No Heavy Lifting

by Rob Simpson

  The first problem for the fellas: logistics and bureaucracy in the developing world. Despite the fact that they had properly filled out the necessary paperwork in advance, the customs agent they were dealing with upon arrival in Mozambique wasn’t going to cooperate. Unsure whether to pay him a bribe and afraid of being arrested if they did, the crew decided to hold their wallets. And without his palm being greased, the customs guy decided not to allow the professional equipment into Mozambique at all. Berg and Lepik were forced to shoot some limited video on their own personal camcorder and to take some still photographs while the HD equipment remained under government sequester. They did get all the gear back as they left the country, but for the first segments of the final product, they had to use their still shots, plus video from the documentary we’d made the previous summer, involving other kids and different hockey players.

  Meanwhile, as the first portion of their journey was winding down, I was flying into Nairobi, Kenya, to meet them at the airport. Unfortunately, I arrived fourteen hours ahead of them, and, no, there’s not a hell of a lot to do at the Nairobi airport.

  Typically in this scenario anywhere else in the world, I’d hop a cab or train to the nearby metropolis. In this case, it wasn’t such a good idea. Knowing I was going to be in Kenya for just that day and a brief layover on the way home, I didn’t really want to change any money. More importantly, the crime rate in Nairobi was off the charts at this time, and a popular pastime was the kidnapping of foreign tourists.

  Thus, I slept on and off in a chair in the “business class” lounge, drank tea intermittently, ate crackers, and occasionally took a lap around the portion of the airport in which I was allowed. Fortunately, Wimbledon was in full swing and I watched a lot of tennis on an international sports channel, and some bizarre foreign movies when the channel was changed.

  When I met with my four compadres before boarding our evening connection to Kilimanjaro, the crew was speechless with frustration. Lepik and Berg explained the aforementioned TV camera trauma. Berg was particularly stressed out, still concerned that his equipment had almost been permanently seized.

  The conversation then turned to Diamox (acetazolamide), the anti-altitude-sickness medication. I explained how I had taken, at the advice of my doctor, four pills in the morning and four in the afternoon each of the last two days in preparation for the climb, and how the stuff made me have to piss like I had something angry in my bladder that had to get out.

  Brender, in turn, described how his doctor had told him to take eight in the morning and eight more throughout the day, and that it also made him have to pee like a well-hung racehorse.

  Berg then said his doctor had told him to take two in the morning, two in the afternoon and two at night, but that he hadn’t taken any yet. I suggested he abstain completely to avoid excruciatingly intense, short-notice urination urges. Little did we know at this point just how much our Diamox-taking strategy would impact the success or failure of the overall endeavour. I decided to start taking one pill each morning and one before bed each night, Berg and Brender chose to take them rarely and randomly, while Chára and Lepik opted to forego the preventative medication altogether. We each took it upon ourselves to decide on the appropriate drug regime, given the inconsistencies in our various prescriptions and the fact that we didn’t really believe the drug would make a big difference to how we felt on the climb.

  Symptoms of altitude sickness can include headache, nausea and dizziness, loss of appetite, fatigue, shortness of breath, general indifference, and disturbed sleep patterns. All of us would eventually experience at least one of these ill effects. The most important key to avoiding these problems, aside from premedication, was gradual acclimatization.

  We were less than twenty-four hours from beginning our climb, but we still had to jump on a prop plane from Nairobi to Kilimanjaro Airport in Tanzania. What seemed like a routine connecting journey became anything but for me.

  Upon arrival, just beyond the southern slopes of Kili, I discovered my luggage had been lost. Normally, lost luggage involves a relatively minor inconvenience and eventual door-to-door delivery by the offending airline. In sub-Saharan Africa, not so much. My shit was gone.

  A pair of jeans, some flip flops, maybe a couple shirts, some toiletries — on a trip to Aruba, that would have been okay. But in this case, they had lost my big trek backpack and everything in it. The carefully compiled list of items from Worldwide Quest Agency’s pretrip checklist was gone. Hiking boots, heavy boots, winter coat for 19,000 feet, gloves, winter pants, socks, fleece, long-sleeved layers, boxers, sleeping mat, sleeping bag, retractable hiking pole, small first-aid kit, and my toque were all gonzo.

