From UK to Africa
Thursday 17th June:
From the United Kingdom to Africa.
Off we go on yet another wonderful adventure. Neither Sara nor I know exactly what to expect but we know that this is not going to be your run of the mill holiday jaunt abroad! We have been kept very well informed, by Scope, as to what we should do to prepare ourselves for the pending ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa, and, although we have trained by walking further and for longer than either of us has done before, we are still not convinced that we have done enough. The furthest we have walked is just over nine miles around Kilburn but we were feeling particularly good that day and it only took us three hours to do it. Hardly the best training for walking a full day is it?
Anyway, whatever we have done will have to suffice because we are on now our way to Heathrow to meet up with the rest of the party and catch our flight to Nairobi. I've done my usual trick of turning up a little early, two hours early to be precise. Not to worry though, at least we have a better chance of getting some legroom!
The first of our fellow climbers we met was Mark. He turned up, as we did [and most of the others now I think about it] with a very expensive looking pile of practically brand new equipment. I did wonder at one point how much of this equipment would ever get used again? Soon after that the group started to gather and before long we were all kitted out with our supply of 'T' shirts [4 each] and we were sitting in the departure lounge awaiting our flight. The call came, thankfully right on time, and off we went. Even if you wanted to [and we didn't] it was certainly too late to turn back now. Whatever preparation we had done was all we would get a chance to do. The next time we put our walking boots on would be in Tanzania.
Just over eight hours and a fairly comfortable flight later we landed in Nairobi. Getting through immigration was hassle free for everyone as far as I could see. We were not asked to show proof of immunisation against yellow fever as we had been informed but you can guarantee that we would have been had we not had it. Once through immigration it was a case of 'milling around' for a while before we all went to board one of the three buses that were waiting to take us on the next seven hours of our journey. At this point most of us were still strangers and as such kept ourselves to ourselves with just the odd "Hello" and "Have you done enough training?" I never heard anyone say "Of course I have and I have no worries at all that I will make it to the highest peak on the mountain!"
The bus journey was not nearly as bad as I had first imagined it was going to be - in fact it was fairly comfortable given the state of the roads and the heat outside. The views started off as being spectacular until we had been travelling for a couple of hours. Then they all tended to blend into one; a flat top tree here, a strange bush there. We did see the odd Giraffe and at least one road kill. No one knew for sure what it was but several people had their own ideas. Dog and Zebra were both mentioned but my guess was a Hyena - although I could have been wrong. It didn't seem to be laughing too much when I saw it!
A stop for 'water and wee-wee' was quickly followed by a further stop to get through immigration from Kenya into Tanzania. This was an interesting experience to say the least. All of our rucksacks had to be removed from the roof racks of all three buses and we were required to 'claim' our own bag. As soon as you had identified your own luggage you were allowed to put it back on the roof again. A strange, and not too productive exercise to say the least, but hey, these are the people who will allow us, or not as the case may be, to enter into Tanzania and the next step of our adventure. The truth is that if they said it was Monday...It was Monday...OK?
We were then 'set upon' by a group of ladies selling whatever they were selling for whatever they could get for them. The group of ladies was so deep that in the end our bus crossed the road to pick us up because it was easier than us trying to make our way through them to get to the bus. It was all part of the wonderfully colourful and exciting adventure that we had embarked upon.
Once through immigration we settled down for the next and longest leg of the bus journey. Not long after we passed through immigration [about five minutes actually] Sara saw a mountain that she claimed "must be Kilimanjaro". As we were still about four-hours from the mountain her assumption was highly unlikely and frankly a little amusing. However, I made the same ridiculous assumption not thirty minutes later - so equal there on the daft mountain sightings, then!
We would discover just how wrong we were when some time later we did get our first sight of Kilimanjaro. We still had well over an hour to drive so you can imagine how far away we were from the actual base.
Nevertheless the sight of a snow-capped peak shrouded in clouds was spectacular. The resulting photographs would give some perspective as to how far away it was but nothing could compare with the first view of our challenge through the naked eye. It was to be our last view of the mountain until our second day walking.
Something to think about...
Kilimanjaro was still over an hours drive away when we first caught sight of it. Even from that distance it looked an awesome sight. Someone was heard to remark on it's size and speak with doubt as to whether they would be able to climb it.
I remarked that at this point it did indeed look awesome but that right now we didn't have to climb it. All we had to do was sit in a vehicle and reach the mountain. Sometimes in life some people will look at their goals in the far distant future and think that they look so awesome that achieving them just does not seem possible. The truth is that the distant goal might look unachievable from this starting point, and from this point it probably is. But we don't have to achieve the whole goal now, only the next small step. Keeping the major goal in sight is a great idea but we should not let the enormity of the ultimate goal put us off taking the next step.
The rest of the journey took us through a series of villages and towns and also included one more rest stop. Eventually, just twenty six hours after Sara and I had left home, our bus turned into what would be described at home as a cart track in need of repair. This was the main road up to our hotel.
Those who were allocated their rooms first and who had the foresight to go straight there to freshen up were the fortunate ones who got a warm shower. From listening to others at dinner, a conservative estimate of the capacity of the warm water tank would be about enough for four or five warm showers. The rest of us got a taste of what was to come over the next six or seven days, cold water. But hey, we were in Africa. We were intrepid explorers who were about to conquer our own little Everest. We weren't going to let a little cold water spoil the adventure!
Our first group dinner gave us an opportunity to meet at least some of the people we would be spending the next week with. Little did we know when we were being sparing with our personal information that within a week we would know more about each others bodily functions than our mothers ever did, or wanted to for that matter.
The walls of the hotel were covered with maps and pictures of the mountain and some of the people who had been before. Fortunately there was more than one photograph of people at the highest peak, Uhuru Peak. Looking at these pictures allowed Sara and I to create our own mental picture of us at the top. It's an easy enough exercise really. All you do is look deep into the photograph and focus on one of the people stood next to the sign that declares that they had reached the peak.
You then mentally change one of the faces in the photograph for your own face. This allows your unconscious mind to create it's own picture of you at the peak before you have actually got there. The trick is that you now know what success looks like so all you have to do is achieve it.
Mohammed Ali used to refer to this as "Future History". I have used this technique on many occasions in my personal and business life and as a result have been called 'lucky' more than once. From this point on, for me personally, there was little or no doubt that I would reach the highest peak in Africa. That done it was off to bed. Thankfully Sara and I, being the only married couple on the trip, had our own room.
Something to think about...
When we set out on anything in life we invariably have some kind of picture in our heads as to what we think the outcome will look like. This is called a belief. Beliefs about the future cannot be true simply because they have not happened yet. They are only based on the pictures of our expected results that we have painted in our heads. Whatever the picture you paint in your head, be it negative or positive, your unconscious mind will move towards that picture. Therefore if you have a fear of the future you can only have a fear of a picture of the future that you have painted in your head. Ipso facto, if you are afraid of the future the simple thing to do is to paint a better picture.
In this case I didn't have to paint a picture it had already been done for me. All I had to do was to look at the picture on the wall and re paint it in my head with ME in it. Once that picture was firmly in place in my head my unconscious mind had a goal to work towards. If you have a fear of the future - paint a better picture!