Month: June 2015

Hindsight is a fine thing!  I spent a great summer in Jersey in the late 1960s when I was a student. The sun seemed to shine every day and I was with some lovely people – but unknown to me at the time, child murder, torture and rape were close by!

A friend in Glasgow set up for me to work in Jersey children’s homes during the three month university holiday.  My fares were to be paid for me and I wouldn’t have to pay for my keep, but nor would I be paid.  That was fine by me: in these days there were no student fees to be paid and I actually received a grant, sufficient – with a bit of scavenging – to live on during the student terms.

I was off to the sun.  I was told I would be going to Haut de la Garenne.  If you google that, you will find it was a home where there are historical allegations of abuse and of children being murdered and their bodies being hidden in the grounds.  Happily a couple of days before I set off, I was told there was a change of plan: I was to go to La Preference, a small home for twelve children run by the Vegetarian Society.

I wasn’t a vegetarian – they were rare on the ground then, and I don’t think I had ever met one before – but that was no problem.  The home was run by “Nanny”, who was probably about the age I am now.  She was a sweet and gentle, but strict woman, who had a great way with children.  She had her own flat at the top of the house and the children loved being invited to spend time there with her: she knew each child really well as an individual.  There were a couple of other girls around my age working there too, as well as a cleaner, who did the bed making and bed changing too.  Nanny’s son in law, Ted, could be relied on to do the garden and odd jobs.  We girls were responsible for feeding and entertaining the children, getting them up and putting them to bed, overseen by Nanny.  We had an old van, which one of the girls could drive and we often piled all the children into it and took them to the nearby beach at St Martins for the day.

I am sure this would be considered unacceptable these days, but there was an enormous communal clothes cupboard and adults and children alike were free to help themselves from it.  I loved wearing the motley collection of clothes in that magic cupboard: the best fitting pair of shorts I have ever had in my life came out of there, but of course had to be left behind at the end of the summer.

The children were not vegetarian when they arrived, but they, like me, agreed that the food was fine. There were loads of lovely fresh vegetables, eggs, cheese, creamy milk and Jersey potatoes and we made lots of proper puddings like spotted dick and treacle tart.  Oddly enough, the diet was also supplemented by tins of “meatless sausages” and “meatless steaks” as we called them.  I suppose this was before the days of easy availability of Quorn, soya and other vegetarian substitutes.

It was a pretty idyllic time, as far as I was concerned, and a great change from the rather dirty and violent place Glasgow was at that time.  It was a few years later that I stumbled across a book about “The Jersey Beast”.  I was very shocked to discover that Nanny’s son in law, Ted, our obliging odd job man, had been entering people’s homes at night wearing terrifying gear and removing, torturing and raping children!  It had been going on at the time I was there, but the lovely people at the home were quite unaware of it.

Now I have to concentrate on foresight – not hindsight.  I hope I can do a good job of working out in advance exactly what I will need to take up Kili with me.  There will be no magic cupboard for me up there, if I fail to pack anything essential in my bag before I set out!

Today’s blog post comes from the gorgeous Megan Russell. Megan and Jae met four years ago through work and have since become good friends and “career confidantes”!

I have always been fascinated by the butterfly effect; the belief that a small change in one state can result in large differences to a later state. It may be my ‘last child syndrome’ rearing its narcissist head here but I have always wanted to believe that my movements can have an impact on the world in some shape or form.

The theory goes that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately result in a typhoon on the other side of the world. The butterfly does not directly cause the tornado but helps to bring the right factors in place to enable it.

In a world where we are constantly reminded of our insignificance in the grand scheme of the universe, isn’t it motivating to know that we can leave our own glorious footprint? Does it not empower you to know that you are responsible for how the world will move in 10 or 20 years time?

Take the 3G Kili Climb as an example. One seemingly small conversation between a family has already started to beat its beautiful butterfly wings around the world. Let’s count the ways.

Close to home, friends and family have been inspired to write articles, raise money and possibly even take on the challenge themselves. I have enjoyed guest articles (causing me to volunteer myself to the task!), smiled at motivational videos and been moved by the money pouring in for charity. Imagine if this climb inspires others to do the same?

On a personal level, the 3G Climb has inspired me to climb Kilimanjaro in January for my honeymoon. Without the 3G Climb I could be planning another beach holiday sipping cocktails, but hearing Jae’s enthusiasm for the adventure ahead challenged me to turn the honeymoon on its head. So thank you Jae, Sheila and Oscar for what we certainly be a honeymoon with a difference!

And the wings beat even further; the money raised from the climb will improve the lives of the homeless and vulnerably housed through Catching Lives, and Exodus supported projects – through Baraka and Friends of Conservation. Just think about the change this will make to lives and communities, not just now but in the years to come. It is humbling to even consider.

But the best thing about the butterfly effect is that you can’t predict how long the wings will beat and who they will touch along the way. 3G continues to make its presence known now but I like to think that this adventure will continue to inspire long after Sheila, Jae and Oscar are back. Which family will be the next 3G and what impact will that have on their family?

Will this climb inspire Oscar to become the next Tenzing Norgay?!

