Homecoming & Kilimanjaro

The day after Christmas, Kemi and I took a bus to Bunda, where most of his mother’s side of the family resides. We had stopped by here on our way back from Dar es Salaam in 2006, when I had tried (and failed) to get a teaching license from the Ministry of Education. I had almost completely forgotten about this part of my 2006 trip, I guess because we only spent a day and half there and I didn’t write in my journal about it, but it all came flooding back as soon as I arrived at aunt Ester’s house and we settled down for a meal I had been looking forward to all day.

Kemi informed me that night that he planned on visiting his mother’s grave the next day. I asked him if it would be okay if I joined him and he agreed. We spent the early afternoon the next day visiting another aunt’s house and her family, and when we returned to Ester’s Kemi got the terrible news that his relatives did not know exactly where in the graveyard his mother was buried. I suggested that he still try and find it, and that even if he couldn’t find the exact plot he would still be near her and be able to sit and speak to her. We set off shortly thereafter, walking to the outskirts of the town, then slowly ascending a hill into rolling farmland.

The graveyard was neither marked nor enclosed, and consisted of about 30 graves, some with concrete slabs and crosses, but most modest mounds of earth with long dead flowers and arranged stones signifying their presence. Kemi’s mother was buried in one of these modest graves and sadly we were unable to find it. I left him alone for a bit to be with his thoughts and noticed that some of the farmland was creeping into the graveyard, with at least one grave converted into tilled ground. Returning home from our high vantage point we could see a large swath of Lake Victoria in the distance, with a radiant sunset providing a beautiful ending to a relatively bitter trip.

The next day was homecoming, something I had been looking forward to for almost 4 years. Walking to the Emanuel’s house from the bus station, Mugumu looked pretty similar to how I had left it:


Upon entering the house, however, things were very different. The house was far more barren than when I had last lived there. The goats, generator, bicycles, motorcycles, television, VCR, and much cooking equipment were gone. The largest bedroom in the house, which I had been given when I lived there, now housed two beds where four to five of the family members slept. The wardrobe where I had stored my clothing and books was now moved into the central area where it housed cooking equipment. The family was indeed worse off financially then when I lived with them in 2006, but I realized that the biggest factors for such perception of discrepancy were the ends the family had gone to 4 years ago in making sure I lived comfortably, and the general state of ignorance my 18 year old self was in, entranced by the incredible shift my life had taken.

While it seems trivial, something that affected me was the fact that their neighbors, who owned the land in the front yard of their house, had taken it back and made them grow a barrier of shrubs. This meant that to leave the house to get to town we had to go through the back yard. I had considered the road leading from the front yard to have been “my block”, only using the road leading from the backyard when I headed towards the library, or, later, to Kisangura Secondary (when I was given permission to teach there). We were now the only house on the block without access to the “front yard road”, and walking along the “back yard road” I would rarely be able to see and greet any of the neighbors, and couldn’t use any of the shortcuts I had learned to get to various points in town.

But forget all that. This was all trumped by the immense joy that was being back with my African family. And there they are:


Standing outside the back door to the house, from left to right, Kemi, Kadada, Doto, Emanuel (back row), Jenny, Jackie (front row). Kulwa, Doto’s twin, was staying with relatives in Mwanza for his school break, and I was sad to miss him (I’ll see him when I return in July). There was a new addition to the family, Emanuel’s second granddaughter, Ester:


Here are all the chilluns together (Doto, Jackie, Jenny, Ester):


There was another new face, Twaribu, Emanuel’s son with another woman (didn’t get the full story, but Kemi told me that while his mother was angry, she still stuck by Emanuel’s side):


Homeboy was hilarious. He’s an aspiring artist and rap/R&B singer, with one of the best musical monikers I’ve ever heard: Cathode Hood aka Q Lean Star. When we meet again, my Western friends, I’ll play you a video I took of him singing his sure to be hit, “If You Want Me Shorty, I Need To Know.”

