Beautifully Terrible: My trip to Mt. Kenya

Monday to Wednesday this last week we had what they call "mid semester recess". This means that we had no class from Friday afternoon until Wednesday and almost everyone leaves campus. Probably about 2/3 of the school goes to the coast to a place called Mombasa and hangs out at the beach. We too this opportunity to climb the second highest mountain in Kenya, Mt. Kenya. It would be an experience we would never forget. Here is a little song that I made up on our final hike down the mountain:

[to the tune of Gillagan's Island] "Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful climb that started from Kenya's sunny plains on a day just past its prime. The group, they were all from Daystar U. Six students brave and true. With one to lead the way for them. These adventurers brave and true."

That's all the farther I got. I can't tell you the complete story here because it took my 24 notebook pages to recount it in my journal...I don't want to write that much and I don't think anyone wants to read that much. I'll try to give the brief highlighted version here. Our group was made up of me, Hillary, Nick (both from Bethel too), James (Nick's friend from Daystar), Songii, and Agata (other Daystar students) and Mr. Masiga was the leader of the group.

We left on Friday afternoon and after going through the worst traffic I have ever seen, we finally arrived at the mountain at midnight only to find that our tents were not complete. None of them had stakes or tarps, some were missing poles, and many had small holes patched with duct tape. We managed to get 3 of the four tents put up enough to sleep in. Luckily it didn't rain that night, so we stayed dry. 

It is common practice here to hire porters to go up the mountain with you and have them carry things for you. I am SO glad we had them! I saw the food that we were bringing and was like "WHAT! I would never want to carry that!" We brought up milk for tea (the milk here doesn't have to be refrigerated), fresh produce like tomatoes, carrots, and cabbage, bread rolls, huge glass jars of Tang (yep they use it for camping here too), flour to make Ugali, rice and beef (it was so cold it was like it was refrigerated)! I don't know how they managed to get it up the mountain, but I'm glad they did!

I'm not really sure that I can call the trails we took trails. One was a waterfall. It was a very steep incline with many rocks that when it rained all the water flowed down. It rained. The next part was a huge bog. The closest visual that I can give you is the bog thing that Smeagle brought Frodo and Sam through in Lord of the Rings that had the dead people in it. This one had no dead people,  but i felt dead by the time I was out of it. We had to jump from one "dry" part of ground to the next and sometimes a part that looked dry was really just a huge mud hole covered by what looked like nice green plants, but really gave away under your foot covering it in mud. Then my feet got wet. This whole time I just kept thinking "On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand." It was a very good direct application to this verse. 

On the 3rd and 4th nights we got to stay in a cabin! This was amazing! It was very cold up this high-about 10,000 feet- and we would have been frozen and miserable had we slept in the tents, and probably wet too. 

The day that we went up to the top was the worst. I think we were all feeling a little altitude sickness and it was only supposed to take us about 3.5 hours to get up there and back down. We were going to have lunch back at the cabin when we were finished. It took us 8 hours. It was terrible. My water had a hair in it that was not mine and made it VERY unappetizing to drink, but I knew that I had to drink it anyway. There was snow up this high, but luckily the rain help off until we were almost done. However, it had rained the day before and all of our clothes were still very wet, especially our shoes and socks. That was dumb. The peak that we climbed to was at about 15,000 feet and it was so cloudy at the top we couldn't see anything...but on the way up we got some good views. This whole day I had a song stuck in my head called "Desert Song" by Hillsong. It was my theme song for the trip:

This is my prayer in the desert

When all that's within me feels dry
This is my prayer in my hunger and need
My God is the God who provides

And this is my prayer in the fire
In weakness or trial or pain
There is a faith proved
Of more worth than gold
So refine me Lord through the flames

And I will bring praise
I will bring praise
No weapon formed against me shall remain

I will rejoice
I will declare
God is my victory and He is here

And this is my prayer in the battle

When triumph is still on it's way
I am a conqueror and co-heir with Christ
So firm on His promise I'll stand

All of my life
In every season
You are still God
I have a reason to sing
I have a reason to worship

This is my prayer in the harvest
When favor and providence flow
I know I'm filled to be emptied again
This seed I've received I will sow

We all made it to the top and back down again. Our only injuries were sore and blistered feet, so that is a blessing. I can't say that I wish I hadn't climbed this mountain, now that I'm done I feel very accomplished. But I don't think I will ever need to do it again...at least not in the near future. For our credit, we did take the hardest route up. I'm not really sure why we did that. We students had no choice in the matter, but it's done now and we made it.

The scenery was really pretty! That was by far the best part. Here are some pictures, which of course don't even come close to the true beauty that we saw.

Hiking on the first day through the rain. 

Sunrise over our first campsite (this was before it started raining that day)

The view from half way up. We are level with the clouds (that later rained on us...)

The mountain we conquered. It may look innocent now...

Kenyan flag at the peak

Agata and Hillary on the rainy, waterfall trail on the long trek down.

 

Fires, motorcycles, giraffes...Oh my!

