INTERNATIONALADVENTURE - Northampton Community College

of the valley below. We could see the plains of southern Kenya.
After about eight hours of hiking, we reached our camp in
the Shira Plateau with the snow-covered peak looming above
us. It is our fi rst real view of the top of the mountain, and it is
intimidating ….VERY intimidating.
Some thoughts from
yesterday:
As we were driving to the trailhead yesterday through miles and
miles of fl at savanna and farmland and numerous small villages,
it was fascinating to watch the people. In
every village, people were walking, work-
ing, talking. Children were playing. And
as we drove by, most stopped to wave and
smile at us. The young kids would yell
and laugh and wave like crazy. It was like
our little convoy passing through was a
highlight of the day. We all waved back,
and it seems we made some kind of very
ephemeral, but not completely meaningless,
connection with each other.
I asked Kambona what these people
think about Americans. He said, “The
people who live around here don’t know
Americans from Germans or Brits or
Spaniards. They only know ‘white people’.”
So I asked what do they think about
white people? “They are great,” he said.
But in the cities, he said, the people really
like Americans, but they hate George
Bush. We heard that theme several times
over the two weeks we were in Africa.
On our way up the mountain today, the stupid part of my
brain was silently complaining that the pace was too slow. But
the rest of me was grateful for the intentional pace. The guides
and porters regularly intone: “Polé, polé.” Slowly, slowly. It is
the mantra of Kili hikers. Slowly. Polé-polé. The slow, smallstep-by-small-step
pace can be frustrating as you bump into
the hiker in front of you, but is a wise – and remarkably effective
– pace. Hikers rarely exceed one mile per hour, but
14 NCC ● SUMMER 2007
Morning at Shira camp. Rain on the Shira Plateau trail. Climbing out of the Shira Plateau.
“ The mountain could
be angry, benevolent,
generous or spiteful.
The mountain made
so many things make
sense. The mountain
was omnipresent
and omni-powerful.
The mountain was
to be feared, loved,
worshipped.”
you soon realize that you are 1,000 feet above where you were
just a short while ago, and your breathing is comfortable, your
muscles relaxed.
There is a lot to be learned from polé-polé. Many slow,
small, intentional steps will get you to the highest peak as long
as each step is in the right direction. In our crazy-fast western
world, where everybody wants to get things done fast and move
onto the next task, polé-polé speaks about a better way – especially
for the really big projects that make profound differences
in people’s lives. Polé-polé. Slowly, slowly. But always unerringly
moving forward. It will get me to
this peak – literally and metaphorically.
All of us arrived at camp tired, but
we all seem to have recovered well with a
warm meal. I am sure the pace will only
be more polé-polé as we get to higher and
higher elevations.
Long hikes give you an opportunity
to think in ways that no other activity I
know of can do. Here is something I
thought today ….I’ll call it God’s Birthplace.
I learned that the word, Kilimanjaro,
is a botched up interpretation of a Chagga
phrase meaning “Mountain God.”
That got me to thinking. Kilimanjaro is
visible for hundreds of kilometers in all
directions, including from the southern
reaches of the Serengeti and from the rim
of Olduvai Gorge. Olduvai is where the
Leakey’s discovered fossils of the earliest
proto-humans. In this area 3.5 million years ago, hominids fi rst
walked upright. A million years later, their descendents began to
use simple rocks and bones for tools. A million years after that,
their descendents began to shape rocks ands bones into more
effi cient tools.
It doesn’t require a lot of imagination to envision one of the
earliest Homo sapiens, our grandfather or grandmother 40,000
generations removed, looking upon the snowy peaks of Kilimanjaro
far across the grasslands and experiencing the very fi rst