My main crew during my week in Mugumu consisted of Kemi, Twaribu, and my friend Emanuel. Here’s a pic of me and Emanuel at his house with his 1984 jeep:


I had a hell of a time tooling around in the backwoods around Mugumu with this thing. The gears are really shot, you have the pump the brakes ridiculously hard to slow down, and you can’t turn the steering wheel until you get above about 10 mph, making backing up in tight spaces quite an adventure. We drove it out to a newly constructed dam sculpted out of the natural landscape about 15 km out of Mugumu, and to Enyamai Primary School, the English-Medium boarding school I taught at, which has since moved about 10 km out of Mugumu.

I also got to hang out with my good friend Fredrich, a local artist I befriended and would practice drawing with:


In 2006 he made me a stamp of approval: a stamp that says “Seth Congdon Approves”. This time around I got him to make me a stamp of disapproval: a stamp that says “DERP”. For instance, Super Sink Bus Services gets the DERP stamp (see previous entry):


It took us a couple of days to procure some bicycles but we finally made it out to Kisangura Secondary School. The students were on break so I had free reign to check out my old place of employment.


The corrupt headmaster during my brief tenure there had thankfully been transferred. His replacement seems like a stand up fella. Here the two of us are:


There were a number of new structures, and the school had expanded quite a bit, with three or four sections now for each form (grade). A dormitory for orphaned girls had been built and was being utilized, and another was being constructed. The school now had a meeting hall, which also housed a kitchen. I asked if the students were now getting food (when I taught there all they got was a cup of tea, while the teachers got a cup of tea and two pieces of chapati), and the headmaster smiled and said no.

I was very excited to check out the recently built science laboratory.


Most government schools don't have the funds to build and stock a laboratory, and thus the majority of Tanzania's students automatically fail the practical portion of the terminal exams (which determine if students get funding to go for further education). While Kisangura now had one itself, there turned out to not be a Biology or Chemistry teacher at the school, so the lab was not in use anyway. I thought to myself, if only these were the conditions the school was in when I arrived to teach four years ago. A headmaster who actually would allow me to teach there, science positions open, and a laboratory waiting to be piloted. A great opportunity exists here if anyone out there is interested.

The lab had a good amount of textbooks (though most were from the '80s and early '90s):


A decent selection of chemicals, glassware, and other equipment:



A hand crank centrifuge!!


...and even some microscopes:


After we had rounded the campus we retired to the headmaster's office, where he took a small strip of paper and wrote a note for me: "check with .... project, I think they are misusing your funds". I asked if he could explain further, but he said he could not. I wasn't able to stay long enough in Mugumu to really get any facts, just speculation and hearsay, but it seems that to a much, much smaller degree than before, some funds are still being pocketed. It disappointed me but I can't say I was very surprised.

Back in town a local duka la dawa (medicine shop) was offering some interesting products:


"Sure being a virgin is lame, but with Xtreme Virginity Herbal Soap you can turn that '16 Candles' virginity into 'Teeth' virginity! (warning: may not actually cause vagina dentata)"

And likethat (finger snap) my time in Mugumu was up. I'll be returning for a week with my ma and Will in early July, though.

Kemi and I embarked on our fateful bus ride to Arusha (see previous entry) and we said goodbye for a week the next day when I hopped off our bus at Moshi, while he continued on back to Dar es Salaam, where I would be joining him after I got down from climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.

I met up with my four roommates who had all been doing some traveling of their own and we set off on what was probably the hardest physical (and for some portions mental) task I've ever done. My apologies, but sitting here more than a month and a half after I got down, without any journal entries to refer back to, my description is gonna be somewhat skeletal (a combination of work becoming more busy and a horrible show called Lost sinking its teeth into me has led to a prolonged procrastination from finishing this entry). My photos start when we got to the campground on the second day:

To fill in the gap: the first day was about an 8 hour climb up a pretty steep path that cut through rain forest in a light rain, not too bad. We left the rain forest at the beginning of the second day and took a less vertical route through moorland with some brief rock scrambling.