This week has been very eventful! It started on Sunday. We went to church with a guy named Lukas who is a part of the singing group Afrizo from Daystar. They are a group that tours around singing and promoting Daystar. They have some US tours too. They've been to Bethel a few times. Anyway, we went to a near by town called Athi River. The bus that goes to Nairobi dropped us off there. This town is on the smaller side, but still too big to walk everywhere. We had to take another form of transportation...motorcycle. They have a cool name here, but I can't remember it. This was the first time I ever rode a motorcycle and i was sitting behind a guy that I had never met and in front of one that I had only met a few minutes ago driving through gravel roads with huge pot holes. But surprisingly, it was fun. We never got above probably 20 mph, so it was just a nice drive. There was a lot of dust blowing that I could have done without, but all in all, it was an enjoyable ride.
The group Afrizo is amazing. They are all Daystar students, and I think they have a director, but she wasn't there with them on Sunday. Before the service, the church gave us tea, a very common practice everywhere here. While we were taking tea, the group started to warm up. They just said, ok lets sing this song ready, go...instant, beautiful harmony! I could have just sat there forever and listened to them. And I think most of the time they just make up parts and add them in and they always sound amazing. I love African singing.
On Monday, Hillary and I cooked an "American" dinner for some of the girls here who have cooked African meals for us. We made spaghetti, potatoes with pumpkin (what we would call squash), garlic bread, and fruit salad. It all turned out very good. I didn't think the sauce was as good as back home, but the rest was excellent. We don't have an oven here, so it's hard to think of truly American things that you can make with out an oven. I would love to bake something, but I can't :(
Then on Tuesday Bethel President Jay Barnes and his wife came to visit Daystar. He was here to officially sign exchange agreement between the 2 universities. Then we had lunch with him. It was kind of weird because I had never met him at Bethel, but then here in Africa i have lunch with him.
Later that day, there was a fire! Some background to this is that it is common to see fires around campus because they burn the garbage. On this particular day, we were in class and I could smell smoke. This was not that strange. I didn't think much of it. Then the smell started to get stronger. Finally, out teacher let us out a few minutes early because it was getting petty bad because the wind was blowing it it. We left the building to find men probably about 50 -20 feet way from the building trying to beat out a garbage fire that I'm assuming the wind caught and started the very dry grass arund it on fire too. Then there were students running with fire extinguishers to help out. But no one else seemed to care. They just looked and kept walking. They didn't even evacuate the building or anything. It's probably not the first time that something like that has happened. It is very common weather to be dry and windy here. It's just not how they would have handled it in the US. The fire trucks would have been on their way and the alarms would have been sounding and everyone would have to be at least 100 yards away.
One morning while Hillary and I were running, we looked up to see about 9 giraffes crossing the road about 50 feet in front of us. It was great. I will never get tired of seeing the wild life here on campus.

This is a matatu. I don't actually know how to spell that. This one is from Daystar, but the public ones are always super full and have yellow stripes on the sides.

Here are some of the girls I play soccer with :)

This is from when we went to Thika with the girl on the left and stayed with the woman on the right. That is one of her little boys behind me. I'm shaving coconut to make the Pilau.

I took this from a bus window

Just...life

Life here is starting to feel kind of normal. I say kind of because i don't think it could ever really feel normal, but I'm getting use to it. I eat the same meal for each day of the week (Tuesday is chipati and beans, Wednesday chips (fries) and meat, etc.). Sometimes the water runs out and I have to take a bucket bath, witch I don't mind so much. Classes are long and my hand sometimes feels like it is going to fall off from all the notes I was dictated, but it ends eventually. When the sun comes out it's really hot, but it's cloudy more often. I really enjoy washing all my clothes by hand. I get to be outside and listen to the birds and it's peaceful. Sometimes there are monkeys too! I go to soccer practice and hang out with some really sweet girls. I can't complain. It's pretty nice. 

The weekends are the time when more exciting things sometimes happen. This past weekend Hillary and I went home with a girl we met here. She is from a town about an hour away from Nairobi called Thika. It's a bigger city, but smaller than Nairobi. To get there, we had to take Matatous. They aren't really like buses or taxis because they have both of those here too. They are usually the cheaper form of transportation. They are like a van, probably the size of an Astro van with seats for 15 people including the driver. It's squished in there already with 15 people, but most of the time they manage to fit closer to 20 if not 25 if some of them are kids, into one. Needless to say, it is not the most comfortable way to travel. I feel like I'm in a clown car. 

We stayed in a house with a family that Lucy, the girl who took us, knows from here church. The woman has a shop in the market so we went and looked around there and went around the market for a while. Then we went back to her house and she taught us how to make an African meal. She is from Tanzania, but she said they make this meal a lot on the coast in Kenya. We wrote everything down, so I will attempt to make it when I get home. It was delicious!

*I tried to add pictures but they were loading super slow and I got tired of waiting. Sorry, I know that is 2 posts now with no photos. I will try again later. *