Kilimanjaro - Day 6
Barafu Camp to Stella Point to Uhuru Peak
Maximum elevation: 5895 m
Bad acclimatisation - the frequent waking at night, Cheyne-Stokes respiration, fatigue, headaches and dizziness, that's acclimatisation. And when it goes wrong, that's Acute Mountain Sickness with the exciting symptoms of cerebral oedema - hallucinations, ataxia, (which I suspect one too many happy trippy student can claim familiarity with even at sea level) - and pulmonary oedema, that fatal sloshing in your lungs. What they don't tell you about at all is the peripheral oedema you get on summiting, that painful swelling and bloating from the cold that renders you unable to fully bend your fingers. I think knowing a little physiology makes it scarier.
*
So it creeps upon you like a love affair gone sour - in the beginning it's that giddy excitement that electrifies every crevice of you and coaxes even staid hydroxyapatite into grinding gyration (feel it in your bones) and before you know it, you're burnt, that's why your mother tells you to never play with fire. It hit us around 500 m from the top, and to flog a bad analogy to death, it took out of us more than we realised until we could hardly move on at all - the altitude was draining us of the precious little energy we had left.
*
We'd been roused at half-past ten - most of us had been awake for some time, packing, re-packing, re-re-packing, listening to the howl of the biting wind, resisting the urge to go admire the stars for the last time without our feet going left-right left-right - and again (or so it seemed), hushed and hurried, summit night began.
*
I stumbled a lot, I wasn't ill, I was tired and am usually slightly anaemic anyway, I wanted to go home, curl up in bed with Bach blasting me out of this world on a soft pillow, not sharp rock lodging itself into the lordosis of my spine; home, where I couldn't see the stars, where it wasn't here, where food wasn't stew and bread and chips and pasta and stew and rice and butter and stew, where blisters didn't bleed and came from tight heels not loose boots, where everything was surreal. The worst error of judgement I made on that mountain, temporarily or otherwise, was ever mistaking physical fitness as my most insuperable obstacle - never forget your mind, and never forget the power of prayer.
And so I couldn't think and my feet didn't seem to belong to me anymore. The choice as always, was simple - I had to do something or I'd be going down. I think God laughed, as usual, that night, at me, with me, for me, for all of us. Andy caught sight of me, "we need a water break" he shouted to Wilson and we shuffled to a stop, and as usual, I plonked myself next to him and smiled wearily. And as usual, he gave his crooked grin and putting his arms around me, squeezed gently and said "It's all right , Xin Hui" then placed an energy tablet on my tongue and motioned for me to swallow it, "concentrate on the goal", he whispered, and handing me his waterbottle half-sang "now concentrate on your breathing, like this...follow me...we're going to make it".
You know, I don't think I ever did get to tell my Uncle Andy he's an angel, an angel in orange and baby-soft hair, an August baby like me with an august sense of wonder. I just thank God for him, and all the other angels before him, and after. It's strange how even though he doesn't believe in God, he's exquisite proof of His existence.
I didn't want to go down, I wasn't going to go down, and I sang, silently
I'm pressing on the upward way,
New heights I'm gaining every day;
Still praying as I'm onward bound,
'Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.'
Lord, lift me up and let me stand,
By faith, on Heaven's table land,
A higher plane than I have found;
Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.
My heart has no desire to stay
Where doubts arise and fears dismay;
Though some may dwell where those abound,
My prayer, my aim, is higher ground.
Lord, lift me up and let me stand,
By faith, on Heaven's table land,
A higher plane than I have found;
Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.
I want to scale the utmost height
And catch a gleam of glory bright;
But still I'll pray till Heav'n I've found,
'Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.'
*
Andy didn't make it to the top. 200 m from the end, he found himself seeing flying saucers and safari animals floating above the scree - hallucinations, classic symptom of High Altitude Cerebral Oedema. I'll never forget that moment when we saw him, ashen, eyes bloodshot, clutching onto the arm of one of our porters
"Xin Hui?" he ventured, tossing my name into the darkness beneath my head-torch
"Yes...Andy what are you doing here? Kay and I are taking the rear, why are you..."
"I can smell wimbi (Kenyan dark grain) porridge, my dear Xin Bin, I'm going down, I'm going down..."
And he laughed. No one laughs like Andy, not on that mountain, not quite anywhere, no one can. I hugged him, hard. And he laughed somemore as he waved goodbye to Kay and me as they rushed him down, down where oxygen molecules had more frequent collisions, where he'd come back to earth.
Altitude sickness (also: acute mountain sickness (AMS) or altitude illness) is a pathological condition that is caused by lack of adaptation to high altitudes. It commonly occurs above 2,440 metres (8,000 feet). The symptoms are headaches, fatigue, shortness of breath, nausea, unsteadiness and dizziness, loss of appetite, insomnia, weakness and sometimes even hallucinations, seizures and coma.
-trust us medics to have to be impassive about it all, why Andy?
*
There's not much to be said about the summit really. Wilson suggested repeatedly that I go down because I looked like I needed a blood transfusion (yes, anyone need a vampire stand-in?). I politely refused. We got there just as the sun was rising, after groping in the dark for seven hours. My camera was down to its dying breath and the sweet Frenchmen who'd shared bon-bons with us decided to take photo of us, just in case my camera didn't work. I rearranged my half-frozen face into a smile. "You have blood all over your front teeth" said Kay, concerned. "So do you" I replied slowly, as life trickled back into my grin and realisation dawned with the morning light "we made it, Kay" and throwing my arms around her, smiling as hard as I could in my utter enervation muttered "we made it..."