So I think I speak for many friends, family and distant supporters when I thank Sheila, Jae and Oscar for how they have impacted people, places and personalities around them. And I urge you all to ask yourself what your Butterfly Effect will be…

The last eruption on Kilimanjaro was between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago, so it is fairly safe to assume that despite what we said in the blog on April Fool’s Day, there is little risk of any volcanic action.  I am very grateful for that: I feel very sorry for the poor people in Nepal whose lives have been devastated by the earthquake in the Everest area.

There are seven official ways up the mountain: we will be taking the Lemosho route. Climbing Kili is strictly regulated by the Tanzanian Government.  You have to be part of an organized group: you can’t just decide to go up with your mates!  The Lemosho route is possibly the longest route and that is why we are taking it.  It will take us seven days to walk up to the top – if we make it – and the longer it takes, the better the chances are of getting up. Exodus say that 95% of their travellers make it to the top on this route, whereas in general, less than 70% of climbers succeed.  Taking our time gives us a better chance of coping with the change in altitude.  People who are used to living at high altitudes – like the guides and porters who will be with us – are much less likely to get altitude sickness.

I was quite amazed to read that a mountain guide ran to the top and back in August last year in six hours forty two minutes.  I can’t start to imagine that level of fitness!  So many people spend several days climbing and still don’t make it – it is all so hard to understand.

Exodus has been taking adults up Kili for decades, but the family group departures in August this year will be the first time that they have taken teenagers.  However, it seems that a seven year old American boy Keats Boyd has climbed the mountain, despite the fact that the park authorities make it clear than no-one under the age of ten is permitted to enter.  It seems that his parents lied about his age: they say he was absolutely determined to do it.

Although it will take us a week to climb up, it is expected that we will come down again in a day and a half.  We do the last bit of the climb up between mid-night and dawn, when the scree at the top is frozen.  That makes it easier – I am not sure that is the right word – to climb on.  When we start to come down, the scree will have defrosted and is likely to be moving about.  On holiday in Dorset recently I wondered if clambering on Chesil Beach was a bit like it will be on the descent.  The pebbles were piled up really steeply and it was very scrabbly to move about on them at all.  Perhaps I should go back there again for a bit of practice.  They say that you can develop a kind of yomping style of moving over the scree, sort of running and going with the movement underneath you.  Maybe I will try to find a bit of steep pebbly beach on the Kentish coast and give it a go – though I might get a few funny looks from those around me.

The oldest woman recorded to have done the climb was an eighty-four year old in 2010 – so I am fairly young in comparison.  She, however, had a history to climbing behind her, whereas I am still pretty much a mountain virgin.  If we make it, we will be the first three generation team including a granny, ever to do it.  I dare say almost straight away afterwards, there will be another feisty eighty-something year old doing the climb – a great-granny as part of a four generation team.  But maybe we will make it and hold the record for a wee while first.

I have been enjoying Sheila’s postings, especially when she writes about the ‘olden days’, that is the days of her childhood – and mine.  How cold it was before central heating, how inconvenient before there was hot water on tap and how smelly it was with coal fires, paraffin heaters and clothing that was washed less frequently than needed (the hot water problem).  And then there was the permanent fug of tobacco smoke (my apologies to any unredeemed smokers reading this).

One thing that Sheila hasn’t mentioned, or only obliquely, is the invention of “Gore-Tex” and similar waterproofing materials, especially when used in shoes.  Oh, the joys of wet soggy feet when all we had to deal with snow and rain was a pair of black school shoes, usually of the lace up variety.  No matter how well polished they were kept, they always let in.  The alternative was wellington boots.  Modern wellies are a lot better, helped no end by the fact that they are usually worn with trousers.  In the ‘old days’ little girls wore skirts with woollen stockings reaching to below the knees, kept up with elastic garters.  As soon as you took more than a couple of steps in wellies, the socks slipped down and down.  Net result was an alternative winter, without soggy feet but instead painful red chapping all around the legs where the wellies rubbed.  It is good to know that Sheila, Jae and Oscar will not have to bear such tribulations, as we all know that Sheila’s Kili drawer is well stocked.  A hundred and one memories of these oh so different days are lurking in my mind and I constantly rejoice in how much the world has changed, in every aspect of life it sometimes feels. And then something pulls me up in my tracks.  Recently hubby Jim and I were raking around in ancient ruins in Greece.  That happens to be one of our ‘things’ although we have had our moments at high altitude.  (And that has given me an idea for another guest post.)   But to return to things ancient.  We have been to many countries with long, long histories of civilisation stretching back thousands of years.  One of the oldest settlements we have visited was in central Turkey at Catalhoyuk, at its peak about 9,000 years ago although it survived for 2,000 years.  Some of the artefacts, like tools and rugs, were so like their counterparts of today; and in South America we saw similar.  Right across the settled world and the aeons, mankind seems to come up with similar solutions to the problems of everyday life, even the problems of waterproof clothing.  In rural China they make waterproof capes and hats from reeds.

Admittedly we are of the first generations to have telecommunications – and that has really changed the world.  Returning to Greece, we were on the island of Delos, a now uninhabited archaeological site with a history of civilisation reaching back more than three thousand years.  It was an important place of pilgrimage honouring Apollo before becoming a thriving trading centre with money to spend on embellishment of the environment.  By great good fortune the major excavations took place long after the days of the international plunderers aka 19^th century archaeologists, so a lot of what was found has remained on the island, housed in a beautiful light and airy museum.

