Oscar asked me one evening what I’d been doing at work that day. I explained that I’d been writing about the fact that Exodus (where I’ve worked since September) had decided to allow teenagers to climb Mount Kilimanjaro with their parents. Exodus has been taking people up Kili for decades, and funds a Porter School to make sure local people can make a good living out of the mountain, and visitors get a great, safe experience. This summer will be the first family departures they have run.
Oscar immediately said, “I’ll be a teenager this summer. Do you think I could climb a mountain like that?”. Other parents will know that you feel programmed at moments like this to respond with something along the lines of, “You can do anything you put your mind to Darling”, but it got me thinking. If a 13 year old could do it, then my tall, clever 13 year old could surely do it. And if my 13 year old could do it, surely I’d be able to do it. I started Googling and wasted hours deep into the night reading everything I could find about climbing Kili.
I soon discovered what all trekkers know; that the enemy of Kili climbers is altitude sickness. Everything I could find said that climbing Kili, on most routes, isn’t a technically difficult challenge – there are only a few bits of scrabbling / climbing, but it’s completely exhausting, relentless, and the altitude makes you feel terrible. Just how terrible seems to be random – not based on age, or fitness, but arbitrary luck.
I started to think about climbing the mountain with Oscar and, just as when I was in labour with Oscar, I knew I’d want my mum there. My mum is my hero; she’s funny, kind, practical, generous and determined. She and Oscar went to visit my sister in Australia for a month when he was nine and they both loved it. I knew that if I could get mum to agree to come too we’d have found our “team”. And she did!
So on the 19th of August this year the three of us intend to fly off to Africa and see whether that mountain will let us reach her summit. Please cross your fingers for us.