  As we rode in the shuttle from the airport to the Marangu Hotel, I took stock.

  Okay, we’re heading up the mountain tomorrow. I have nothing, and we have no choice but to start. Delaying the trip is not an option. Zdeno Chára (whom I didn’t know very well at the time, other than his public, hard-ass, hockey-machine persona) is going to kick my ass if I whine or somehow manage to screw up his trip. Or they’re going to climb and I’m gonna go home, or I’ll be sitting in Marangu for a week. Horrible.

  I did have my little NBC Torino Olympic carry-on backpack with me. As we pulled up to the lodge, the other guys hopped out with all their tough-guy hiking shit, like Doctor David Livingstone. I hopped out like Dora the Explorer.

  “C’mon guys, let’s go!” Not so much.

  Brender empathized. He was like, “Dude, we’ll figure something out.”

  Chára looked at me like, “You’re not screwing up my trip.”

  Berg looked at me like, “You’re not screwing up my trip.”

  Lepik didn’t even bother looking at me.

  Bottom line, I had held on to the items I would need to get my job done. I had my notebook and journal. I had writing implements. I had my little still camera, and I had my camcorder with enough backup batteries on hand to document the journey.

  In any situation on the road, I always try to make sure the items I’ll need to do the job, to perform, are on, or with, my body. I also had my running shoes; a rolled up t-shirt; my lucky, plastic travel lizard my son had given me years before; the clothes I was wearing; and one extra pair of mini-socks that came in the business-class airline kit.

  The five of us filed into a large wooden lodge that served as the dining room at the Marangu Hotel, where a couple of local women promptly served us bread, stew, and tea. We were the only ones in the room.

  The warm meal and the chance to sit and relax and chat as a group renewed the soul. We would soon be part of the same team, and although we didn’t really know what adventure or specific topography lay before us, we sensed we’d forever be bound by this once-in-a-lifetime experience.

  The walls were adorned with photographs and artwork of Kilimanjaro and its summit. The most startling realization was just how much the snow lines and glaciers on top of the mountain had receded in recent photos, compared to images from the 1970s and ’80s.

  The other realization: “Shit, we’re going up there?”

  Brender and I retired to our nearby cottage, Berg and Lepik to theirs, and Chára to his. As we shut it down for the night, my roommate, Brender, remained confident we’d find a solution for my missing gear.

  “Maybe you can buy something,” he suggested.

  As a delightful African day dawned, it turned out that Brender was mostly right. Instead of buying equipment, I’d be able to rent gear at the base of the mountain at the gate of Marangu National Park. This according to the man we would come to rely on for everything for the next six days, our head guide, a Tanzanian mountain man named Aloyce Manyanga.

  I didn’t have much in the way of leverage or bargaining power. There was a vendor operating out of a wooden shed in the parking lot just inside the park, offering up all kinds of supplies. I would end up renting most of what I needed for th
e equivalent of US$240. That seemed like a lot for renting clothes, but with no luggage whatsoever, and my journey beginning in an hour, the African vendor dude kind of had me over a barrel.

  I quickly got the feeling I wasn’t the first, nor would I be the last, who had lost his luggage on his way to the mountain. Aloyce tried to ease us through the negotiations in Ki-Swahili, and Brender chipped in a portion of the cost because I didn’t have the full amount in Tanzanian dollars.

  There were still key items missing from my newly acquired kit: a sleeping mat, layers of clothes, extra socks, and hiking boots that fit. The rentals were one size too small. My new teammates would offer up extra bits and pieces as the journey unfolded. Brender lent me an orange long-sleeved, sweat-free shirt, which I wore the entire time. Lepik eventually lent me socks, a winter cap, and gloves; Chára some sweatpants and some first-aid items.

