Getting immunized downtown (2008-05-06)

While I was entering Tarangire National Park (March 14, 2000), a tsetse fly bit the back of my hand. Fearing further bites, when I reached the porch of my ridge tent I took off my shirt to spray it with Permethrin--and a tsetse fly bit my back.

Later that day I developed diarrhea and a moderate fever. As my temperature rose I worried I would become delirious and no one would discover my condition. This was one of three times in Africa that I wished I had a traveling companion.

My fever stopped rising and finally dropped, I got some rest, and my driver checked with me the next morning. The following day I was well and resumed my safari, taking photographs of elephants and afternoon storms.

This illustrates part of my philosophy of travel. I take whatever precautions are possible, accept that traveling has risks, and then forget my worries and focus on enjoying the experience.

Some precautions are medications and vaccinations for vaccine-preventable diseases. Last year I wrote about anti-malarial medication, mosquito avoidance, and a red colobus monkey. Vaccinations include routine vaccinations like MMR, polio, and Tdap, as well as vaccinations like hepatitis (A and B), rabies, and typhoid.

When I went to Africa, I was watching wild animals, so I received rabies vaccinations. For our trip to China, there wasn't time for the series, and we anticipated less time outdoors. For similar reasons we didn't get the Japanese encephalitis vaccinations. In addition, there are shortages of both of those vaccines. We'll avoid malaria-risk areas of China as well. We did go to King County Downtown Public Health Center Travel Clinic to update routine vaccinations and get hepatitis and typhoid vaccinations. Finally, Ryan is spraying our clothing with Permethrin. At least this time I'm not traveling alone.

On the Lower Route from Marangu to Kibo (2000-03-08/11)

After reviewing a book set in Africa, I began recording in this blog stories of my trip there, especially of my climb of Mount Kilimanjaro, and the people I met along the trail. Below is an outline of these events, from Marangu to Kibo.

I woke up at Marangu Hotel to a beautiful sunrise. After we packed and ate a large breakfast, the staff gave us a briefing and assigned us our guides and porters. I had a team of four:

• my porter,
• my guide,
• my guide's porter, and
• our cook.

We got into the truck—my guides and porters climbed in back while the driver showed me to the passenger side of the cab. Then we were off to Marangu Gate. From Marangu Gate we climbed over several days to Mandara and Horombo.

From Horombo Hut to Kibo Hut, the moorland vegetation gave way to alpine desert. Most people put on jackets.

From some points on the climb from Horombo Hut, I could see Kibo Hut at the base of Kibo as a tiny metallic sliver in the distance. My picture of Kibo from one rise includes for scale people on the trail ahead.

At High Altitudes (2000-03-08/13)

After reading a book with scenes in Africa, and another set in Africa, I decided to post memories and stories as well as photographs of my trip there. These are more stories of Kilimanjaro.

High altitude climbing is interesting. I have since decided (after climbing Mount Adams when I was out of shape) that I prefer streams and trees to rocks and snow. While the equatorial location of Mt. Kilimanjaro may make the temperature at higher elevations more like lower elevations elsewhere, I don't imagine there's any more oxygen.

A sign at Marangu Gate had some reference elevations. From Marangu Gate we climbed to our first stop, Mandara Hut. In regard to oxygen, I don't think anyone had too much difficulty at Marangu Gate (1 970 m, higher than Denver) or Mandara Hut (2 700 m), though the climb was tiring and the air noticeably thinner on the way.

Several people climbing Kilimanjaro at the same time I was—including two American doctors and some Austrian gentlemen—took Diamox to assist in acclimation. Ashley, a young woman who was part of a British couple climbing alongside me, starting taking it at Kibo Hut. Apparently it alters the oxygen dissociation curve so that hemoglobin will release oxygen more readily.

Additionally, many people—including me—stayed two days at Horombo Hut, taking an extra day to attempt to acclimatize. I'm told most people notice the effects of lack of oxygen due to altitude at around 3 000 m. Horombo Hut is at 3 720 m. After lunch there, we climbed up to the saddle between the two prominent volcanic peaks, Mawenzie and Kibo. On the way to the saddle, at 4 500 m, is Zebra rock.

