I had made this com­pre­hen­sive list of all the things that I want­ed to men­tion in this final post for the Africa hike and all of the amaz­ing, eye-open­ing things that had hit me upon re-entry to the U.S. That might have been too long of an entry to keep everybody’s atten­tion any­way, but the truth is that I can’t find the list any­where. I had four days of trav­el­ing includ­ing three red-eye flights in a row to get home. Then I had the usu­al “explo­sion” of stuff every­where from my back­pack and have sub­se­quent­ly lost the list. I guess that I need to start mak­ing lists to keep track of where I have put the lists, or some­thing like that.

I got back from Africa and took a week or so off and then I went on a nice leisure­ly, relax­ing hike on the Pacif­ic Crest Trail in Wash­ing­ton. Wash­ing­ton is always real­ly pret­ty and the flow­ers were in full bloom so it was awe­some. After being in Africa this was a real­ly wel­come change of pace.

It was nice to be back home and return to the U.S. Dur­ing a lay-over in the air­port I was able to read any one of a mil­lion mag­a­zines and you can pret­ty much get any­thing that you want 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Also a big dif­fer­ence that I start­ed to think about a lot is that here at home peo­ple know that the police are around on high­ways, roads, and to respond to any­thing nec­es­sary and take care of prob­lems and crime. In Africa, things did not seem like this at all and I heard a lot of sto­ries of cor­rup­tion, espe­cial­ly in Kenya. I was def­i­nite­ly always watch­ing over my shoul­der. It now seems to me like if the police give peo­ple an inch (allow them to break small rules) then those rules become obso­lete and then it just works its way up the sys­tem until more and more laws are use­less and not enforced. Enough on that though. Those were just a cou­ple of the main thoughts that I had. On a side note, I know some of you that know me and know how much I love piz­za will get a kick out of this so here’s a quick list of places that I ate piz­za in the past few months: 1)Addis Aba­ba, Ethiopia, 2)Nairobi, Kenya (at 2 dif­fer­ent places), 3)Arusha, Tan­za­nia, 4)Johannesburg, South Africa, 5)Jeffrey’s Bay, South Africa, 6)Dubai, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, 7)Leavenworth, WA (a Bavar­i­an theme-town, the name of the restau­rant was Rudloof’s Piz­za and Won­der Dogs). I’ll end on that note. I am head­ed out on anoth­er hike for a few weeks and should be back towards the begin­ning of Octo­ber so I’ll keep you posted.

View Africa Cur­rent in a larg­er map

6/29/2009

I fin­ished up hik­ing Mt. Meru (just under 15,000 feet) and Mt. Kil­i­man­jaro (about 19,400 feet) this past week. Two very pret­ty moun­tains. My 40–45 degree sleep­ing bag was push­ing it a lit­tle bit on Kili where it got down to about 15 degrees and windy at night, but no prob­lem. My guide actu­al­ly did­n’t make it to the sum­mit. I want­ed to do the Arrow Glac­i­er Route up (a lit­tle more tech­ni­cal route and a lot less crowd­ed than the stan­dard routes). We got about halfway up the Breach Wall and he was­n’t look­ing so good. Final­ly we crest­ed the Breach Wall around sun­rise (it was real­ly cold) and I took a few pic­tures, had the guide take a cou­ple of pic­tures of me and could­n’t feel my hands when he passed the cam­era back, so it dropped and broke about 20 min­utes from the sum­mit, just my luck. Any­way, the guide got real­ly sick and could­n’t keep going. So I went to the sum­mit and met him back in the crater. I felt real­ly strong and the alti­tude did­n’t really
do any­thing to me. Strange con­sid­er­ing the guide should have been the one that had no prob­lems. I am going to head down to South Africa now since I fly home from there and fig­ure out what to do next with the time that I have left.

6/20/2009

This is real­ly hard for me to say because I have nev­er backed out on some­thing before but I hon­est­ly no longer think this hike is safe for me. I seri­ous­ly thought I was going to die 3 times in the past week or so and last night took the cake. The locals don’t walk around alone or unarmed (they all car­ry spears and lit­tle swords) and it real­ly just isn’t safe for me to be out this part of the world by myself between the peo­ple and the wildlife.….…
The death sit­u­a­tions list­ed in order of occurrance:

1) Near mug­ging which I ran from and avoid­ed luck­i­ly, but could have been a lot worse now that I think about it.….I got back to the city now and I saw a white guy walk­ing around with his head split open and a cou­ple of black eyes. I did­n’t even want to ask him what happened.

