The Gift Of Light On Kilimanjaro

“Wake up, it is time!” a voice shouted in broken English, breaking the metronomic sound of the tent flapping in the wind.  It was 12:30am, and I didn’t have anything to wake up from.  I was up.

I put my headlamp on, grabbed the pack that I prepared a few hours earlier, and jumped out of the tent.  Game on.

It was about 15 degrees out, and I was at 14,500 feet on the slopes of the highest freestanding mountain in the world, Mt. Kilimanjaro.

I came here for an epic adventure, complete with the suffering such adventures entail, and I was loving every minute of it.

After a quick swig of water and a clif bar, our clock was punched.  “Okay we go – polé polé!!” shouted our lead guide Jacob. 

“Polé” (pronounced pō-lay) is Swahili for “slowly” and it had been a constant mantra from our guides for the past six days.  The idea being you climb slow and steady, to avoid altitude sickness and to avoid burning too many proverbial matches.

The weather was great, I was feeling strong, and we had about 5,000ft. of volcano to climb to get to the summit.  Off we went…

 

Go Big Or Go Home

In the spring of 2009 I decided to put climbing the Seven Summits on my bucket list.  As an avid mountaineer it’s one of those “I wish I could” type dreams.  And Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, is a great way to start.

Just visiting all the Seven Summits is an awesome goal, but climbing the highest peak on each continent is the kind of challenge I thrive on.

Full disclosure – it’s an outrageously expensive thing to do.  But by this time I had already seen my net worth grow substantially as a result of discipline and relatively simple living.  I knew I could afford it. 

Like everyone else I only get one go at a journey on this planet.  Damn if I’m going to sit on a beach or watch TV.

 

Gear Guilt

“We break here!” shouted Jacob.  We had been climbing for two hours and still had another three until the sun would mercifully show itself.  Despite the biting cold I was feeling warm and content.  Muscles are amazing heat generators.

Jacob lived in Moshi, the city closest to the mountain.  It’s a typical third-word city with a mix of older, ramshackle buildings and tin shacks held up by sticks.  At its worst it’s poverty that most first world people cannot fathom until they experience it firsthand. 

He and his assistant who went by David were amazing guides.  Fit, funny, and smart beyond their years, we laughed with them and followed their lead for 6 days.

They asked us about American culture and movies, and we taught them lyrics to Rolling Stones songs. 

But as the climb progressed I couldn’t help feeling a level of guilt at the difference between the guides and clients.  When the rain clouds presented themselves, we first worlders whipped out our expensive Goretex jackets. 

The guides had cheap knockoffs, usually with some holes in them.  Some of this was surely due to the heavy use, but it was apparent they didn’t have access to, or more likely couldn’t afford, real gear. 

I had climbed in other third world countries before including Peru and Nepal.  While those countries are also poor, I always found the guides were outfitted well. 

Kilimanjaro is a serious environment, and the last thing you want is to be drenched at 14,000 ft. with nightfall coming and no way to start a fire because you’re above tree line. 

That’s a textbook recipe for hypothermia. 

 

The Gift Of Light

This was also our only day with an “alpine start”, which is climber’s lingo that means leaving before sunrise.

During our break I couldn’t help but notice David didn’t have a headlamp, but was instead using a cheap flashlight that’d you’d find in a dollar store at home. 

A headlamp is important for having a light source while keeping your hands free.  Kilimanjaro has lots of sections steep enough to force you to use your hands to pull your body up or keep your balance. 

Plus a flashlight could easily be dropped and lost down the slopes, while a headlamp is secured on your body. 

“No headlamp David?” I asked him.  He just smiled and kept climbing.  David’s English was not nearly as good as Jacob’s and he often didn’t understand us, but he always had a smile.  Always. 

At that point I made a decision, “I’m going to give him my headlamp with my tip when we’re back down, it’s ridiculous that they don’t have them”. 

I had already been thinking about my tip, which is expected on these kinds of trips.  It’s recommended that clients tip 20% of the guiding service.  I was committed to giving my guides at least that much, plus some gear they clearly lacked. 

We summited Kilimanjaro that day, all of us.  It was beyond amazing, the roof of Africa. 

If you’d like to see what the final approach is like, have a gander.  That’s a huge glacier off to the left, still there but shrinking. 

 

 

Oxygen doesn’t come easy at 19,000 feet….

 

Swindled?

When we got back to Moshi, I tipped both Jacob and David handsomely for a job well done, and gave David my headlamp.  He smiled broader than ever and thanked me profusely. 

Some of the other clients also gave them gear, everything from expensive hiking poles to Nalgene bottles.  They had noticed the discrepancy too and we discussed it a few times.

We all had a few days left in Moshi to do whatever and many including myself went into town to shop for souvenirs. 

It was then that one of the British girls in the group came back to the hotel and said “I have some interesting news, I saw Jacob and David in town today selling the gear we gave them!  And they had lots of it – mostly headlamps, jackets, and hiking poles!!” 

She was clearly angry. 

So instead of keeping the headamp I gave him, a very nice and quite pricey model, David was selling it. 

Was he running a racket here?  A first-world gifted-gear side hustle? 

I have to admit my first reaction wasn’t anger, but a definite disappointment.

But wait.  Could it have been that David really needed the money more, but was just too embarrassed or linguistically incapable to ask for a pure cash tip instead of cash and gear?  I thought about it and came to a conclusion.

It just didn’t matter. 

I chose to give him the headlamp, along with cash.  Sure, finding out he was selling it left me with no doubt he had been given headlamps before by previous clients, and the girl saw that they had a stash of them.

But I gave him the item, does it matter that it was meant to serve a function for him to make his job easier?  The money he would get for it in town could also serve a valuable function, like maybe feeding his family. 

His kids can’t eat headlamps.

If you donate some clothes to tornado victims who lost everything and see them using some for another purpose or even reselling them, is that bad?

Were Jacob and David running a tad on the side of dishonesty by perhaps ‘pretending’ they didn’t have access to decent gear when they surely had been given it before, only to sell it? 

Maybe. 

Did it matter to me?  No. 

But for some reason it did matter to some of the others in my group.  The way I saw it, my gift to him was exactly that, a gift.  And he can choose to do with it whatever he wants.  For someone in his situation, selling it for money isn’t shady or dishonest, it’s survival.

 

Our Place In The World

As my plane took off from Kilimanjaro Airport I gazed out the window at Moshi from above.  I noticed how amazingly different third world cities look when you’re peering down on them.  

You see the roofs.  Not symmetrical shingles or neat rows of beautiful Spanish tile, but corrugated slabs of tin and torn blue tarps.

I thought about Jacob and David, and the hardships and struggle they surely endured in their lives.  And while reminding myself I needed to buy a new headlamp when I got home, I smiled at the thought of David selling mine in Moshi. 

I hoped I was able to bring just a little light to his life.