And at last I am getting to the Kili point of this.  Sheila and Jae have agonised over dealing with their hair on Kilimanjaro where all water has to be carried by porter from the bottom.  The ancient Delia ladies must have had a similar issue because right before my eyes, in the museum I saw a beautifully carved marble head of a lady with ‘corn-rows’, one of the solutions Jae has been pondering.  So is there really anything new in this world?

PS I must concede that attitudes have changed.  Can you imagine Sheila’s Grandma of the bosoms taking off to climb Kilimanjaro with son Robert (Sheila and Leslie’s dad) and one or more of the grandchildren?  I think not, although she did go on some cashmere buying trips with her husband to northern India.

I bought this book – How to Conquer a Mountain: Kilimanjaro Lessons – and read it in an afternoon.  I felt a bit more confident about my ability to reach the top before,  than I do now, having read it!  Maybe my research should stop right here.

The book is written by a couple, and the woman, Sue, must be about twenty years younger than me – but she struggles with the climb really from the very first day!  She gives details of her pulse rate and blood pressure, which sent me shooting off to Stewart’s blood pressure monitor to check my levels.  When I first spoke to my GP about the climb – see the blog of 12th February – he said my blood pressure was slightly raised, but that it might be because HE was running late, and that I should come back again in a month.  When I went back a month later, the doctorwasn’t running late and my blood pressure was fine.  He said that I should check my blood pressure every so often during the coming months, and if it was more than 150/85, that I should check back with him before I go.  Stewart, of course, has every handy gadget known to mankind, so it has been easy enough to use his magic monitor.  My blood pressure readings have not been higher than advised during the last few months, and my pulse rate has varied between 55 and 72, which is pretty low, I think.  Sue Irving had a resting pulse rate of 103 just before starting the climb – and it seems that she did have some undiagnosed health problems.  She made it as far as the third day of the climb, before she was told in no uncertain terms that she was to go back down again – so her husband John continued up and made it to the top, while she had to twiddle her thumbs in a posh hotel for the rest of the week.  She was told that she had altitude sickness, which resulted in her having trouble with her breathing.

I can see that Americans, as one would imagine, have ingenious ways of preparing for climbing and breathing at altitude.  They have various machines that simulate the conditions at the top of mountains.  You can lie in bed at home at night in a sort of tent, which deprives you of oxygen while you sleep, by way of preparation.  I think that’s one sort of preparation that I will avoid!  I will just keep on with lots of long walks, Pilates and the odd bit of cycling.

The Irvings took the same route up the mountain as we will: The Lemosho Route.  I am glad to see that they refer to it as being scenic and non-touristy. They describe climbing through all the climate zones.  I don’t think you could do that anywhere else on earth in the space of a week.  I love the idea that we will be walking through a bit of jungly rain forest and also through a desert before we get to the snowy bit on top.  One of the guides points out to Sue some of the wonderful flora en route, such as pink impatiens plants (Busy Lizzie to most of us) which have grown to the size of bushes,  red fireball lilies with flower heads the size of tennis balls and daisy-like everlasting flowers, which are dotted all over the Shira valley floor.  I am really looking forward to seeing these exotic plants, as well as the more mundane heather, which grows among strange palms and cacti.

However, it isn’t all loveliness! There is another animal to worry about in this book, adding to the leopards and rats (10 March),  fire ants (7 May) and big scary birds (13 May), which I have already blogged about!  John Irving has a mouse nip his toe while he is dozing in his tent and the mouse proceeds to scurry all over the place and then sits on his pillow to get its photo taken!  He describes the rodent as having interesting red fur with white stripes on the back – which might be lovely BUT NOT WHAT I WANT IN OUR TENT, though I guess Oscar may think a bit of wild life would be intriguing.

What I did find interesting is that the Irvings seem to have been either starving hungry or falling asleep – sometimes both simultaneously – most of the time when they were not walking.  I had envisaged having longish periods of inactivity and card game playing, but that doesn’t seem to have been their experience.

I think what we should take from this book is that there are several different possible outcomes from our trip, and whatever happens, we need to view it in a positive light. After all, Sue didn’t even get half way up, but has co-written a successful book about her journey.  It is the journey that matters, people often say, not necessarily getting there.

We would love if all three of us got there, but even if we don’t, we will have had an amazing experience, raised a substantial sum for worthwhile charities and, who knows, we might write a book too!

When I read about what to take up Kilimanjaro with me, sweets and snacks seem to feature large. People get enormously hungry at times while walking, so they welcome them then and, conversely, when it becomes difficult to eat much at all at altitude, it seems to be easier to force down sweets and snacks than whole meals.  It seems that people stuff their bags with Mars Bars, Twix, Snickers etc – things that I love, but absolutely never normally allow myself to eat, because of the calories they contain.  But, it seems, we will have carte blanche in August to stuff ourselves with such delights.  Given that I have been really careful with what I have eaten since the start of this adventure – I have lost a stone and a half and my BMI is now bang in the middle of the “healthy weight” category – I am looking forward to a bit of a blow out on forbidden foods.