While I was at Horombo Hut, one German young man was removed from Mt. Kilimanjaro in a stretcher, a victim of High Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HAPE), or fluid on the lungs. While some climbers asserted that they saw him alive at lower elevation, one American doctor also making the climb, who watched him pass in the stretcher, was convinced that he died before reaching the bottom. The Segmans, whom I met at Horombo Hut, corroborated this after returning to the park headquarters at Marangu Gate.

Apparently the young man had been sick at Horombo and Kibo Huts, and perhaps even at Mandara Hut. It may have been merely traveler's diarrhea, but dehydration might be deadly if one's body begins to retain water as in pulmonary edema.

While the climbers were abuzz with this news, I overheard one climber who reached Gilmans Point on the crater rim being asked if he had had any trouble. He said he had many symptoms: headache, dizziness, and hallucinations. I would not have persisted if I had experienced the latter, a symptom of High Altitude Cerebral Edema (HACE), or swelling of the brain.

They don't publicize the statistics, but my informal and anecdotal survey suggests that on the order of 1000's attempt Mt. Kili, 100's actually arrive at the crater rim, and 10's die. I heard that eight people died in December during the millennial climb. One woman died of HAPE on January 1, after she and her husband insisted on continuing to climb against their guide's recommendation.

Admiring the Active of All Ages (2000-03-07/08)

After the stories of beasts, beatings, bribes, and bugs, I wanted to share more inspirational stories of east Africa. At Marangu Hotel I met Betty and Ruth. Betty Leavengood is a freelance writer from Arizona. (She is the author of Grand Canyon Women and Tucson Hiking Guide--in a second edition.) She and her friend, Ruth, were "the two mamas." ("Mama" is a respectful form of address for any women old enough to have children). Betty and Ruth climbed Mount Kilimanjaro at the same time I did--to more than 4 500 m at the saddle between Kibo and Mawenzi. I was able to take a picture at Mandara with Ruth on the left and Betty on the right.

Betty says, "We old folks should give you youngsters hope for your old age." They gave me hope, at least. After climbing Kilimanjaro, Ruth went to Haiti. Betty wrote:

My friend Ruth had a great time in Haiti. To her, having a great time means being dumped in the middle of nowhere by the jeep driver supposedly taking her to a hotel in another town. He got angry and left her and her daughter. They were rescued by a policeman.

At the time Betty was working on another book about Arizona's mountaintops. She also planned a backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon over Easter.

Wanting Longer in Africa (2000-03-06)

This is another story of Africa in March 2000: My business partner and I worked together at a civil engineering consulting firm in Bellevue, WA, before we started our current software development company. I've long loved travel, and it was while working at the consulting firm that I took a month off to go to east Africa. We were working on a telecommunications project at the time, and a month was all we could spare--not the six weeks I wanted. (Unlike my trip to Paris, we didn't determine a way to work abroad.) On the fifth day of my trip I sent this email message:

It hasn't rained for the last two days. I booked a Mt. Kili climb and a safari. The rain won't stop the Land Rovers on the latter. I just hope that I can work a camera with the remaining arm and leg after I've paid for it. In anticipation of the rain, and because KLM lost my tent somewhere, and because the known trustworthy trip agent is high-end, I'm going on the hut/lodge variety, rather than the budget tent variety of trek.
Are you *sure* that an extra two weeks here would put our work behind? :-)

I came back to Bellevue as planned at the end of March. Upon returning to the office, I learned that there was a stop-work order on the telecommunications project!

Reading Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (2007-03-04/15)

He turned to me as if to say, "Hurry, boy, it's waiting there for you."--Toto, "Africa"

Book Review

Alexandra Fuller went to Africa in 1972 with her British parents. Her memoir, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight tells of 1976 to 2001 in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), Malawi, and Zambia. She shares these childhood stories in a series of overlapping vignettes. She writes of her mother, "hard-living, glamorous, intemperate, intelligent, racist." (The book's title comes from A.P. Herbert's lines, "Don't let's go to the dogs tonight,/For mother will be there.") She writes of her father, "taciturn and capable." Most of all, she writes "a love story for the continent."

Personal Memories

I went to Africa in March 2000 for the best vacation of my life. For a month I took photographs, mostly of wildlife, in Tanzania and Kenya. The best photographs are in an album, for reminiscing--or occasional sharing with guests, accompanied by narration. Some of these stories are already on the Web; some photographs and recollections are already in this blog; some I will start to share now.

