually it was probably more than 150 meters because we were more than two-thirds of the way up.
At least that’s what Mr. Odogo had told us. I just didn’t know if I could believe him. He was always underestimating the time or distance left. I’d learned that “twenty minutes” meant closer to an hour. I knew he wasn’t lying, but he was either telling us what we needed to hear to encourage us or was actually telling us the time it would have taken us if we didn’t have to keep stopping. And in this section we kept stopping.
Doris was having some serious problems. Mr. Odogo was carrying her backpack, and repeatedly he had taken her hand, helped her up a section, or used his body as a shield, standing between her and the edge. I almost envied her, although if I tripped, I didn’t think he’d be big enough to stop me from going over. I’d just take him with me and have company on the way down to our shared deaths.
Doris called for another stop. I was grateful. Not just that we were stopping but for the location she’d chosen. It was a fairly flat, wide section of trail, and there were even spots to rest with our backs against the cliff face. Doris took a seat, and I slumped down beside her.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
“Slow but steady, although I can’t seem to find any flowers to smell.”
“Maybe it’s time to take pictures of rocks,” I suggested.
“If I did that, there would be no shortage of photo opportunities.�
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I pulled out my water bottle and took a big slug of water. My breathing had quickly settled back to normal, but I could feel my heart pounding heavily. My lungs were responding to the rest, but my heart wasn’t. It was still reacting to the fact that we were on the side of a cliff and I was feeling fear. Pure fear. Why had my grandpa sent the kid who was afraid of heights up the side of a mountain?
“This is a little bit like having a baby,” Doris said.
“It is?”
“Yes. It’s a great deal of hard work; you take it one contraction at a time; and once you start, you really can’t stop until it’s over.”
I laughed nervously. “I guess I’m going to have to take your word for it.”
“You make sure you’re there with your wife when she has your babies. No loafing about in the waiting room.”
“I won’t do that.”
“I didn’t expect that you would. You don’t seem the sort to shirk from work or responsibilities,” she said.
“I try to do the right thing.”
“Even if it means waiting for an old woman to climb the mountain?” she asked.
“It’s not a problem for me,” I said. “Them I’m not too sure about.”
I gestured to the three Finns. They seemed to be doing better than they had been at the start of the day. They were on their feet, packs on, edging forward even while they were waiting. Actually I was grateful that Doris was here. Otherwise it would have been obvious that I was the weak link, and they would have been waiting for me. Now I could at least look gracious, staying with her, rather than being a weight holding everybody else back. I was tired and sluggish, and my feet—my incredibly big feet—were clumsy.
“Here come the porters,” Doris said as she leaned forward to look over the edge.
I didn’t need to look. I could hear them. They were talking among themselves and their footfalls were loud, moving fast even with heavy weights on their backs. The first poked his head over the edge of the ridge below us. On his head was balanced a load of gear. I knew that even if it was heavy, it wasn’t as heavy as what Sarah was carrying.
He pulled himself up to reveal that he had a pack strapped to his front and his back. It looked like the weight he was carrying was greater than his body weight. Of course, putting the two numbers together, he still didn’t weigh much more than I did if I didn’t have a pack on at all. There was sweat pouring down his brow and dripping from his face. It was almost reassuring to see that this climb wasn’t effortless for him.
We pressed closer against the cliff face to allow him to pass along the narrow path with his wide load.
“Jambo, assante sana,” he called out to Doris, offering her a smile.
“Karibu,” she replied.
“Jambo,” I said.
He looked at me and his smile disappeared. The same thing happened as each porter passed—friendly to Doris, openly ignoring me. I had obviously gained the superhero power of invisibility. At least with our porters.
“They really are being particularly nasty toward you,” Doris said. “And this is all because you asked for Sarah to come on this journey.”
I nodded. “At least they’re not discriminating. They’re not talking to her either.”
“These fellows should all be ashamed of themselves. Don’t any of them have daughters or wives? I know they all must have mothers.”
“Remember, they believe they came from a melon patch,” I offered.
“Even melons have mothers. They should show both you and Sarah more courtesy and kindness.”
“Where is Sarah?”
I looked back down the path. All the other porters had passed. Just then, as if on cue, she poked her head over the top of the ledge. She strained—little muscles on pencil-thin arms—to pull herself up. Her load looked much larger than that of anybody who had passed. Larger and heavier.
“Jambo,” she said. Her breath was strained and her face was beaded with sweat.
“You okay?” I asked.
“She is fine!”
I turned around. It was Mr. Odogo.
“She is both a Chagga and a porter, so she is fine,” he said.
I wish I’d known he was so close or I wouldn’t have said anything.
“I am fine,” Sarah agreed.
