... but first, a word from our sponsors.
Mary tells one of the most ridiculously heartwarming union tales I have ever heard... quite possibly, THE most heartwarming tale. Even if you don't read the rest of this post, YOU HAVE TO READ THIS.
And Sergey just went through Zimbabwe with a surprising tale of complete... non-chaos and normalcy. Who knew?
Today's topic will be hygiene, and particularly "washrooms" as they call them in Canada.
As Americans, we value our hygiene. Probably not as obsessive as the Japanese, and of course, there are degrees even within the Land of the Free. But by and large, if you told most people they had to sweat and no shower for a week, even for money, most people wouldn't take that bet.
After altitude questions, the most frequent questions I get concerning the climb are along the lines of "where do you do number #1 and #2" and "how do you keep clean?" The answer to both is "it's an adventure."
So let's start off with the easy stuff. There are no showers, period. Heck, there is no running water. Well, that's not exactly true. They have running water at Horombo Hut and a couple of other high traffic huts, but we had access to running water for a total of one day out of seven, and that's very typical.
Instead, the 100-packs of Kirkland baby wipes set forth above served as our showers. Ask for about ten minutes alone in the tent (get your mind out of the gutter), strip (still no gutter), and scrub. As you would probably expect, baby wipe showers are not as satisfying, but the surprising reason is that the cleaning chemical leaves kind of a sticky residue that kind of convinces your mind you're not fully clean.
Now, that's not to say we didn't get hot water to wash up. We did get that about twice a day. Remember Modi?
Well, he would bring us each about two quarts of hot water in a bucket twice a day; once in the morning when we woke up, and once in the evening after the hike and before dinner. He was also responsible for making sure we had water in our Camelbaks. Anyways, we would use this water to wash our face and hands, and also to brush our teeth.
I'll get to clothing in a future post. Suffice it to say, however, that while you are not super-limited in what you can bring, you will wear everything (including underwear) multiple days.
Which brings us to the main event. Bathrooms. To say that the bathrooms on Kilimanjaro were an adventure is an understatement. Some of you may find this topic gross, but let's be honest: it's important and we do it every day, so why beat around the bush? Every journey to the bathroom had to be carefully weighed against a myriad of factors. Among them:
- Is it #1 or #2?
- How bad do I really have to go?
- Is it a sitter or a squatter?
- Is it cold (better for smell, worse for comfort) or is it warm?
- Does it have ventilation?
- How pungent is the odor?
- Does it have toilet paper?
- Is it close enough that you can run in, do your business, and run out while holding your breath?
- Can you build in with someone else's group and use their portable johns?
- Would you rather go outside?
- How long can a human being live without going to the bathroom?
One of these is a trick question. Guess which one!
Here is a very typical standalone bathroom at the less traveled campsites.
All things considered, it wasn't bad, although the "chimney" did nothing to appreciably reduce the smell.
This is the inside of a typical "squatter." Concrete heaven. Don't even ask what all that stuff is.
This was a typical bathroom at any of the "huts." They were located around 100 meters from where anyone slept, and that was most definitely due to the smell. For some reason, trekkers were supposed to use the ones of the left, while porters were supposed to use the ones on the right. I checked both out, however, and didn't see an appreciable difference between the two.
The bathrooms at the huts were "cleaner" in the sense that they were porcelain and you could tell they were "cleaned" semi-regularly by someone throwing water in them. However, any advantage these posed was more than made up for the fact that the volume of trekkers using it made the smell in these unbearable. How unbearable? At Kibo Hut, the day before we summitted, the bathroom stench permeated the entire campsite. It was so bad, that two of three of our group couldn't eat anything due to the smell, despite the acknowledgement in their minds that we had to eat in order to have enough energy to walk up 3,000 feet the next morning. the other third didn't let a little nausea get in the way of hungry. I leave you to guess who was who.
Oh, and BTW, the trick question is whether the toilet was a sitter or a squatter. As you can see, all public restrooms were squatters.
It is due to the foulness of these bathrooms that we had asked Ronald if we could have a "poo porter," after our experiences with the bathrooms on the safari. In hindsight, we should have wrapped this one up prior to the trip.
The portable johns are the green structures in the back. They are made of cloth type material and have a "sitter" in them. Underneath the sitter is a bowl in which the "poo porter" goes around several times a day, reaches into the back of the john, empties the bowls into a bucket, and then dumps it in the public restroom. These "poo porters" are very defensive about making sure only their clients use these johns, and I can't say I blame them. I wouldn't want to clean up after more than the absolute minimum number of people either.
We know this because, as a joke, Resha went up to hug one of the portable johns. Several of our porters quickly signaled to us when Resha walked up to the portable john that she could not use it, but when they saw we just wanted to take a picture, they laughed. At Mawenzi Tarn Hut, there was about 40 South Asians from London who had a half dozen portable johns (the green ones in the picture above), and we schemed as to whether Resha could fit in with them enough to confuse the porters so she could use their property, but in the end it didn't happen.
And I've think I've blogged enough about that topic to last me a lifetime. On to more pleasant things.
As I noted in my previous post, there were a lot of cave camps. And of course, where there are cave camps, there are caves.
Ronald said that in the olden days, some trekkers, but most porters, would actually sleep in these caves. However, after some incidents where parts of the caves would periodically cave-in and hurt people, sleeping in the caves was banned.
Clearly, these facts didn't stop us from having fun, particularly at first cave. A reenactment from past treks.
William happy as can be.
Mike ready to pounce.
The altitude turning William into one of "teh gays?"
Group shot.
For the record, I did not actually hock a loogie.
I found this hole, which proved irresistible.
My groundhog impression...
... although I guess it makes more sense from the top side.
The Sarlacc has me!
Second Cave.
Perhaps not as much fun...
... but still pretty fun.
I leave you with this final cave.
Although it initially looks like all the other caves...
... it is very different because it extends at an upward slope several thousand feet up into the mountain. Ronald says they are old lava chutes where magma used to flow when Kibo was very active. But they also served another purpose.
Although I forget the specifics, Ronald said that about 10 or 20 years ago, there were some incidents where either Kenyan or Tanzanian rebels were taking Westerners climbing Kilimanjaro hostage. During one such incident, he said the guides and porters hid the Westerners in these chutes, tell them to climb as far as possible until light was not visible, hide, and not come out until they came back to get them. He said this particular incident had a happy ending, as after a few days, the Tanzanian army came to assist and the Westerners were all found.
Until next week...