I have always had a sweet tooth: I am Scottish, after all!  Scotland has a higher rate of consumption of sugar per head of population than most countries in the world, and also one of the lowest for eating fruit and veg.  One of my earliest memories is eating Hills’ Hawick Balls, a delicacy which used to be produced within a hundred yards of where I lived as a small child in the Scottish Borders.  I think that the Hill family were actually related to us: John Hill, who owned the “factory” was possibly married to one of my paternal grandfather’s sisters.  As small children we would be allowed to go into the building where the famous balls were produced.  It was in a building like a very large shed up an alley way adjoining Uncle John’s house.  That was where Uncle John, Uncle Fred and Uncle David worked.  I hasten to add that all of them were probably not relatives.  We had dozens of what we came to call “phoney” aunts and uncles, when we were children.  All of my parents’ friends were known by their first name preceded by “uncle” or “auntie”.  In these days: it was not considered proper for children to address adults just by their first name, but too formal to call them “Mr” or “Mrs”, if they were close family friends.

We could smell the sugary minty smell as we went up the alley and it was quite overpowering in the shed.  Big copper pots of the sugary syrup would be bubbling away, and when ready, the contents would be poured out on to the marble slabs and pulled out into enormous golden brown snakes.  A length of snake would then be placed between wooden boards, which would be moved about for a while, then the brown Hawick balls would suddenly appear, when the board was removed. It seemed like magic, and I loved standing watching the men work.

The other delicacy produced by the Hills in the same big shed was meat paste. This was made on the other side of the space.  There was a fridge full of animal pieces, which were somehow reduced to this delicacy.  All of the town’s food shops stocked the meat paste: it had a great reputation locally.  This was long before anyone knew or cared what the ingredients were!  The paste was sold in white waxed carton without any writing on at all.  I have got a very clear memory of being in the factory one day watching the balls being made, when Uncle Fred came up to me and told me to put out my hand, and when I did, he placed a cow’s eye in the palm of my hand.  I was all set to take it home with me as a bit of a curiosity, but my mother insisted on me returning it to him, before I was allowed to leave.  She must have been appalled! So I guess that’s the kind of thing the delicious meat paste was made out of.  I doubt there were any Heath and Safety inspections then, or concern about sweets being made within feet of raw meat processing.

Hawick Balls have quite a provenance.   Bill McLaren was a famous rugby commentator, who was famously never without a “poke” (bag) of the traditional sweeties named after his home town. He used them to start conversations, elicit information and garner gossip that would then be added to his ‘big sheets’ – the detailed information he used to support his rugby commentary. Despite McLaren’s deserved reputation for impartiality, however, the members of the England team were apparently never invited to partake of his sweeties.  

Now produced in the town of Greenock, legend has it that Hawick Balls were first made in the town in the 1850s by one Jessie McVittie. She used to ‘pull’ her boiled sugar mix by hanging it over a nail and allowing gravity to stretch it out. Although the exact recipe remains secret, today the “bools” are still made in open copper pans, which caramelise the sugar, with oil of peppermint providing a minty hint. The resulting sweet looks a bit like a pickled onion (or, according to some, a sheep’s testicle). The flavour is buttery and actually quite grown-up, with a hard crunch setting them apart from other traditional sweeties from Borders towns such as Jethart Snails, Berwick Cockles and Galashiels Soor Plooms, which have a rock-like texture.

It seems that Chay Blyth, another local lad, took some bools round the world with him when he made records sailing in his yacht and some have been buried at the South Pole by a local explorer.  However, I can’t find any record of the Balls having been taken up a mountain. I wonder if I should take some up Kilimanjaro with me?  I dare say I might make myself popular among some of the porters and guides if I did take a tin or two along.

Today’s post comes from the brilliantly supportive Kate Gordon – FD at Exodus Travels. Kate is always one of the first people to “like” our 3GKiliClimb posts on Facebook, and we’re really grateful for her encouragement.

I have always had someone in my life to be in awe of, its been a variety of people, those like my father who told me at 16 that unless I pulled my socks up then I would end up picking out burnt crisps at the local crisp factory (!), to others who have guided my way through my working and home life. My work mentor helped me to get to the lofty position of Finance Director, and I still thank him for the support he showed me when I was not really all that interested!

The person who I am currently in awe of is Jae Hopkins our Marketing Director and one of the three who are doing the 3GKiliClimb.

Jae has three boys, a full on job, a husband and a million and one other things on, but is still seen dashing around at the weekend, and evenings, giving her time away with a smile and the famous “its flippin fab!” which I think is her mantra.  Her mother Sheila does even more by the look of it from the blog posts, it makes me feel sort of exhausted!  I have tried all sorts of things to get the 3GClimbers further into the public conscious (think viral!) currently to no avail, but I will keep trying.

This all made me feel that if they can climb Kilimanjaro then I can get fit.  Those that know me well know that having a Sunday nap with a good book, and then a nice glass (or three) of red wine is my idea of heaven!  So I have been on a get fit and diet routine over the last two months and I am working towards my own personal goals.  My current mantra is that “nothing tastes as good as slim feels”!

