After crossing ten miles of the arid savannah Ma’we and I reached the road to Illasit, an isolated Masai town in the late afternoon. The equatorial sun was dropping to the west. My backpack weighed a ton. JM the guide had warned about carrying any extra weight and I thought about throwing away my toothbrush.
The dirt track led to the local middle school.
The 2019 Kili Initiative team had yet to arrive.
Ma’we pointed to eight figures atop a hill. It was our crew.
“They’ll be here soon enough.”
At the school gate JM and Fast Steve were speaking to the headmaster, whose right hand grasped a long stick. The students were arranged by boys and girls for release from education. Ma’we whispered, “When I taught in this town, the headmaster beat any troublemakers at the end of the day.”
“I went to a school with nuns. They beat us all day long.” The 1950s had been a time of penal education.
“Same as when I was a boy. Now they don’t do it so much as threaten to beat them.”
JM introduced the headmaster, who requested that I speak to his charges.
“Sure.” I approached the students.
“Education is important. Knowledge is more important. Running fast is most important for Linet Masai and Eliud Kipchoge.” I lifted my right hand. “On your marks, get set, GO.”
They ran from the school yard with the wind, puffs of dust exploding beneath their feet.
Within ten seconds they were a hundred meters from me.
Even as a teenager I had never been that fast.
The headmaster smiled and left to attend to those students scheduled for detention.
None of them looked happy.
“Let’s go to the tents.”
Our camp had been set up by the tuk-tuk driver.
Female detainees stared out from the classrooms.
They looked hungry and I handed over my remaining lunch as well as my supply of chocolate.
Smiles gathered on their faces and I returned mine, thinking that was a good pound off my back.
Sitting with Ma’we and JM I asked how long they had known each other.
“We met in the late 80s teaching the Kenyan Army how to survive in the bush. We didn’t think that we would be friends, but here thirty years later two old men working every year for this Kili Initiative trek.”
“Not as old as me.” I had a a good ten years on both of them.
“I was 18 the first time I climbed Kilimanjaro. I had never been so cold, but I made it to the top. The problem was that my water had frozen and I was dying of thirst. I thought I was going to die, but by the time I got back to Kibo Hut, I was fine. I’ve been up to the top maybe a hundred times same as Ma’we.”
“Not everyone makes it the first time,” added Ma’we.
“You think I’ll make it?”
“Tomorrow if you can make it to the top of Lolapange, then you can make it to the top of Kili.”
I looked around me. Nothing was as high as Kili in the distance.
Snow tipped the rim.
It was over a million years old.
I felt older, but not as old as the team walking into the campsite.
They set up a table for cooking dinner.
“How was it?”
“We found our way together,” said Jackman and JM nodded, appreciating the backpacks were on the ground, instead of their backs. I felt the same way.
The Kenyan staple tasted better on an empty stomach.
“Good,” asked Maureen.
“Very good.”
Everything was always better when you weren’t alone.