Alright! Oh Yea! Uh-huh!
Climbing Mount Meru was quite an experience, and if I had a list of things to do in my life, I could now check of "climbing a mountain" with a big bold check mark. It took us 3 days to climb up, and one day to descend. We climbed about 1000m/day. Except on the day we summitted.
On the summit day we were up at 1am, starting to climb the mountain at 2am, and reached the summit around 6:45am. It was like I was back rowing, accomplishing that much before 9am! Luckily for us, there was a full moon just a few days before summitting, so even though it was the dead of night, there was hardly any need to use my headlamp. In fact, often times we were casting shadows across the rock faces. It was pretty darn cold up at the top, between the elevation and the wind, I was all bundled up and glad of it (quite a change from the first day, when I wore shorts and sneakers). And then after summitting, there were 4 more hours of hiking down to follow. I slept quite soundly that night.
After climbing Meru, Tim and I spent one last night at CCS (where we'd left the majority of our gear -- don't need too much on a mountain). I was lucky enough to talk to Isaac and the new volunteer at CCS. Isaac said that E's case is still being "investigated" (harumph!!), but that he's going to school now as a day-schooler. And he and I checked with the registrar before I left to make sure that he could switch from day-schooler to boarder whenever his case is resolved. So it's freaking annoying as all get out that he's still staying at Juvi, but it's good that the warden will let him go to school during the day (and it's lucky that this wonderful school is just a 5 minute walk away). The new Juvi volunteer said that he loves Juvi, would love to add some musical notes to the mural, and I made him promise to send me pictures.
And now I'm in Mombasa. An eight hour bus ride across the country side on Saturday (Valentine's Day) brought Dana, Tim and I to the shores of Kenya. But tomorrow we're heading out again (with one more person, Michelle decided to extend her stay, yessss!), down to Dar and then on the ferry to Zanzibar.
I'll try to post some pictures from the mountain, etc soon.
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I wish I were climbing a real mountain right now instead of the mental one I have fabricated. It soudns like youare having a marvelous time. I can't wait to hear about Zanzibar. Travel safe.
ReplyDeleteWe love you,
Mllelulu and Baba
Can't wait to hear more about all of your experiences! We miss you.....MK, Britt, Meg and Ryer.
ReplyDeleteWay to go Sadie, I just looked at your blog for the first time in VT, my computer time is even less in VT than in CA, and was just thrilled to see what you have been doing for the last few weeks. The mural is super cool, I'm sure it will bring a smile to those who live there, you never know how much a thing like that can mean...
ReplyDeleteMust have been a great trip up the mountain, isn't it great to try new things??? keep up the good work, i love you and wish you all the best travels, enjoy.
Here in VT things are going along steady but slow...i hope to speed up the process as i get more experience, what has been done looks good but it took forever.
On another note, i took a little ski trip with billy and his kids up into the green mountains last weekend and had a blast, 2 night in a little cabin, a foot a fresh snow overnight and wind so hard on the way out it almost blew me over....thats all for now, travel safe and greet the world with that wonderful smile of yours, you'll be welcome anywhere you go.
love,
dad