I wish them so much luck, I read the blog every morning before I get up (which is early!) and am disappointed if it’s not been posted before I have to go to work.  I find it really inspiring to see what they are trying to achieve for the charities, and I expect they will charm everyone on the trip!

No calendar pictures I am afraid! (Not yet anyway!)

10 Interesting Facts about Kilimanjaro

Rising majestically above the African plains, the 20,000-foot Mt. Kilimanjaro has beckoned to climbers since the first recorded summit in 1889. Here are 10 interesting facts to help inspire your own future summit:

1. Mount Kilimanjaro is the tallest mountain on the African continent and the highest free-standing mountain in the world.
2. Kilimanjaro has three volcanic cones, Mawenzi, Shira and Kibo. Mawenzi and Shira are extinct but Kibo, the highest peak, is dormant and could erupt again. The most recent activity was about 200 years ago; the last major eruption was 360,000 years ago.
3. Nearly every climber who has summitted Uhuru Peak, the highest summit on Kibo’s crater rim, has recorded his or her thoughts about the accomplishment in a book stored in a wooden box at the top.
4. The oldest person ever to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro was 87-year-old Frenchman Valtee Daniel (although his achievement has never been recognised by the Guinness Book of Records).
5. Almost every kind of ecological system is found on the mountain: cultivated land, rain forest, heath, moorland, alpine desert and an arctic summit.
6. The fasted verified ascent of Mt. Kilimanjaro occurred in 2001 when Italian Bruno Brunod summitted Uhuru Peak in 5 hours 38 minutes 40 seconds. The fastest roundtrip was accomplished in 2004, when local guide Simon Mtuy went up and down the mountain in 8:27.
7. The mountain’s snow caps are diminishing, having lost more than 80 percent of their mass since 1912. In fact, they may be completely ice free within the next 20 years, according to scientists.
8. Shamsa Mwangunga, National Resources and Tourism minister of Tanzania, announced in 2008 that 4.8 million indigenous trees will be planted around the base of the mountain, helping prevent soil erosion and protect water sources.
9. South African Bernard Goosen twice scaled Mt. Kilimanjaro in a wheelchair. His first summit, in 2003, took nine days; his second, four years later, took only six. Born with cerebral palsy, Goosen used a modified wheelchair, mostly without assistance, to climb the mountain.
10. Approximately 25,000 people attempt to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro annually. Approximately two-thirds are successful. Altitude-related problems are the most common reason climbers turn back.

One thing is for sure: I will never forget in which year the 3GKili challenge took place.  I will, I hope, always know that it took place in the year in which Oscar became a teenager.  I hope I will also always know that it was about Kilimanjaro and that I will not become confused about which mountain it was.

However, it seems I cannot be so sure about some other things that have happened in my life.  When planning our recent holiday to Charmouth,  we knew that our group had been on holiday in the town before, but we were absolutely certain, having looked at the address of the house, where it was on the map and having discussed it among ourselves, that it was quite some distance away from where we had stayed before and therefore we would have an altogether different starting point for our walks.

It was only as we drove into the grounds of the house we had rented that we got the feeling that maybe we had been there before.  The outside looked remarkably familiar – but perhaps there were two fairly similar houses in the town?  The house we were renting this time boasted fifteen bath/shower rooms.  The one we had before had only half a dozen – but could they perhaps have added a few?  It was only upon entering it that we were certain that it was in fact the same house.  As soon as we clocked the dining room table, we knew it had to be.  The entire dining room is taken up with the most enormous roundish table – probably about ten feet in diameter – and everyone has to sit around the edges.  There is no way anything can be passed across the table – no human being could reach across without clambering on to it.  There could not be two such tables!  I remember on the initial visit climbing on to the table – when no-one was about to see me lying prone on it – to remove the vase of dying daffodils from the centre and then again to replace it with fresh ones.  This time there was a vase of rather nasty red plastic flowers in the middle.  It was a couple of days before I got enough privacy to replace it with a vase of the lovely bluebells and wild garlic growing in the garden.

We have tried to work out in which year we were in Charmouth before.  We know it wasn’t 2001, as that is the year we missed because of foot and mouth disease restricting movement and walking in country areas.  I had to send a message out to some of the original group who can no longer walk long distances, to see if anyone remembered.  What short memories we have for relatively recent events!  Happily, someone has now told me that it was in 2000 that we were originally there: she remembers because she arrived a couple of days late due to attending her father’s funeral.

We have always tried to ring the changes with our group holidays and to find new locations.  However, it has become increasingly difficult in recent years because we are not now willing to be packed in three or four to a room with shared bathrooms.  We all want our own rooms and en suite facilities, and that is not easy with twenty people.  But Ken has come up with a great idea.  He says we should choose the best four or five houses we have stayed in over the years and just rotate them.  By the time the house comes round again, some of us may have forgotten we have ever been there and we are absolutely certain to have forgotten what walks we did on the previous occasion.  We have got to reap some benefit from old age and failing memories, after all!