  Aloyce had reached the summit of Kili’ more than a hundred times. He was a legitimate professional. Unlike some of the shady trek operators who often prey on European teenagers and rush them up the mountain, Aloyce preached patience and determination. We would be taking the second-longest and potentially most scenic route to the top. The less credible guides would hustle groups up what was called the “Coca-Cola” route, a commercial reference to Western tourists. These three-day jaunts directly up the Kibo trail on the southeast side of the mountain from Marangu often led to stories of altitude sickness and failure.

  While I was getting familiar with my new supplies, cameraman Berg and producer Lepik were getting familiar with the national park bureaucrats. For a little while, it appeared Berg and his equipment might be headed home. As opposed to seeing it seized for a second time on his trip, he was prepared to just pack it up and go home. After a great deal of angst, a little bit of palm-greasing and pleading, and some intervention from Aloyce, it was determined that, yes, Berg would be able to bring his camera onto the mountain.

  With that hurdle cleared, we left what we hoped would be our eventual finish line coming off the mountain, Marangu National Park. We stuffed our equipment, our now six-man group, and a driver into a white Suburban for a miserable four-hour ride to our starting point near the Kenyan border. We wound towards our destination northeast of the mountain on narrow gravel and dirt roads, which eventually became a future highway under construction. The road construction was in its infancy and, based on the lack of progress and the primitive means of development, it was clear that the infancy was going to last a long, long time.

  We occasionally passed enormous boulders, idle backhoes, road wideners, or stray animals, but for the most part we passed stray people. No one can afford cars, few can afford bikes, so most Tanzanians walk miles and miles along the side of the road from village to village.

  Every person — whether a school kid, an old man, a family, or a scantily clad professional girl standing very close to the road — every single person would stop what they were doing and watch our van go by and ogle at the foreign occupants. I swear I made eye contact with practically every person we passed. Based partially on my previous experience in Africa, I knew many of these people were desperate for any form of prosperity or escape. It seemed they were trapped in the moving landscape, some dying for an opportunity to jump in the van and ride away.

  Being just a few hundred miles from the equator, it was too hot not to ride with the windows cracked open, but with the windows cracked open, the dirt and dust from the roadway poured in. The dry landscape became palpable inside the van. Aloyce’s driver was moving along at a pretty good clip, when he didn’t have to stop at a narrow section to let an oncoming truck pass or slow down to buck through some enormous ruts in the road. Dust gradually filled our eye sockets, our mouths, our noses, and coated our skin and hair. Once or twice, the driver made a wrong turn and had to be corrected by Aloyce and double back. These unplanned detours were almost unbearable.

  Finally, we reached a little wood-and-mud hut village called Nale Moru, in a region called Rongai, near the northeast corner of Tanzania. We turned left off the main road and followed a narrow lane up toward the mountain. About a mile along, we came to a shed, an outhouse, and a camping area where a few dozen African men had congregated. They were mountain porters looking for a gig. From this group, Aloyce would select the twenty or so men who would carry our supplies, food, camping materials, and TV equipment up and down the mountain.

  For the six-day trek, most of them would each make a total of about twenty-five bucks. We stood around for a few minutes, took a couple of photographs, and then, suddenly, we were beginning our hike up the lower reaches of Kilimanjaro.

  The mountain is actually made up of three peaks. Kibo, or Uhuru, is the highest: the snow-clad dome, the one in all the photos, and the one we were attempting to summit. Local tribes call it the House of God; others call it the roof of Africa. At 19,340 feet, Uhuru Peak is the continent’s highest point.

  The second peak, Mawenzi, is the next-highest spot, about 3,000 feet shorter than Kibo, and made up of rocky spires. About 800,000 years ago, a decent portion of its northern wall blew away in an eruption, leaving jagged remains behind. East of the main mountain and connected to it by a formation called “the saddle,” the crater of Mawenzi would be our last stop before stalking Kibo.

  Shira, the third and lowest peak, an extinct volcano, sits in the distance to the west, and wouldn’t be a factor in our climb.

  With its elevation and the fact that it is a total of fifty miles long and about twenty-six miles wide, Kilimanjaro is the largest free-standing mountain in the world.

