Mount Meru...best described as: Amazing Misery!

So I decided to climb Mt. Meru this past weekend after much humming and hawwing about the money situation mainly. I finally decided to do it, so we went to the company's office last Friday and picked up all of our extra gear that we hadn't brought! Free Rentals! This gear mainly consisted of winter clothes lol, something that was extremely odd to be trying on while I was in Africa, and it was about +27 outside that day.

Our crew consisted of 4 other people from the house I live in, and 6 Porters, 1 Head Guide, 1 Assistant Guide, a Chef, and a Ranger for safety. We also decided to do the 3 day climb versus the 4 day climb, simply for affordability's sake. This probably wasn't the best idea for me, haha oh well you live and you learn.

So....DAY ONE.....Saturday.

We woke up quite early, and packed the last of our belongings, ate breakfast and headed out to meet the truck. You wouldn't think there would be much to pack, but layering is essential, and we ended up having 3 big backpacks between the 5 of us, as well as our own day packs.
We drove for about an hour and a half to the other side of the mountain,  and up a little bit to reach the gate. On the drive I got a glimpse at my first real African wildlife, we saw Zebras, Water Buffalo, Warthogs, Baboons, and White Colobus Monkeys.
The 1st days climb is supposed to be about 4 hours, and you go up 1000 meters. I can guarantee that I made our trek longer than that, and about half way up right before we stopped for our lunch my mindset was... (mind the language)....."What the Fuck am I doing here?! I can't do this, I don't belong here.....OH GOD!!! Then I also came to the realization that I was climbing with Sarah and Mark, whom have both climbed Kilimanjaro Mountain previoulsy, Rylee who is in amazing shape, and Jordan who did a tour in Afghanistan and is part of the Air Force I believe. At this point, that whole last train of thought went through my head again only much more vulgar I am sure!
Also for those of you who don't know this about me, but I have asthma - and it apparently really doesn't agree with me not working out or training, or climbing mountains! Who would've guessed eh? Haha

My asthma was certainly the biggest problem in this challenge, following closely by the fact that I am pretty sure I had gone to the gym twice in the last year, oops!

Either way on the first half of day one, we passed through savannah type areas where we saw more of the same animals as above, as well as giraffe, and on our lunch break we had a giraffe eating its lunch probably 40 meters or so from us! Super Cool.
Once we finally made it to Mirakamba Huts, where we would be staying for the night, we just relaxed, enjoyed the view, and ate. Before bed we all laid down on this deck thing they have, and I watched the most amazing stars I have ever seen in my life, there were literally so many that you couldn't tell constellation from constellation and we were lucky enough to see some shooting stars. We were high up enough here that we were above some clouds, and it was quite cold.

DAY TWO.......Sunday

We awoke early again, and then we were supposed to hike up another 1000 meters, and it was to take 4 or 5 hours, again I'm sure I made this longer. This part of the climb also involved make shift rainforest stairs, ALOT of them! The guide told us that there were over 1000 stairs, awesome I know! I also thought I was going to die today, and felt awfully horrible because one of the girls Sarah decided to help me by taking my day pack, and after this I did do quite a bit better...but far from good! Several hours of this hike were done walking through the clouds in this rainforesty type setting, it was a very eerie pretty and was nice because it kept us coolish.
Finally about 1 we arrived at Saddle Hut Lodges, and rested and had a snack, then to acclimatize we hiked another 300 meters up to a little peak known as Little Meru. This hike actually wasn't so bad, and most of the clouds had cleared so we got quite amazing views! We stayed at the top for awhile and then descended back to the lodges. By the way when I say Lodge, I don't mean much, minimal power run off solar power and small rooms with 2 bunk beds each, enough to do the job. When we got back from Little Meru we just hung out, ate supper and prepared for the hellish day that was about to happen next hahaha! We ended up getting to bed by about 8:30, though I didn't get to sleep for a good 2 hours or so, because of the cold mostly.

DAY THREE............Monday 

We woke up at 12:30ish...as in midnight, as in pitch black, as in freezing cold! And started off our lovely little hike. We hiked with head lamps and I think I had 7 layers on my top and 3 or 4 on my bottom. She was a little chilly, to say the least.
My new theory for the hiking in the dark is so that you don't know what you have left to go, and so you can't really see what it is your going to have to go back down either!
This hike is supposed to take just over 5 hours we did it in almost that actually!

Here I would have been repeatedly cursing in my head, if I'd had the energy. Though you see my asthma decided to take a toll for the worse, and I actaully probably took 20 puffs in 4 hours....you're supposed to take 2 every hours as needed! Eeeks. So when we were about an hour from summit my inhaler decided to stop working because of the cold, but I thought I had just used it all up, so things got a little sketchy!
I want you to think about a 90 degree angle, now picture about a 110-120 degree angle, this is what we were climbing up in the dark with no path, and falls that would actually make you fall to your death on your sides. It was great times.
I would say that the scariest part of the whole thing was when I was about 30 feet away from summit, and the sun had started to rise so it was a little lighter out now, and I was climbing, and started seeing little black spots and started swaying back and forth, literally about to faint. I believe that it was this time that the guide pushed me against the rock to keep me safe until I was good to go again. So when I say I literally almost died, I'm not really exagerrating! All was good though, made it to summit watch the sun rise up from behind a clear view of Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance with the clouds far beneath us. We stayed only long enough to watch it rise and take pictures. I will try and post them to facebook but I don't know if it will work well!

THE DESCENT......also Monday!

