High School

Southern Rhodesia’s war of independence with the sovereign crown brought my stint at Falcon to an early end, and I returned home to attend Kansenji High School along with many of my former schoolmates. Compared to Falcon, I found the discipline very lax, and would no doubt have really gone astray had it not been for three facts. My brother was now my history teacher and to avoid being accused of any favoritism, insured I was paying attention at all times; our school was slated to be one of the first integrated schools in the country; and our headmaster who was determined to insure this process would be peaceful and meaningful.

Origins of the expedition

To do this he decided to select an equal number of black and white students between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, thirty eight in total, and take us by bus up the great north road across Tanganyika and the Serengeti to climb Kilimanjaro – at 19,760 feet Africa’s highest point. It was to be the experience of a lifetime. It took us a week to travel across Tanzania. The days were long, and dusty with welcome nighttime respites when we set up camp under the stars, surrounded by the sounds of the bush. We remained a very segregated group in spite of our headmasters’ best attempts to integrate our campfire duties. Finally we arrived at Kibo at the base of the mountain and, after one day of rest, set off up the slopes.

Climbing the mountain

None of our group had ever experienced cold weather and we were woefully unprepared to deal with the sub-zero temperatures we would soon encounter. Several of the black students didn’t even have gloves and simply wrapped their hands in layers of cloth. Nobody had appropriate footwear - the favored shoe being a canvas hockey boot that proved to be a useless defense against the cold and wet. The first two days of the climb were relatively easy but by the third several of us were beginning to struggle. The long, wind swept hike across the saddle to our highest camp site seemed interminable and sapped the spirit of all but the most determined. We slept that night fully dressed in readiness for the final assault. This began at 1am. Our guides, all members of the Chugga tribe who regard the mountain with religious reverence, woke us with steaming bowls of soup and hot tea flavored with large amounts of raw honey.

For the first five hours we climbed in complete darkness. We would need every bit of the following day to ......

To be continued...