I have just finished reading “Kilimanjaro Diaries” by Eva Melusine Thieme. I have now read quite a few accounts of people’s experience on the mountain, but this was by far the funniest and – for me – the easiest to identify with.
To start with, she admits that if she “did make any bucket lists, climbing a mountain is possibly the last thing I’d put on there. I’m terrified of heights, and I might even be more terrified of being cold, both of which are hard to avoid when you go mountain-climbing”. She gets involved in the climb principally because she and her family are temporarily living in South Africa, not so far away, and because a family friend gets carried away with the idea and starts making all the plans for the group – which includes three parents with teenage boys. You can see there are some similarities: I can’t claim to be specially afraid of heights – I have been up and down the scaffolding on my house several times lately to inspect what both roofers and our lovely painter have been doing – but I am very frightened of being cold. There have been several occasions in my life when I have become so chilled that the only way I have been able to warm up again is in a hot bath, and that certainly won’t be on the menu up Kilimanjaro!
However, Eva’s main preoccupation is definitely with toilets, as is evident from the cover of the book. She writes that hiking on Kili, “reduces your topics of interest to three things: when will I eat, where will I sleep, and where do I shit, excuse my language”. She says she could have written an entire guide about what to do when nature calls and what to do with the, ahem, results – and flags up yet another entertaining and relevant book for me with the glorious title of “How to Shit in the Woods“, which has chapters entitled “Anatomy of a Crap” and “How Not to Pee in Your Boots”!
She strongly recommends travelling with a private toilet tent, and I am so pleased that we are, having heard from many people now about the infamous drop toilets all the camps are fitted with. She says that if “you’re planning to frequent those toilets, you might as well not worry about altitude sickness, because there is no doubt you’ll be fainting from the smell way before you’ve even reached 3,000 meters”.
In fact, it seems that even with a toilet tent, there are problems: one of the guys in her group suggests, “Let’s leave the roof off the shithouse tent to try and alleviate the asphyxiating smells”! The suggestion is taken up and thereafter when tall people are using it, they “have their head poking out while the rest is hidden from view, if not from imagination”. She also finds that the higher up the mountain they climb, the steeper the terrain of their campsites. More often than not, you find yourself perched inside the tent at an “impossible tilt, fervently hoping that the whole thing won’t topple over with you on – or rather in – it, which would definitely not be a pretty sight”.
One of her most useful recommendations is to ensure that when you are in your tent, you always have your shoes, head lamp and toilet roll at the ready. In fact Eva ends up sleeping with her head lamp wrapped tightly round her wrist. I will make sure that all three of us definitely take her advice.
It is clear from what I have read that most adults – though not, perhaps, teenagers – are unable to sleep much at altitude. Eva says that “sleeplessness is your constant companion on Mount Kilimanjaro, along with the peanuts and the toilet talk”. Coupled with that seems to be the need to urinate much more frequently than usual – she refers to there being queues at the tent even in the middle of the night and having to make the trip four times nightly! I think that if Jae, Oscar and I are all three going to be in the same tent together, there will have to be a rule that if one of us gets up in the night for a wee, then we all get up, otherwise it could be that no-one gets any sleep. Imagine the scenario: unzipping and getting out of your sleeping bag and its liner, locating your shoes, light and loo roll, unzipping both the inner and outer lining of the tent – then repeating that in reverse on your way back. If there are three of us, each making four trips in the night, that would be happening twenty four times each night in one direction or the other!!! Unless we get co-ordinated, there will be no time for sleeping, supposing we were so inclined.
Many people have asked me if I intend to take a Shewee up the mountain with me. In a very early blog – 7th February – I said that I had decided not to. I referred to my squatting being up to scratch after years of practice in Pilates classes. Eva also researches this issue and finds a “female urine device…..that looks like a stunted funnel and can be had… with an ‘extension pipe’ that is great for extra reach when aiming into a bowl”. She goes on “Of course, only a woman could be enticed to spend money on a device to improve her aim into the bowl because her original device leaves something to be desired. If only men could be made to carry extension pipes around with them, then toilets the world over would be a happier place”. Of course, in normal life there is another solution for men: I have a friend – in fact one of our fab guest bloggers – who will not let a man enter her home unless he undertakes to sit down when using the toilet at all times!
Anyway, back to the Shewee. Eva decides – after writing several highly entertaining pages about them – not to take one up Kili with her for much the same reasons I have, and, I am pretty sure, Jae has too. That is, as Eva puts it, “the somewhat disquieting debate of clean-up-before-stowing-away versus stowing-away-without-cleanup, and quite frankly I’m not inclined to explore either one of these options any further”. I know that Jae would be with her on that: Jae managed to toilet train all three of her boys without ever introducing them to a potty. They went straight from nappies to using a toilet in the usual manner – and each of them in turn accomplished the transition in a weekend. I recollect I was looking after Oscar and his brother Milo in an indoor play area for a couple of hours during Milo’s special weekend, when I saw him heading for the loos. Given that he was very new to the game, I thought I should follow him in to make sure it went alright. I saw him carefully look at the two available doors and choosing to go into the gents – and he had disappeared in before I could divert him to the ladies. I went into the gents regardless and found him in a cubicle, managing perfectly competently. However, when we turned to come out, I realised that we had company – I could hear that the urinals were in use. After a bit of hesitation, I shouted, “Lady coming out”. There was a bit of scuttling about, but a minute later when we came out, the coast was clear! Phew! I learned my lesson then to leave the boys to it.
Eva’s group was one of ten, but was, of course, supplemented by five guides and about thirty porters. Of the ten, only one of them didn’t make it to the top: altitude sickness hit on the last day, when one of the group suddenly fainted and was rushed down the mountain on the backs of two of the guides. However, I won’t tell you any more than that, as this book is a really good read and I wouldn’t want to deprive anyone of the mounting excitement to see who makes it to the top and how!
Note from Jae: Ha – I must read that book, I think I’d love the family element, and the fascination with Kilimanjaro Toilets! I’ve always hated the concept of potties – I can’t imagine why people want to deal with moving wee and poo about, and cleaning it up, when there’s a loo that flushes it away perfectly, but I’d forgotten about you getting caught in a mens’ loo cubicle Ma! With three sons – all of whom have been determined to go into “the boys” loos from toddler age – I’ve put my head round many a “gents” door, often to some very interesting looks! My most recent brush with toilet talk, though, was on safari in Kenya. We were on game drives for around six hours each morning, and four hours each afternoon – and for a whole day (dawn to dusk) on one occasion. Our photographer guide, Paul Goldstein, made it very clear from the moment we arrived, that all wees were to be taken within a few feet of the vehicle – with girls being allocated the back (quite handy for a little lean!). Despite the presence of coffee in flasks, and chilli in most meals, I managed not to need a number two during any of these drives – phew! Some of my fellow safari-ers were not so lucky. Let’s hope all our bowels play nice on Kili!