Climbing down was not nearly as hard as going up, it actually hardly affected my asthma at all which was beyond amazing! Going down is just much harder on your body physically and it has left me with a good number of minor injuries. Just good for memories I say. We made it down the mountain late in the day about 4 o'clock. This meant that we had hiked for a solid 13 or 14 hours! Never again lol! We didn't go down in almost half the time that it took to go up though, so that was kind of nice lol, we were all just ready to get off of the mountain at that point!

In the end as bad as some of this sounds, I am extremely glad that I did it, and it was a great experience, one I probably wouldn't take back. The best part for me was just knowing that I could actually do it, and that I still haven't found the point where my body literally can't go any further. ( I'm not going to keep looking for this point, don't worry) But I was proud that I somewhat kept up with my group lol and that a girl who never works out or anything, and is from the prairies, with apparently some pretty bad asthma was actually able to do it! I have to give full credit to the other people I went with though, if it wasn't for them there is no way that I would have summit-ed!

Ha though of the group I think I did win most falls, and most injuries sustained! I fell down the stairs once, and fell down the rocks an hour and a bit away from summit, and Rylee said it looked like I would have actually fallen off the mountain if I hadn't grabbed some rocks...(this sounds more dramatic than it was though, lol I wasn't actually hanging off or anything)

We all came home absolutely exhausted but I think proud, and sure happy to be off the mountain now we just like enjoying its view from our little porch. That is certainly all I need from that mountain now.

TUESDAY...

I was supposed to go to placement, though figured I would be too tired anyways, but I ended up getting very sick. I was dizzy when I would walk, had absolutely no energy, I was nauseous, and had a slight fever, and was in the most pain that I think my body has ever been through, in my life...lol literally everything hurt!

It seems now that I have fully recovered, though my left hip feels slightly out of alignment, but hopefully that will correct itself, other than that all I am left with are great memories, closer friends, and a couple cuts and very black and blue toenails from the descent!

Would I recommend Meru? Hahaha only if you don't have breathing problems.

There was a sign at the start that said and I quote..."If you have breathing problems, don't attempt to climb this mountain"

Also I recommend being in decent shape, and maybe have climbed a decent hill or two in the past before. Mark and Sarah who both climbed Kili said that physically and technically Meru was quite a bit harder to do than Kilimanjaro, but Kili is longer so it wears you down more emotionally and its colder and higher!

Well thats all for now, hope you enjoyed this read. Sorry it was a little long, I wanted to include everything I could remember. Missing everyone from back home, and some of the luxuries we have back at home. On Tuesday I really just wanted an IV, an ice pack, and a magic bag, and some other things lol.

So truly appreciate what we have, especially hot showers! I miss them dearly! (We didn't shower or bathe the whole time on the mountain, ha we were pretty gross at the end!)

Bye for now!!! Keep in touch, I honestly love hearing from people back home!

Cradle of Love Baby Home - My TZ Placement

First off I have to apologize for the delay in this, I have been ridiculously busy and lazy at the same time haha. I'll update now, i'm only a week and a bit late no big deal!

Okay so Cradle of Love is a baby orphanage run by an American woman, and funded by and American Church, it is very very well maintained and structured, so not what your typical African orphanage would probably be.

To get there and back everyday is a long commute, mine is the longest commute of all of the volunteers that are in the volunteer house right now I believe. It is about 20 km outside of Arusha, and  not so conveniently on the opposite side of Arusha from where I live. So I leave at 8ish and take a yellow dala dala (300shillings - 20 some cents) for 20ish minutes and then I take a green dala dala (500 shillings) for about 35 minutes. Then just walk down a road for a bit.  So all in all its about an hour each way, and transportation costs me 1600 shillings a day which is just over 1CND dollar, so I really can't complain.

There are over 40 babies at the orphanage right now, and it always seems to be quite full. Each one of the babies has a different story and different background, and all of the are at CoL for different reasons. For many their mothers will have died during child birth and their fathers can't support them until they are older, so they will stay at Cradle until they are older. Others have simply been abandoned and left on their own essentially, For many women in TZ it is quite shameful to give up your child, so many will go off have the child on their own, and pretend that the baby died, and they will simply leave it there. Other times mothers will have their baby at a hospital and then sneak out of the hospital leaving the child there. These are all the children that we receive at Cradle. Their ages range from days old to 3.5 years old.

My job really just consists of playing with the babies, whom are seperated into groups by different developmental stages (almost all of them are developmentally delayed.) We also do their feedings and put them down for naps.
My second day of placement I was in the nursery which is for Newborns to about 6 months-ish. Here you make bottles, feed, change, and rock the babies. It is very easy and all of the children just crave attention so much, it is quite common to have 5 or 6 of them crawling on you at one point. Sometimes are sadder than others when you think about everything they have come through already at such a young age, and to be able to physically see the trauma that they have from abandonment and such. They truly are in the best place they could be now though.

On my 3rd day we took 9 of the babies to a free clinic down the road called Dream, which is funded by a company from Madrid. 1 of the little girls Pendo is HIV + and she had another ear infection, so we had to take her for medicine. The other 8 were suspected of being HIV+ due to the backgrounds they came from. We got one of them tested, little Amani and he came back negative, so that was fantastic and put everyone in good spirits.

Well my internet time is nearly up so I will have to tell you more later when there is more to report. Missing everybody at home. I will also write a blog about my Mount Meru climbing adventures from last weekend, which literally include near death experiences! All is well though, I'm fine clearly. Hahahah

Cheers!