2) Ele­phant charge, which some­how I got incred­i­bly lucky also because there was a lion sleep­ing in the grass a lit­tle bit away that I did­n’t see and as I ran zig-zag­ging (as the locals had told me to do) away from the ele­phant the lion got up and ran in the oth­er direc­tion and dis­tract­ed the ele­phant away from me. that was a close one and appar­ent­ly ele­phants are a real­ly big threat and the locals con­sid­er them the biggest danger.
how­ev­er for me this was the last straw and I don’t want to push my luck anymore.….…

3) Last night I set up my tent and was about to go to sleep when I looked out my tent and saw a lion sit­ting about 20 feet straight in front of the tent watch­ing me.…..not a huge prob­lem, until I saw anoth­er one try­ing to be all stealthy and come from behind also. that is how lions hunt they dis­tract you and/or chase you into anoth­er one. I did­n’t real­ly know what to do, so I tried to scare it off by yelling and shin­ing my head­lamp and stuff. The lion from behind just kept get­ting clos­er until it just walked right up and past me with­in a cou­ple of feet (see attached pic­ture for how ridicu­lous­ly close it came). For some rea­son it just kept walk­ing and walked away, but it def­i­nite­ly showed me who was boss. I could have been gone in less than a sec­ond and I am not will­ing to push my luck anymore.
I know this is the right deci­sion for me and I know that cer­tain areas that I would be head­ed into would be just as bad, if not worse.

It has been amaz­ing and hum­bling to expe­ri­ence this first hand and I am glad to still be alive. I have hiked about 1200 miles through un-hiked Ethiopi­an and Kenyan ter­ri­to­ry and in some areas of Ethiopia I think I was the first white per­son they had ever seen. I hope I haven’t let any­body down by not com­plet­ing the hike as intend­ed. I have re-eval­u­at­ed the sit­u­a­tion and I am still going to hike in Africa. I am going to hit the pop­u­lar areas (Kil­i­man­jaro, Mt. Meru, etc) and known trekking areas (many require a guide with a rifle) and should be safer.
Hope every­body is doing well.
~Trau­ma

6/9/2009

I have fin­ished hik­ing in Ethiopia and am head­ed to my start­ing point in Kenya. I can’t have a con­tin­u­ous route through south­ern Ethiopia and north­ern Kenya because they are very dan­ger­ous areas right now with almost com­plete law­less­ness and a huge influx of Soma­lis hid­ing out.. Not a good idea for a solo white boy. I hiked to the tail end of the moun­tain range in Ethiopia to a town called Goba. The range con­tin­ues a lit­tle more south but I want­ed to hit the high­light areas, includ­ing the Bale Nation­al Park area, which was on the east trend­ing ridge. It was a very nice area and I saw a lot of wildlife. Ethiopia was very dif­fer­ent and an incred­i­ble place and very eye-open­ing. I have so much to men­tion that I think I am just going to run a list to make it eas­i­er. I’ll warn you now some of the stuff is ran­dom. I have a lot of time to think about and notice stuff out on my own.

• In Ethiopia cows don’t crap all over them­selves like in Amer­i­ca. Not sure if it is because of the lack of bovine growth hor­mone or maybe they just aren’t fat enough, but it def­i­nite­ly seems a lot more nat­ur­al than the Amer­i­can cows with filthy hindquarters.
• There are about 83 dif­fer­ent lan­guages in Ethiopia, Amhar­ic being the main lan­guage. I have start­ed to speak some decent Amharic.…..but now on to Swahili.
• I think I am the only per­son that I have seen wear­ing shorts since I left Unit­ed States on May 19th.
• Ethiopi­ans eat raw meat and often there is a lot of meat just hang­ing in the win­dow of a shop all day. Refridger­a­tors are def­i­nite­ly not common.
• I heard a stat yes­ter­day that over 300 mil­lion Africans earn less than 1 dol­lar per day. Ethiopia is the poor­est coun­try that I have ever seen, but I am not sure the aid that we pro­vide and the UN is doing any­thing real­ly help­ful or if it is just asso­ci­at­ing white peo­ple with mon­ey and free help and not spurring inno­va­tion, growth, and change. This is a long top­ic and prob­a­bly too much to write on here because it gets complicated.
• A lot of peo­ple begged for mon­ey, some for pens, and a lot of oth­ers just for plas­tic bot­tles. I am not exact­ly sure why besides for maybe car­ry­ing there water around, but maybe we should just not recy­cle our bot­tles and send them over to Ethiopia.
• They reuse a lot of plas­tic bags, but in the long run they end up blow­ing around the fields, on the streets and in the rivers. There were places that i could not see the water run­ning under­neath because they were cov­ered so thick with trash.
• A lit­tle sto­ry about this pub­lic bus I had to get on for a lit­tle bit after I fin­ished hik­ing to get back to the city. The road was a bit bumpy so a lady behind me got car sick and start­ed puk­ing out the win­dow, there were about 45 peo­ple packed into a 17 seater, a bunch of peo­ple were car­ry­ing chick­ens on which start­ed to run and try to fly around the bus while it was going, one man car­ried a gas can on (so nat­u­ral­ly the whole bus start­ed to reek of gas) and the lady began vom­it­ing all over again, and oth­er peo­ple start­ed shov­ing orange peels up their nos­trils. It was pret­ty funny.

