Dear Friends and Supporters,

 

We’re back…and exhausted! Who booked us on this then? Silly question – obviously Gail. Our mother managed to scale Kilimanjaro a few years ago. Despite having many other good ideas of how to spend those weeks of the summer holiday not already committed to internships, it made perfect sense to show her that we could do it better.

 

 

Getting Down to Kili

 

After a gruelling journey down there, which included a stop at Istanbul, sitting in Dar Es Salaam airport from 2 a.m. until 11 a.m. and a very shaky propeller plane to Kilimanjaro airport, we arrived in Moshi. Most of the journey was spent wondering whether our bags were actually going to arrive after seemingly necessarily paying ‘some guy’ $20 to ensure our bags were on board at Dar. The journey totalled 26 hours between Heathrow and the hotel, the latter being a subtle combination of sweat and dust.

 

The Ascent

An acclimatisation period of 24 hours (and a few beers) passed and we began the climb by driving to ‘the gate’, located on the Southern base of the mountain, where we met our entourage for the climb. There were ten porters in total including guides and a cook. This number was necessary in order to carry tents for both them and us, gear, food etc. We took the Machame route, commonly known as the ‘whisky route’, which is approximately 37 miles from gate to summit, starting at an altitude of 1640m. The first two days’ walking lulled us into a false sense of confidence that the walk would be easy and altitude would not be any burden. We arrived at campsites in half the time allotted – albeit that our porters, carrying much heavier packs than us were less that amused by our failure to take the early days seriously enough. This resulted in spirited games of ‘rock and stick baseball’ (ground not being well-kept enough for cricket) and getting to know the other hikers we had overtaken en route. One really evident observation was the suddenness of the change in terrain, flora, temperature and humidity as we climbed higher and higher. The base of the mountain (our first day and a half walking) was a thick, sweaty jungle – true equatorial landscape. Midway through our second day we blinked and found ourselves in a considerably less thick shrub-land, which quickly grew into a desert over the next hour or so of walking.

 

 

On the third day, we entered an alpine desert and had our first contact with back home, primarily to let Gail know, naively, how easy this walk was and how much of a fuss she had kicked up over nothing. Smugness compounded as we took an entire day off our predicted schedule for the route 

and arrived early at the highest camp, Barafu. Tom promptly vomited and I, having watched, could then not eat the soup served shortly after. Altitude sickness had arrived.

 

We began our final ascent to the peak at 1 a.m. of the fourth day hoping to arrive at the summit as the sun rose. It was on this steep climb from 4600m to 5895m that altitude sickness and fatigue collaborated to render us struggling and feeble as we wheezed and spluttered up the final few hundred metres. We reached the summit and we were dumbstruck as we watched the sun rise. An enormous glacier behind us was slowly illuminated and we knew we were witnessing a truly unique and unforgettable moment. The gradation of the colours in the sky as we watched the sun rise over the horizon was breath-taking.  A screaming wind kept the temperature down at -15c, so we had very cold fingers when calling Gail to apologise for our earlier mocking.

 

 

 Getting Back

The journey down was brief and easier with every step as the air got thicker, only taking a day and half. We followed the ‘Mweka trail’ down the mountain, finishing our whole trek in just 6 days and 5 nights.  Back at the hotel and with three days until our flight back home, again, the journey home promised to be just as convoluted as our route down there. It was then that AirBertie stepped in to save the day and got us back to Heathrow directly without the pleasantries of Dar Es Salaam, Istanbul or indeed anywhere else. Having completed our expedition, we can finally reflect on how important your donations to Combat Stress will be.

 

Many Thanks

 

Recently, a report from DASA (Defence Analytical Services and Advice) into the number of Veterans who have committed suicide since serving in the Falklands War was published. The study found that 95 Falklands Veterans are believed to have committed suicide or had an open verdict returned by a coroner. The very fact that the most up to date report on veterans’ suicide is from the Falkland era shows how little focus is given to researching and resolving problems with mental trauma from conflicts.

 

However unseen injuries of psychological trauma do not always end in suicide – Combat Stress  are currently working with 558 Falkland Vets, 49 of those turned to them only last year.

 

We apologise for joining a long list of people asking for donations, but we really do believe that Combat Stress are worth all the support that they can get, especially as mental care for veterans is so poorly funded in comparison to physical therapy, and such a large number of servicemen are affected with mental trauma.

Thank you so much to those of you who have already donated, especially as so many of you have been particularly generous. It means so much to us and the current and ex-servicemen you will help. If you have not donated yet, now is the time. I am now off to begin my second year at Bristol and Tom starts at Sandhurst next week.