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.