Sometimes I worry that unlike my courageous sister who is preparing her arduous climb of Kilimanjaro so energetically and whose actions constantly belie her age, I am getting to be rather like our grandma. Like her I enjoy sitting in gardens and afternoon tea, preferably the two combined, and neither of us will be remembered for our love of strenuous activity. However, unlike Grandma, who advocated at the most one bath a week, believing they remove our natural oils from the skin, I love having a bath, preferably with a good book and lots of bubbles. Even the introduction of water meters didn’t stop me, although I have cut back a little. The good news is that since Sheila pointed out to me that I needn’t sit with my back to the taps any more (see Sheila’s blog post, How Many Years at The Tap End) I now sit wherever I please.

When “I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here” contestants leave the jungle the first thing they want to do is have a nice hot bath. I expect when our 3G Celebrities get down from the mountain they will savour every moment in the showers at the lodge; not as luxurious as bath time but a great deal better than twice daily “washy washy bowls”. Hats off to them all.

Note from Jae: Well done Leslie – I’m so impressed! How very brave the generation above me is. Did you see Ma (and Gerda and Jean) appeared in the Kentish Gazette this week? 

My paternal grandmother, Lizzie, was a woman – or as she would have said – a lady, with many mottos. She used to bring them out regularly, as the mood took her.  One of her favourites was “Think you are beautiful and you will be beautiful”!  I actually think it probably did work for her: she was still quite a striking woman when she was eighty, with her piled up pure white hair and straight back.

I think her motto can be applied in quite a lot of other areas too.  Really, if you make up your mind to something, you are halfway there.  I worked for many years for someone who believed that if you have average intelligence, a modicum of common sense and lots of determination, that you could become anything you want, whether that be a doctor, architect or lawyer – or whatever else.  She proved it too.  On several occasions in our legal office, we took on youngsters who had left school without qualifications – even at sixteen – and turned them into solicitors a few years later.  It took a lot of hard work, but several solicitors are practising today thanks to her philosophy of life.

I wonder if the same theory is true of mountain climbing?  If you are averagely fit, sensible how you go about it and determined to do it, can you climb Kilimanjaro?  I am starting to believe maybe the answer is yes!  When I watched the film of many of my friends and relatives in the “Climb Every Mountain” blog on 19th May – that amazing film – I really started to believe it is possible that Jae, Oscar and I will be standing at the top at the end of August, belting out our own rendition of the song.  With the support we have behind us from the lovely singers, those who have donated money and things to take with us and those who have even provided us with art works, we have everything we could possibly need.  I believe we really might make it!

Stew and I spent a day recently with an interesting bunch of people on a walk between Shepherdswell, an old mining village in East Kent, and Canterbury.  It was a practice walk for the people who are organising the Refugee Tales, which I blogged about way back on 22nd March.  They have come up with the great idea of re-enacting something along the lines of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but with a modern day twist.  The walk will start in Dover and end in Crawley, taking nine days.  It starts on Saturday 13th June, so takes in two weekends.  It is possible to sign up just for the odd day, so I have signed up for the first four days, as I will be able to get home to my own bed at the end of each day.  However, arrangements have been made for those doing the whole thing, with church halls to sleep in, food provided and luggage being carried.  Among those walking are musicians to entertain and also experts on wildlife.  There was an amazing such expert on the practice walk.  Every so often he would ask us to stand quietly and listen.  He could identify every bird we heard: a wren, a woodpecker, a blackcap and “an excited chaffinch” as well as many others.

At the end of each day there will be a free performance, which will include some “Tales” by some quite famous authors such as Abdulrazak Gurnah, Chris Cleave, Marina Lewycka and several more.  These will include the Detainee’s Tale, the Unaccompanied Minor’s Tale, the Lorry Driver’s Tale etc – reflecting the stories of modern day refugees and detainees.  You can find out more about the walk here.

I owe my existence to voluntary groups working with refugees, such as those who are organising the Refugee Tales. My mother was Jewish, born in Germany in 1925.  In one night – the Kristallnacht – when she was thirteen, thousands of synagogues, Jewish shops and businesses were destroyed by Nazi troops and their supporters. Jewish people were terrorised and 30,000 Jewish men were seized. Ahead lay concentration camps, torture, slave labour and death.  Jewish parents were desperate to get their children to safety.  Kindertransport, the Refugee Children Movement, was a rescue mission set up by volunteers in the UK to assist in bringing children out of Nazi occupied Europe to British foster homes, hostels and farms. My mother was lucky enough to be one of the 10,000 children who fled to this country on the Kindertransport trains between 1938 and 1939.  It has been estimated that nearly one and a half million children died in the Holocaust: she was indeed one of the lucky ones.

When my thirteen year old mother arrived in London she was fostered by a family there who came to love her.  They had two teenage sons, one of whom a few years ago told my sister Leslie (who has written a detailed memoir all about this) that their house became a much happier place, when my mother moved in.  Although some of her close family did subsequently manage to escape to the UK, my mother remained living with her much loved foster family for the remainder of her childhood.  Had it not been for such families, who took children in out of the goodness of their hearts and amazing volunteers who paid for and arranged for the trains, I would never have been born.

There are many people in this country who are unsympathetic towards refugees. They seem to think that they should be sent ‘home’.  What they don’t seem to realise is that large groups of people never leave their homes unless forced to do so by war, famine, persecution or natural disaster.  They don’t have a choice in it, if, like my mother, they want to survive.