  Our trail on the first day wasn’t unlike the road we had travelled on: pure dust. Not long into the hike, my almost-new Asics running shoes had turned brown. The pace was slow on purpose. Aloyce introduced us to a phrase that he would repeat over and over again during the trip, especially when times got tough, “pole, pole” (pronounced “pole-lay, pole-lay”), Swahili for “slow determination.”

  “No hurry. No hurry in Africa,” Aloyce would say.

  We climbed gently and consistently through maize and potato fields, and then through dry forest. We hiked for about three and a half hours, ascending 4,000 feet, and then camped in an area of thick underbrush and vegetation just below the encroaching moorland. Our campsite sat at 8,600 feet.

  “Hey, Brender,” I said, “if this was Idaho, I’d be snowboarding right now. Here, I’m walkin’ around in a long-sleeve shirt!”

  The porters, who had rushed ahead, had set up our tents, boiled water, and prepared dinner. We ate together in a dinner tent, washed up as best we could, and jumped into our tents at dusk, about 7:00 p.m.

  “It was steeper than I thought it was going to be,” Chára stated. “Harder than I thought.”

  During this first day, our cameraman Berg came to a realization: The African mountain porters were permanently acclimated. He wasn’t. Thoughts of carrying his own camera up the mountain, mostly out of concern for its well-being, were abruptly discounted as he began getting winded an hour or so into the day’s journey. He quickly came to trust the three extra porters hired specifically to tote the TV gear.

  A routine was quickly established, and it would repeat itself for the next five days. When it came time to shoot something, the porters would hand Berg the gear, he’d set-up and shoot, and then hand it all back to them. Lepik, who toted the tripod and a large backpack during the first part of the day, also relinquished the extra weight.

  “I’ll be handing some of this off to the porters,” he said. “A 10, 12, 14 percent grade with all this stuff is no easy task. There will definitely be some strategic reduction going on.” Eventually, all of us westerners would end up carrying just our smaller backpacks and water supplies.

  The warmth at this altitude, just three degrees of latitude south of the equator, would last only as long as the sun was shining. When the sun went down, the heat quickly dissipated. Equator or no equator, at 9,000 feet, d
arkness means coldness. I realized this when I popped out of the tent to take a leak on night one. I also realized something else.

  “Holy Moly, Brender,” I said to my tent-mate. “Check this out!”

  From horizon to horizon, in all directions, with no light pollution to speak of, we saw stars, stars, and more stars — like, every star ever created. On ensuing nights, with even less vegetation around, it became even more phenomenal. I had seen otherworldly views previously in Alaska and other places way up north, but nothing like this.

  We were small.

  On day two, we arose to what became a standard daily breakfast: porridge with honey, toast, a fried egg, and a piece of sausage. Conversation was still a bit tentative. The group was still new to one another, and we could all sense a bit of apprehension for what lay ahead. Berg and Lepik chatted about their equipment. Then we learned of some early symptoms of altitude illness.

  A couple of the fellas felt dizzy overnight, while one or two experienced headaches briefly. I was surprised to hear it, especially from the super-human Bruins captain, because I didn’t suffer from these symptoms at all. I just couldn’t sleep. I slept for maybe two hours the first night.

  “You guys ready for this?” Chára asked as we finished eating. “Just seven hours today.” He smiled.

  We washed down breakfast with a cup of tea, rolled up our sleeping bags, and prepared to head out. We grabbed our daypacks, and, not unlike James Earl Jones disappearing into the cornfield in Field of Dreams, we walked single-file behind our guide, Aloyce, into a gap in the surrounding tall brush. The campsite vanished immediately behind us. The first of two three-and-a-half-hour treks was underway.

  The porters would stay behind, pack up, and carry everything to the next campsite. It was a daily ritual: an hour or two into each hike, sixteen porters would catch up to us, pass us, and move on ahead to the next overnight location. We marvelled at the ability of each guy to carry forty pounds of gear, barefoot or wearing second-hand shoes at best, while hopping over rocks and ruts and moving at three times our speed. The five Africans who stayed with us the entire time were Aloyce, his assistant head guide, and the three porters carrying the TV equipment.