THE SHINING MOUNTAIN

Summiting Kilimanjaro will change your life in strange ways. It’s not about how high you can climb; it’s more about how deep you can reach inside yourself.

- LIZA VAN DEVENTER

‘REMEMBER YOUR WHY.’

On the evening before we were going to summit the mountain that had become so huge in our lives, accomplished mountaineer Sibusiso Vilane, our team leader, gathered us all below the crater rim. He spoke quietly, but his words struck home: ‘Remember your why.’ Four days into hiking the Rongai Route, we were about to summit Mount Kilimanjaro from Camp Kibo, one of the three volcanic cones. He was reminding us to hold on to what it was, in our lives, that had brought us to that point.

Sibusiso is the first black African to conquer the Three Poles Challenge (South Pole, North Pole and Mount Everest). I was comforted by the fact that we were in good hands… but I was also terrified.

Our long walk to the summit started at midnight. When the sun finally rose a lifetime later, we were already standing near the top: 5 895m above sea level. And we were all digging deep to find our why.

Group dynamics are always interesting, but few things are more bonding than sharing the hardship of climbing the highest mountain in Africa as a group with a shared goal – not only to summit, but also to do it on Mandela Day. We were there as part of Trek4Mandela, an expedition founded by the Imumba Foundation that summits Kilimanjaro every year on Nelson Mandela’s birthday. Its goal is to support the Caring4Girls initiative, which addresses the harsh reality of period poverty: the fact that so many girls miss school because they have no access to menstrual hygiene products. Caring4Girls helps vulnerable and indigent girls to access these products while also promoting menstrual health, hygiene and puberty education across Southern Africa.

SUPPORT