This was brought home to me by one of the women I met on the recent walk from Shepherdswell.  She had climbed up Kilimanjaro some years ago, so I was very keen to hear about her experience.  She told me about two young girls – perhaps about sixteen – who had signed up as porters to carry luggage and equipment up the mountain.  She told me that they had walked hundreds of miles in the hope of getting such work, and there they were in flip flops and bare legs carrying enormous burdens up a mountain in the snow.  I am quite certain these girls must have been fleeing from some man made or natural disaster.  I understand that still there are dozens of people standing at the gates of the Kilimanjaro National Park begging to be taken on as porters and many of them have probably fled their homelands because of humanitarian disasters.

Exodus, who are supporting the 3GKiliClimb, only use properly trained and equipped guides and porters – but they also raise money for local charities, which help to give people the skills they need to get such work.  A quarter of the money we are raising by our walk up Kilimanjaro will be going to the Tanzania Porter Education Project which Jae wrote about yesterday.  I can’t do much to help the many millions of people who have no choice but to flee their homes every year, whether on foot or crowded into a boat, but I hope that a few of them will be helped by your very generous donations – both through TPEP, and through the other projects we are all supporting.

 

One of the charities you are helping us fundraise for through the 3GKiliClimb project is the Tanzania Porter Education Project (which is funded via Friends of Conservation). Of all the funds raised 25% will go to this project, and if we reach our target, and that gets doubled by our kind match-funder, we will have enough money to support the project for a whole year!

Generally the traditional rural incomes in this area are complemented with seasonal employment as porters and guides. However, outside of these seasons, during the long (April-June) and short rains (November), employment opportunities are limited. The TPEP teaches English to the porters during these times.  Better language skills, environmental awareness and service levels, not only increase their employment opportunities; they help deliver a better experience for trekkers, who in turn may encourage others to come in future years.

Since its set up in conjunction with Exodus Travels in 2004, over 800 porters have been through the programme, and nine porters have also been sponsored to become qualified guides. TPEP accepts women as well as men at the school – allowing both to make good money safely from their mountain.

As we are now coming to the end of the long rains, we have just received an update from one of the tutors:

I am pleased to report that the English language training sponsored by Exodus has recently finished. The training was based in Arusha and lasted for 5 weeks with 2 classes; one of ‘beginners’ and the other ‘intermediate’ for those porters with some experience in English already. There were English language classes 5 days a week through this period.

The Project had 10 ‘beginners’ and 12 ‘intermediate’ students, and they finished with the 13 most improved students being selected to work as porters on an Exodus departure. These students benefited both from this extra work during the rainy season when there are very few climbs and also they were given the chance to practise their English with these Exodus clients. On summit day a couple of the intermediate students also went along with the clients and guides to the summit gaining further experience useful for their future.

Many thanks for funding this course.

We also received the following from Said Swalehe – a porter who attended the 2015 English course:

I was born in Babati in November 1983 and after completing primary education I was not selected for secondary education so I started to do various odd jobs to make some money. In 2002 I moved to Arusha and a year later went for the first time as a porter on Kilimanjaro. Later I joined African Walking Company as a porter. In 2013 I attend the free English course during the long rains. This helps me to improve my English and in 2014 I get a chance to attend the company’s first aid training. Since then I have been 15 times to the summit of Kilimanjaro as a summit porter. On these trips I have got lots of experience and I know the chance came only because of improving myself on the Exodus English Course. Again this year I get the chance to attend the course and further improve my English. I thank Exodus to help porters to reach our goal.

It’s lovely to be able to support a project which so clearly provides opportunities and skills to individuals, as well as bringing safe, responsible tourism to a community that benefits from it. And we know that porters on our trip in August will have been through TPEP, so it feels very personal. If you haven’t yet donated here’s the link, and if you have: thank you so much for helping to ensure this project’s continued success!

Jae recently reminded us of Jenny Joseph’s famous poem, Warning. Written in 1961 when the poet was 29, it starts with the famous line, “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple”. Friends often quote just that one line when they see how I dress, purple gloves, coat, fleece, scarves, shoes, bags, even a hat! Not all of them are the same shade, so many purples. And I certainly don’t wear them all at the same time, well, not always…

The second line goes, “with a red hat which doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me”. About forty years after Jenny Joseph wrote it, this line inspired the creation of The Red Hat Society, specifically for older women (over 50!)  in the United States. Branches of the society have expanded all over the world  since then, or groups inspired by them, usually meeting for afternoon tea, all wearing red hats, not too bothered about whether the hats suit them or not, just having a laugh, not worried about what other people might say.

We knew a lovely red hat lady when we were little; our Auntie Lizzie, whose red hats were decorated with extravagant red feathers.  She was one of the many thousands of women left widowed after World War I, married for only a brief space of time to Gilbert Taylor, one of our Grandma’s brothers. (So just as Grandma had been, she was a Lizzie Tayor). They had no children. And when we knew her, she was in her sixties and retired, living on her own in a small top floor tenement flat. Everything was very different from our normal house: its tiny kitchen and the fact that we needed a key to use the toilet outside the flat, at the top of the stairs.  The Kili group will be carrying up chemical toilets for use morning and evening.  In between, it will probably be en plein air! At least that didn’t happen at Auntie Lizzie’s.

