They say you miss something in life if you have never climbed a mountain. Me? I don’t like missing things in life. There are other ways of dealing with low spirits of course, but climbing a mountain cost less, for the same amount of money, than a visit to Kenya’s number 1 shrink, Dr Frank Njenga. I’d still come back, sure, but psychological problems also returned. In essence, nothing changed. But ever so often, I believe I have found the Answer to Life, and right now, it’s climbing Mt Kenya.
It would be a four-day hike, the guide said. There was a swing to his gait that let you know this cabrón wasn’t going to coddle you. Easy pace, he added. The sweetest words I’ve heard since Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech. I may even have been a little priapic. I had on my poncho, fleece, thermal, balaclava, woollen socks, waterproof boots, gloves, and spare gloves, long johns, sunscreen, arimis. All this cost a small fortune that could fund the lifestyle of a small dictator in East Africa, or a bling bling rapper on a budget. In short, I couldn’t have been more ready if my last name was Ludwig Krapf.
Earlier in the week, I had been sent to talk to A— because apparently there is no mountain he hadn’t lassoed and tamed and was something of an encyclopaedia on hiking. Boy was he. An amiable fellow, he talked about “retractable carbon coke poles and Semi-stiff, high-cut boots with deep Vibram lugs” with the same enthusiasm I talk about Zendaya’s smile. Why I was hiking a mountain, who knows? And who cares? It’s not like I was on the run from people with names like Mr Wong or Muhindi Mweusi. What I know is it would be useful on dates, to tell my, erm, date that I hiked a mountain. “Light work,” I’d say. Or when those men, you know the ones, who hunt and kill venison for their meat, when they are talking, I won’t feel like such a yutz. Or princess. I ain’t no sissy, you see. No sir I ain’t. I wanted to say I’d done that, that I set foot on Africa’s second-highest mountain. How many men can say, “You know, I shit on Mt Kenya.” Which I did. A man who has never shat on top of a mountain misses something in life. Me, I don’t like missing things in life.
This was my big puta moment. Point Lenana would be the people’s climb, though to say that it would be easy would be to engage in careless understatement. It rises to 4985m, the third highest peak after Batian (5199m) and Nelion (5188m). We’d be sleeping at Mackinder’s Camp, which belongs to the man who first climbed the mountain in 1899, Sir Halford John Mackinder. Naturally he named the mountain peaks after Maasai laibons, then he named the camp after himself, because why not? It wasn’t no Four Seasons but there were bunk beds and a mattress, all to yourself. I have fallen in love on less.
There were lots of things you could do at Mackinder’s camp. Except sleep. Try as I did, my eyes just couldn’t shut. It was sleeting the whole night, and some wise guy on Reddit had suggested that if I were ever camping, to sleep next to the window. For God knows what. The window couldn’t completely shut because some enterprising fellow had made away with the latch fastener and the Reddit smartass didn’t mention anything about that. Tough titty. I don’t wish to reach for melodrama, but people have died in less trying circumstances.
Outside, the rain would ease off and the bitter wind would take over, a nuisance scratching at the window. We were summitting in a few hours and I was the only one awake, my fellow hikers in their sleeping bags, their snores briefly interrupted by interludes of farting. With nothing to do, I think about The Rock in the Mummy Returns. Say, if I was the Scorpion King, half-man, half-scorpion, would my woman still love me?
The mountain was daunting; I won’t lie. It didn’t help that the porters were regaling us with apocryphal tales of how, just a few months back, a hiker missed a step, and his guide tried to save him, as per the contract. The avalanche, which had not read the contract, took them both. “Miili yao ilikujiwa after siku tatu.” Fine by me. Our guide had said the route is only 6km. And I had not wanted to believe anything as much as I wanted to believe that guide’s words. He also said we wouldn’t shower for five days. Fine by me. He didn’t mention anything about White Walkers which was sad. Then there is the briefcase of diseases: snow burns, altitude sickness, Frostbite, hypothermia, trench foot, diarrhoea (of course), and Khumbu Cough which is so bad ass that it has been known to break ribs just by a single cough. If I was going to get something I’d want to get Khumbu Cough. It even sounds like nothing you want to fuck with: Khumbu Cough.
The cold had settled into the pit of my stomach, the banshee wind tossing angry tree branches, the intensity of the howling like a pounding at the window. Occasionally, you could hear the night whimper as dawn tightened its grip, finger by finger. I had two pills of my favourite drug: delusions of grandeur. Any time now the summit push would begin and I would fart my way to the top. What could be more natural than breaking wind, in the wind? This was my big puta moment.
It was time to go.
