AFRICA!
A dream come true...I finally reached my seventh continent and even prior to my 40th birthday (which was my goal) and I got paid for it, as well!As I wrote earlier, I signed on to work again with World Challenge Expeditions out of London and Boston to lead a group of 9 teenagers and two teachers to northern Tanzania for one month. The group consisted of 4 students and their teacher from a wealthy private school in Palm Beach, Florida and 5 students and their science teacher from a school in Northampton, England.
The individual schools did not have enough students to launch their own expeditions, so World Challenge paired them up and as I was visiting mom in Florida and then visiting family in the Netherlands (just a cheap flight away from England), it was a natural choice for them to assign me as the expedition leader.
Preparation for the expedition started for the students in January of 2006. At that time, the teachers chose a location (in this case, Tanzania) and the students started working on designing an itinerary and raising money for their (very expensive) trip. As it turned out, the American students got almost all of the money from their parents and the English kids raised almost all of it themselves. This was just one of several differences between the 2 groups but one that caused the most problems later on.
I was informed of my placement with this team in late February and started making arrangements to fit our travel plans around the pre-expedition meeting schedule. I met the American kids and their parents at their school in early May and then met the English kids and their parents at the school in late May.
After lots of emails with the teachers to coordinate visas, vaccinations, and transportation for the Build Up day, I said good-bye to Michiel and my father-in-law and headed off to England for 1 day of preparation with the English half of the team. We checked gear, discussed roles and responsibilities and tried to get some sleep on the floor of the teachers' lounge at the school while blocking out the booming bass of the wedding band in the gym next door.
We got a ride to Gatwick the next morning, where we met the Florida group, who had already taken 2 planes to get to England. We spent almost the entire day on the floor of a small hallway in the airport getting to know one another (ice breaker games, interviews, etc.), clarifying the roles of team members, setting the rules of the team, planning for our first 24 hours in Dar es Salaam and discussing health, safety and hygiene.
The philosophy of the World Challenge is to facilitate growth and development by having each student take turns performing set roles, including leader, food manager, transport manager, accommodation manager, accountant, health manager and environmental officer. My job was to help them learn what they needed to do to be successful in each role, to keep them safe and to teach them how to take care of themselves so they remained healthy. The main vehicle for feedback was the nightly review session which is never popular with teenagers....especially since they tend to only hear how perfect they are from their over-indulgent parents. My honest and, sometimes, brutal feedback wasn't really welcome, but in the end, not one of them got sick, nothing got stolen, they managed to arrange a 4 day trip to Zanzibar, which they were afraid they wouldn't be able to afford and they had $20 per person left over in their budget to go towards food and lodging. (Considering that their normal daily budget for food was $4 and $6 for lodging, $20 was a significant amount of money.) I guess I can say that the trip was a success!
It wasn't all fun and games for me, however. The adults proved to be very difficult to manage and a couple of the teenagers were....well....teenagers - head strong, argumentative, bossy, etc. (Hey! I'm sounding like an old lady.) but the positive side was that Tanzania is an incredible country to visit and travel with World Challenge allowed me to do project work and spend more time in communities I would never see as a regular tourist. Additionally, traveling with teenagers who are still so open to strangers offered me the chance to get closer to local people than I would have otherwise.
Tanzania
The itinerary was broken up into 4 parts: acclimatization, main trekking phase, project (community service) and R&R (rest and relaxation). The destinations for the acclimatization and main trekking phases were determined by the students prior to departure and were pre-booked by the company. The project location was chosen by World Challenge and the R&R location was at the discretion of the group while in-country and was paid for with extra pocket money.
Acclimatization: The acclimatization phase is meant to give the participants a chance to get acquainted with customs of the country, the way transportation works, the currency, the pace, camping and trekking and most importantly, the altitude. The idea is that groups will travel to a destination and do some treks that will prepare them for their main trekking phase.
We flew into Dar Es Salaam via Dubai on Emirates (great airline, by the way) and traveled by bus to Morogoro, which lies about half way between Dar and Dodoma, the capital. Our acclimatization treks took place in the Uluguru Mountains just outside of Morogoro. Our guides were provided by the Cultural Tourism Programme (CTP), a nationwide organization of Tanzanians who are trained to give guided treks and culture information. They were friendly, fun, knowledgeable and completely committed to working with our ethos of student leadership. (This was a real challenge on earlier trips to South America. Most guides are trained to only work with adults as leaders and had a hard time taking requests or working together with teenagers as leaders. The guides in Morogoro were excellent in this respect.)
Here are some photos of the headquarters of the CTP, Morogoro and the first day trek up to a former German hotel from the early 1900s when Tanzania (then Tanganyika) was a German colony. There was also a kindergarten on the grounds of the CTP office, so we enjoyed the singing and sweet, shy smiles of little kids each morning when we awoke.
Learning how to eat ugali - a sort of corn meal mush rolled into a ball and dipped in stewed tomatoes
Trekking in the Uluguru Mountains and photos from the small town of Kinole
Singing with local kids
Banana market and brick making
Downtown Kinole and a view of the Uluguru Mountains from Morogoro
Main Trekking Phase: The group had decided that they did not want to climb the highest mountain in Africa, Kilimanjaro, but preferred to climb Mt. Meru, the 5th highest mountain in Africa. Meru is nearly 15,000 feet high (4,562 meters) and the trek takes 3 or 4 days to complete. We opted for the more reasonable 4 day trek starting from Arusha National Park and due to the experience and professionalism of our guides, the great weather, Diamox (anti-altitude sickness medication) and sheer perseverance, everyone summitted.
The trek is one of the best I've ever done, especially the first half hour trekking through the grassland with giraffes, warthogs (wrattenzwijn) and buffalo and the views into the volcano itself from the peak. From the entrance gate, we climbed through moss-covered trees to the first hut at Miriakamba (8,500 ft/2500 meters). On the second day, we climbed to Saddle Hut just above tree-line at 11,700 feet/3570 meters and did a side-trip up to Little Meru Peak (12,500 feet/3800 meters) to acclimatize to the elevation. That night, at just before 2:00 AM, we left our hut for our ascent under a crystal clear, starry sky. As we slowly, slowly (pole, pole in Swahili) climbed, our guide sang Swahili songs about angels. It was absolutely magical being serenaded in the darkness with just the dots of headlamps along the trail and the stars overhead.
We watched the sun rise behind Kilimanjaro in the distance and finally reached the summit at 8:30 AM, where the teachers pulled out letters for the students. When I had met the parents in May, I asked them all to write letters to their kids for them to read on Meru's summit. Luckily, they all made it. Needless to say, the exhaustion and the emotion brought almost all of them to tears.
That day was incredibly long and our breakfast of biscuits and tea didn't do much to hold us over, but everyone made it in various states of brokenness back down to Miriakamba Hut after nearly 15 hours on the trail. Brutal!
We hiked with an armed ranger to protect us from charging buffaloes but later saw the ranger use a small rock to frighten one off the trail.
Moss forests and on the trail with our guide, Whitey (that was really his name!)
Kilimanjaro from Meru and the ash cone of Meru from the peak
Read on in the next posting about our project and R&R.
