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Our second Excellent Expedition to Kilimanjaro has raised over £5,000, thanks to the hard work of all involved and their generous sponsors. Susanna Siddiqui led the expedition this year, which challenged participants to both mountain climbing and dam building. Here Susanna recounts her experiences...

Months of fundraising and training through the wet English summer melted away as we caught our first glimpse of the snow-capped peak on the short flight between Nairobi and Kilimanjaro airport . We arrived in Moshi, a small Tanzanian town at the foot of the mountain, eager to get under way.

The next day was spent preparing for the trek and visiting a tourism initiative set up by members of a Chagga coffee co-operative to bump up farmers incomes in low periods. Our guide led us round the local area showing us how coffee is grown and prepared in this fertile area on the slopes of Kilimanjaro and a little of the history of the Chagga tribe’s way of life and their historic battles with the nomadic pastoral Massai. We were led down a secret tunnel used by Chagga women and children to hide from the Massai until 1908. This tribe had migrated from other parts of Africa including from the Kamba areas in Kenya, where Excellent’s work is focused.

At lunch we were treated to a delicious spread of banana soup, beef curry, beans, greens, rice and East African style chapattis accompanied with something we had become very curious about...on the journey from the airport and to the Chagga village we had seen lots of people passing around some sort of drink. Here we were introduced to banana beer. We were all a little disconcerted when we discovered that it was pink and thick like a milkshake! Bananas and millet (which we had seen being harvested and dried in the sun) are the ingredients for this local brew which we decided must be an acquired taste and we later repaired to Moshi for dinner and a little beer closer to our own taste buds – Kilimanjaro beer!
From Moshi we got an incredible view of the whole mountain so that by the next morning excitement with a healthy degree of apprehension had kicked in, especially for me as I was returning a year after my first attempt when I had turned back just 200 vertical metres from the summit because of altitude sickness.

The next day we met our guides, Onesmo and Seraphim, and the team of porters that would carry our kit, tents and food for the next six days; that is all our kits except Rich’s. Rich felt that scaling a 5895m high mountain wasn’t quite enough of a challenge and carried his own kit all the way to the final camp!

The route, Machame, a.k.a the whiskey route (as opposed to the cushy ‘coca cola’ ascent on the other side of the mountain) is all walkable and as such accessible for non mountain types. By the end of the first day’s walking we had ascended above the misty rain forest to be greeted by our tents, already set-up by the porters, waiting with hot drinks and popcorn. Dinner was an amazing 3 course meal with soup, beef casserole with potatoes, and fruit to round off, and the view of the mountain ahead filled our dreams.

Day 2 got off to a steep start but levelled off and allowed us to keep up a good pace for the 5 hours through the moorland, leaving us plenty of energy for a short afterdinner stroll. Day 3 took us 700m up to the lava tower and then 600m back down – not because we are mad adrenalin junkies but because to ‘walk high and sleep low’ was one of the three mantras we were told would help us beat the effects of the altitude. The others being to drink a lot of water and, as our guides advised us, to go ‘pole pole’ (slowly) even though our Tanzanian crew seemed impervious to the altitude: Seraphim, our assistant guide, pranced up the lava tower, a short optional scramble at 4500m, like a mountain goat!

In the event our small group laughed its way up the mountain, at times hysterically...lack of air? Passing every kind of trekker, from those taking pigeon steps all the way up to prepare them for the summit attempt, which involves climbing more than 1000 vertical metres in one go; to the porters who would merrily jog past us laden with all our camping gear, some of them with enough breath left over to belt out a folk song or two and set up the camp again ahead of our arrival.

We were reminded often during the trip of why we were there; Rich, who had been mad enough to cycle to Africa to raise money for Excellent in the past, donned the t-shirt from that exploit, and we were stopped many times to explain what the charity does: by the third day people we passed en route were shouting ‘excellent’ at us and cheering us on!

We all suffered from the altitude to varying degrees, headache and nausea sapping our energies, but the crunch came on summit night (day 5). We set off from camp at midnight, Rich glad to finally leave his kit behind. I was the first to fall behind, my breath already short from leaving the camp, so Seraphim and I detached from the group and carried on at a slower pace. Sometime later I learned that Sarah had also broken off from the others...somehow Seraphim and Onesmo were able to communicate perfectly to each other in the dark. As the sun began to rise I could see Sarah ahead of us but the others had disappeared from view. At my painfully slow pace it took me 10 hours to reach Uhuru peak, the highest point in Africa, and by the time I got back to the camp Rich and Steve had already had a good couple of hours kip. That is not to say that when we gathered for a quick lunch before starting our descent that any of us looked fresh! Still tired from the night’s efforts we set off again to reach a camp at 3100m.

I’m delighted to say that we did all make it to the top, though not all at once, which made for a very merry descent with sporadic rounds of mutual congratulation and new wild challenges being hatched, like running the London marathon and learning Polish (you had to be there!)

The final day was just a stroll down to the gate, a quick stop to collect our certificates and then back to Moshi for a hot shower and congratulatory beer or two. However, our muscles didn’t have a chance to cool down and start aching - the next morning we were heading north to the border crossing of Taveta to be met by an Excellent vehicle that would take us to Mtito Andei, via Tsavo West Game Park for the second week of the challenge ...

The landscape in Mtito was a striking contrast to the fertile volcanic soils the Chaggas farm and the plentiful water gushing out from Mzima springs – it was visibly arid. We were welcomed and well taken care of by Musila, Excellent’s Field Manager in Mtito, and his wife Anna, and the next day we set off to support a community group already at work building their second sand dam. We were all duly appointed our Kamba names, some of which were more welcome than others...Rich was pleased with Mitungi - ‘Big strong man’ but Charlotte was less excited about being called Calondu or ‘sheep’, though we later discovered it had been lost in translation and the meaning was actually lamb – somewhat more endearing and possibly a reference to her blonde hair which caused some bemusement to the women in the group!

We had the opportunity to see some of the water tanks that Excellent have helped build, and to hear from villagers how they had eased the pressure on other water points and lessened their daily walks. We also got to see groups busy on other tasks such as tree nurseries and terracing. Each group was eager and proud to show us round, and their dedication and hard work was both immensely inspiring and humbling.

Despite a few aching muscles we got busy shovelling sand and mixing cement or carrying stones for the dam. This was only possible thanks to many weeks of preparation by the group, who had gathered these materials from miles around. The women of one group we worked with kept spirits up by dancing and singing to the beat of a drum and Sarah, the only one of us brave enough to join in, picked up the moves in no time at all!

Seeing the amazingly green and lush farms around mature dams and experiencing first-hand the grit, determination and unflagging spirits of community groups putting in all these extra hours of work on top of tending their farms and homes left a profound impression on the group. For the second year running I asked the group if the pain and endurance of climbing Kilimanjaro had been worth it – and it was again a unanimous yes – absolutely.