Just round the corner from her flat was Hawick public library. That suited her very well as Lizzie had the spare time and the appetite to do a lot of reading. But on one notorious occasion, when she returned books unexpectedly quickly, the librarian was foolish enough to ask her if she really read them, or just looked at the pictures. It was just a joke, I think, but she was greatly offended and would have boycotted the library after that had she not loved reading so much.

She often had Sheila, Robbie and me to stay for the weekend and she made a huge fuss of us. It was fun to be with her and we loved our visits.  A song popular at the time, sung by Guy Mitchell,  went like this:

She wears red feathers and a hooly-hooly skirt
She wears red feathers and a hooly-hooly skirt
She lives on just cokey-nuts and fish from the sea
A rose in her hair, a gleam in her eyes
And love in her heart for me

Hawick’s weather didn’t lend itself to hula skirts and or any other sort of exotica, but she loved the song and laughed her head off when we sang it along with her.

I have recently bought a few books detailing people’s experiences of climbing Kilimanjaro: and I had planned to write about one of these today, but seem to have taken off on a frolic into childhood instead!  One very depressing thing about every account of the climb I have read is the amount of diarrhoea and vomiting referred to.  I started to wonder if there was a better way of referring to this and remembered the much more delicate terminology my friend Gwyn uses: she and her family always refer to being unwell in this way as being “untidy”.  When I asked Gwyn how that came about, she said it came from reading about a bear called Mary Plain, when she was a child.  I have vague memories of reading about Mary Plain myself and decided to find out a bit about her on the internet – and have got entirely carried away!

Mary Plain is an orphan bear cub at Berne zoo who is befriended by the spectacled ‘Owl Man’ by means of the regular application of bear friendly treats (sugar carrots! condensed milk delivered by hose!).  She is persuaded to leave the safety of her home and her bear twin cousins Marionetta and Little Wool and embark on a series of adventures with him.  These range from winning first prize in a show, to capturing Nazi spies and outwitting kidnappers, from escaping a field of angry bulls to being washed up on a tropical island . Mary is always funny, practically fearless, wonderfully manipulative, endlessly imaginative and just the best company ever.  Her adventures are recorded in a series of novels written between 1930 and 1965 by Gwynedd Rae – yes, another Gwyn!

Mary had a few catchphrases which handily cover all moments of Triumph and Despair in life:

To convey sadness and uncertainty:

‘I wonder if the Twins are happy without me?’

Or when self esteem is more buoyant:

‘I am an unusual first class bear with a white rosette and a gold medal with a picture of myself on it.’

“Gracious! that’s the cock waking me up, it must be another day,” and Mary pattered over to the window and had a look. Yes it was. How lovely! Mary liked new days. You never could tell what might happen on a new day; so many things could and especially when the day was Mary’s…

There is a thread of glorious gluttony that runs through all Mary Plain books. She eats constantly and always things that sound completely delicious; hot bread and milk, chocolate eclairs and meringues. She is very fond of cream buns, though if she ate too many, could fear that she was going to be “untidy”.

I have decided that Mary would be the ideal companion for us to have along on our trip, with her delicate phrasing.  She would find a positive side to every possible difficulty we might encounter and would happily greet each new day as it came along, no matter what.  Come and have another Big Adventure with us, Mary Plain, please!

“Asante”. Swahili for thank you. Perhaps the most useful of all the Swahili words and phrases the 3G KiliClimbers will learn. It’s a little word that makes a huge difference, whatever language it is expressed in.

Ever since Sheila was little she has been saying thank you, and the moment she could write, she was writing thank you letters. Our mother was adamant. She would draw pencil lines with a ruler on a special notelet with “Sheila” printed on the  front, and after every birthday, every Christmas, the thank you letter routine would roll into action.

Recently a dear relative, our mother’s cousin Marianne, sent from Norway  a bundle of treasured black and white  photos and among them were thank you letters from Sheila which Marianne had kept for over 60 years. Spelling and handwriting in pencil are endearingly child-like, but the presents seem odd. A book about galleons (Sheila was seven at the most as her address is Lintalee) and a gummed paper outfit that might help her win a prize. What was that? Maybe Sheila remembers these presents better than I do.

Thank you letters are totally out of fashion. Even a spoken thank you cannot be taken for granted. But I was pleased to see that in emoji, apparently the UK’s fastest growing language, there are many emoticons with which to express thanks.  And the iWatch, which has only a preset range of messages as there is no keyboard, can send thanks in four ways, cheers, thx, thanks! And thank you. Which is what I want to say to everyone who is reading this, thank you to everyone who has donated, to all the supporters of the 3G KiliClimbers behind the scenes and front of house. Above all thank you to the 3GKiliClimbers, the three actors on the stage, who by climbing Kilimanjaro in August, are helping three charities, Catching Lives, Friends of Conservation and Baraka, a small charity working with under-privileged schools and communities in Zambia, Morocco, Laos and India. To all, I say ASANTE.