Africa came to my attention when a friend and his wife moved to Nairobi for a research assistantship abroad. I asked myself, When would I know someone in Africa? Thinking it unlikely to happen again, I decided to visit. (As it happens, my friend's family is again in Africa, and another old friend is there as well.) When I thought of Africa, I thought of Isak Denisen's Out of Africa, Ernest Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and safaris in the Serengeti. As I researched my trip, I discovered that east Africa (Nairobi in Kenya, Arusha in Tanzania, and Masai Mara or Serengeti in both) was the location for almost all of my associations.

I had taken chloroquine for my 1992 trip to Honduras, so I was familiar with antimalarial medication. Chloroquine had been the worst-tasting medicine I'd ever taken; I couldn't throw the pills down my throat fast enough to avoid the aftertaste. Mefloquine was the medicine for east Africa, with its chloroquine-resistant strains of plasmodium. It tasted better but produced vivid dreams. My waking imagination of what the parasite would do inside my body was vivid as well, so I took the antimalarial anyway.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight opens with descriptions of bugs, and indeed insects were a concern as I prepared for my trip. I asked a friend who grew up in Africa about mosquito netting. What was the best kind? He didn't know; his family never used it. Did he worry about malaria? They just caught it, and got sick periodically. I decided I couldn't afford an absence from work for malaria when I returned.

One of my first nights in Arusha I awoke under the mosquito netting provided over the bed by the YMCA at which I was staying. What had disturbed my sleep was the high-pitched whine of a mosquito's wings. Fearing a proboscis through the tiny holes, I curled myself into a ball so none of my body touched the netting, and went back to sleep.

"I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills," I remembered, both from the movie, and from a British woman's reading of the book by Karen Blixen née Dinesen. (I heard Karen Blixen read another of her stories on tape as well.) In Nairobi, my friends lived in the neighborhood "Karen", and one day we visited that farm.

Bribery and graft have a place in most people's stories of Africa. For me it started before I was officially in Tanzania. The fee for the visa was $20. I handed the guard $50, which he placed in a machine that purported to check for forgery. The machine "broke" and the border guard wrote me a receipt for $20. I thought, "I guess I just paid $20 for a visa and $30 for a bribe." I never argue with border guards; after all, I wasn't yet in the country.

When I wanted a topographic map of Mount Kenya (I love maps), I found they were only available from a Kenyan national agency directly. When leaving their offices in Nairobi, the guard asked for "chai". My friend and I pretended not to know the meaning of this slang for bribe.

Every building in Nairobi had a guard. Every apartment building, every house, every shop had a guard. (There were plenty of people: a drought had brought many rural residents to the capital.) Almost no one called the police. Those who did told stories, repeated by my friends, of the police requesting money to handle the matter. While I was in Nairobi, the news reported that a man stole a mango. The bystanders and vendor chased him down and beat him to death. Corruption and vigilante justice have their price: a death penalty seems steep for theft. This, and the crumbling infrastructure, place Nairobi at the bottom of my list of the world's cities. (Paris, of course, is at the top.)

The drought affected both the human and the animal populations of east Africa. Another news story while I was there told of a fight that broke out between villagers and monkeys when a water truck arrived at the village.

I was briefly chased by a monkey myself. In Mombasa they are pests, attracted to the rubbish of Kenyan tourists. After safely reaching my hut, I took a picture through the sliding glass door of the Procolobus badius on the porch.

[Corrected author's name.]

Remembering Elephants (2000-03-14)

Africa has been on my mind. Coincidentally, I just reviewed a book my business partner recently lent me; it had a few scenes on safari. I'm now beginning a book (Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight) a friend recently lent me; it's an African childhood.

I took the picture of the African Elephant--tembo to the East Africans who speak Swahili and Loxodonta africana to my Collins Guide to African Wildlife--while in a Land Rover in Tarangire National Park in Tanzania. The driver hired by Serengeti Select Safaris, Audex, said to the cow starting to cross the road, "Wait, Mama; let us pass." After the cow and her calves had crossed, we continued along the road. The "Mama," perhaps concerned about her young, trumpeted as we passed. As she was as large as the Land Rover, perhaps 3000 kg, and had tusks that curved forward, I had no wish to quarrel with her.

Wandering East Africa Years Ago (2000-03-01/31)