The only views we got of Mt. Meru during our climb was at the second campground, but the sky cleared just in time for us to witness a gorgeous sunset light it up:


Day 3 we moved out of moorland into alpine desert, and it started to snow. We made our way to a large volcanic rock formation called the Lava Tower:


For almost the entire hike that day it was either hailing, snowing, or raining. Finally at the end of the day's hike the rain let up, and our harsh surroundings gave way to a valley filled with miniature water falls and these tropical looking plants:


At the bottom of the valley was Barranco camp. Here's a picture of Frede, our fearless leader, outside our food tent there:


The sky that night was very clear and you could see the lights of Moshi in one direction and the top of the mountain in the other:


It turned out we were climbing the mountain at the same time as a host of celebrities including Jessica Biel, Santigold, Lupe Fiasco and Emile Hirsch. They were filming a documentary for MTV trying to promote clean drinking water, check it out: www.summitonthesummit.com. They're looking all shiny and airbrushed in an obviously fake pic of them at the peak. They and their crew numbered 45 and they had 240 porters. We heard from one of the people on their crew that the porters had to run up and down the mountain everyday to get them random items that they requested.


We discovered this all on the fourth day when we had to climb up the side of a big cliff called the Barranco wall, and there was a huge traffic jam cause of all their porters and them. It should have taken us like an hour to scale the wall but it took us almost 2. To commemorate the ordeal we made up a song: "240 porters on the wall, 240 porters, one gets sent down to get an espresso machine/TiVO/ manicure set etc. etc., 239 porters on the wall..."


After reaching the top of the wall it was still a long hike to base camp. Upon arrival we found ourselves in a depressing place. Out of all the camp sites, it was by far the most in disrepair:


Save for some mosses and lichens, nothing grew here. We nicknamed the terrain "alpine wasteland". The soldiers unfortunate enough to have to work at the ranger station there sat around chain smoking and getting wasted on Konyagi sachets all day. I think the thing that most impacted me, though, was the ever present layer of mist, which thinned and thickened throughout the day, but mostly thickened:


After we got down from the peak, in an incredibly exhausted state, the mist was so thick we couldn't find our tents. Before deep despair set in we were able to find them, though. When the mist thinned and I could actually see my surroundings it reminded me very much of the surface of Mars:


The ascent to the peak began at 12 midnight (we had an early dinner and got to sleep around 7 PM). When I say this climb was probably the hardest physical task I've ever done, this ascent accounts for 95% of that statement. It was an incredibly and relentlessly steep, freezing cold march for almost six hours straight. As we got near to the end of it, and it looked like some of us were rapidly losing the energy and motivation to continue the porters and guides around us burst out into rounds of spirited chants that I'm sure saved a few of us. I seemed to be an exception in our group, as I had not started to feel any effects of altitude sickness, and I seemed to be the only one with a powerful thirst who drank lots of water and took lots of pee breaks. We finally reached the top of the incredibly steep portion of the ascent, Stella Point, just as the sun was first starting to rise:


From Stella Point it was just about a 20 minute stroll along an easy incline to the peak, and I hopped around, full of energy somehow, taking tons of photos (I'll get them up on facebook soon enough).


Thankfully it was very crowded at the top, so no one was tempted to try this


Here's Emilia, Charles & I at the peak:

On the way back from the peak the sun had fully risen, and the views were breathtaking:




The descent was just as steep as the ascent, and you had to act like you were skiing as you skidded down to avoid taking a nasty tumble:


Once we had gotten past Stella Point, and the climbing became much easier, I foolishly stopped drinking water frequently, and on the way down I finally started to get a pounding headache. Three bowls from a huge pot of delicious stew back at base camp saved me.

That's all folks!