I think that is all for Ethiopia. I can’t wait to see what Kenya has in store. I am going to start a lit­tle north of the Equa­tor and work my way south to Mt. Kenya, over 17,000 feet tall, and onwards. I’ll keep you all posted.

6/4/2009 Ethiopia

Every­thing is going well. I have already drank about 12 sodas in 300ml glass bot­tles and I think they are the best thing that I have ever had. They are mod­er­ate­ly chilled, but by no means cold by Amer­i­can stan­dards, but nonethe­less they are cold enough that I can’t get enough. The black­cur­rent Fan­ta is amaz­ing! It is a bit dif­fer­ent than grape soda at home. I have also had a medi­um piz­za. Yes Mom, I had piz­za in Ethiopia and it was pret­ty good (every­where I go my Mom can’t believe that I eat piz­za after grow­ing up in New York because I grew up with great Ital­ian food). One fun­ny thing, after hik­ing for 2 weeks, most­ly by a 1:900,000 scale road map through the mid­dle of nowhere and not real­ly get­ting lost. I got a lit­tle lost and dis­ori­ent­ed in the city. I end­ed up head­ing the wrong way for about 20 min­utes and had to ask some­body where the heck I was because there were no street signs.

5/22/2009 Text From Satellite Phone

It is pret­ty crazy over here I put in a good day. I’m at 14’05 by 38’18 now and start­ed in a town called Aksum, Ethiopia.

5/2/2009 Africa Prep

I am about two weeks from depar­ture and things are start­ing to get hec­tic. There is always a last minute rush to tie up a lot of loose ends and do some final plan­ning before I head off on a trip, espe­cial­ly a trip like this. There’s def­i­nite­ly a bit of anx­i­ety and ner­vous­ness about the trip, but that is all part of the excite­ment and fun of it. If there wasn’t a sense of learn­ing, adven­ture, and ven­tur­ing into the unknown, then it wouldn’t stretch the com­fort lev­el and be near­ly as inter­est­ing and fun. It is also such a great feel­ing when I final­ly start the trip because then every­thing I have been rush­ing to get done drops away and it is just me and the things I have on my back and nature.

Each hike has its own lit­tle nuances. In Africa, the ter­rain, cul­ture, and wildlife will be incred­i­bly dif­fer­ent than any­thing I have ever seen. It will have so many dif­fer­ent aspects. I can’t wait to take it all in. I will also have an Irid­i­um satel­lite phone with me, so I will be able to blog from the mid­dle of nowhere and be able to keep you all post­ed on the trip as well.

I am plan­ning to hike down through East Africa through Ethiopia, Kenya, Tan­za­nia, Malawi, Mozam­bique, and South Africa. I think the route will be around 2000–3000 miles. Because of the cur­rent polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in Soma­lia I will not be able to make this trip a con­tin­u­ous walk. It is a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing but safe­ty is def­i­nite­ly the first pri­or­i­ty and north­ern Kenya is report­ed­ly very dan­ger­ous right now because of the Soma­li sit­u­a­tion. I think it should take 2–3 months for the trip. I plan on going over most of the major high peaks along the way. This makes it a lit­tle chal­leng­ing decid­ing what gear to bring since tem­per­a­tures will range from hot and humid in the low­lands to cold and snowy up high. It also won’t be easy to mail myself dif­fer­ent gear like it is in the Unit­ed States, so this all presents anoth­er chal­lenge to the hike that I am still try­ing to work out the details for. The key fac­tors in the gear selec­tion will def­i­nite­ly be ver­sa­til­i­ty and dura­bil­i­ty, so that I won’t have to car­ry extra weight and I will know that my gear will last for the long haul.

I think that is all for now, so check back as the trip progresses.