“Although she would be finer if she could be with the other porters. You must hurry your pace.”
He was speaking to her but looking directly at me, daring me to say something, to challenge him. I didn’t. I didn’t really think he’d push me off a mountain, but if he had wanted to, there was no better place.
“We all need to go,” Mr. Odogo ordered.
I offered Doris my hand to help her to her feet.
“Thank you,” she said. “You are a gentleman.”
We started climbing again.
I pulled myself up over the rise, and I could hardly believe my eyes. We were at the top of the wall! Stretching out in front of me was a long, steady incline. We still had to climb, but we’d finished the Breakfast Wall. It had taken us just over two and a half hours to climb the 240 meters of cliff. I was so happy, so thrilled, to be done that I almost started to giggle.
“We did it,” I said with satisfaction.
“Yes, you have scaled the wall,” Mr. Odogo said. “You have finished the very first part of our day’s safari.”
I’d been so focused on the wall that I’d lost track of the fact that it was only the beginning leg on today’s trip. “How much farther is it?”
“Not much. Four hours if we move fast, not counting a break for lunch.”
“But how far is it? How much farther do we have to go?”
“Are you tired?” he asked.
I almost lied but didn’t, because it never came naturally. I nodded.
“Then you will be much more tired at the end of this day. It is a very hard day.”
“Harder than the summit day?” I asked.
He laughed. “No day is harder than the summit.”
“Really?”
“Are you questioning my word again?”
“No…no, sir. It’s just that the Breakfast Wall was really hard.”
“It is hard but it is not high.”
“There’s a taller wall to climb than that one?” I gasped.
“Not taller, but higher.”
Now I was just as confused as I was tired. “I don’t understand.”
“The Breakfast Wall, the Barranco Wall, is the tallest single climb, at over two hundred and forty meters tall, but it is not the highest.”
“Okay, you’re saying it’s the tallest but not the highest. I don’t understand how that can be possible.”
He gave me the kind of look usually reserved for when you are trying to explain something very simple to a small child.
“It is tall, but it is also low. It starts at just below four thousand meters in height and then ends at four thousand two hundred and twenty. It is not high. It is low. High is the top of the mountain at five thousand eight hundred and ninety-five meters. So the wall is tall, but it is still not high. Do you understand?”
“Now I do.”
“You will see high and you will feel high as we climb. Nobody gets mountain sickness at three thousand meters. It starts now and with each step there is more chance. You will find that out.”
Or maybe I had already been finding that out.
“The secret is to go polepole.”
“I think you’re preaching to the wrong people,” Doris said. She pointed toward the Finns who had gotten up from their rest and were already well along the trail, leaving us all behind.
Mr. Odogo muttered something under his breath, and his face changed into the expression of annoyance he usually reserved for me. He called out and the porters, who were sitting in two groups—Sarah by herself and the others all together—all got quickly got to their feet.
“I must catch those men and try to counsel them,” Mr. Odogo said.
I almost blurted out that they s
eemed to be doing fine without him but was smart enough to keep my mouth shut. At least this once.
“I have ordered the porters to go forward to set up camp,” he said. “Except for one. She will be your guide for this portion of the trip.”
She could only mean one person. I was happy about that. There were lots of people in our group but only two other people on my team—Sarah and Doris.
“You must listen to her and remember to take it all slowly. You must remember that with each step you are closer to the top, but that each step is harder than the one before.”
“That’s not a very reassuring thought,” I said, once again instantly regretting the words as they escaped my mouth.
“Do you want reassurance or honesty?” he demanded.
“Honesty, sir.”
“Good. Now I must leave.”
He turned to leave, yelling out a few words in Chachagga to Sarah as she came toward us. She replied, nodding her head. She looked as tired as I felt. Leading the porters, Mr. Odogo quickly set off on the path chasing the three Finns, who were almost out of sight. I had no doubt that he’d catch them but didn’t understand why he was so upset with them. They seemed to be doing just fine without him.
“We must leave too,” Sarah said.
Doris was already on her feet, ready to go. She was a real trooper. I pulled on my pack and was ready to go as well.
It was strange, but I almost started to miss the climb of the Breakfast Wall. The slope we were on was much gentler but seemed to be without end. Short and steep now seemed more appealing. I never thought I’d think that.
Sarah led, followed by Doris and then me. As we traveled, it was apparent that Sarah was struggling even more under the load she was carrying. A few times she stumbled, once again almost toppling over before regaining her footing. She was sweating profusely and her breathing didn’t seem that much easier than mine or Doris’s. I was feeling increasingly guilty. It just didn’t seem right to allow a girl—one who was younger and smaller and weaker than me—to carry so much more than me. I knew what she was going to say and that I’d regret asking, but I had to.