The good news is that this enables me to type as I always have (in contrast to the pre-trip visions I had of having to relearn how to do everything with my nose after losing my appendages to frostbite). So, if you are reading along simply to find out if we survived. We did. If you are reading because you are intereseted in climbing Kilimanjaro yourself and are researching Tanzanian flora and fauna, possible climbing routes and the environmental impact of global warning on the famed Kilimanjaro glaciers, you are definitely in the wrong place. If you would like to hear a funny story about a group of nine slightly off-balance people drawn together by the pull of a mountain challenge and repelled from one another by the smell of their socks after too many days of baby wipe baths, you are in the right spot. Hold your nose, supress your gag reflex, and enjoy the ride.
Well before our trip began (back when we officially registered to climb with Team Kilimanjaro), Chris sent a reminder email to the five of us who had signed up to climb together. "Once our climb is posted on the site, anyone can sign up to join us. Recruit your friends. Otherwise you never know what kind of freaks we may end up with!" None of us heeded his sinister warning.
Meet the freaks*
*In fairness to the beauties below, all closeup face shots were taken on the seventh day of our climb. No one had showered in a week. Hats were strictly forbidden.
Howard: A fifty-one-year-old reformed lawyer who runs a company that invests in cell towers (or something like that) came along on this trip as a part of a threesome from Ohio (with his friends Jeff and Gayle). "Howie" (as only Gayle was technically allowed to call him because she has known him since birth, but by the end of the week we all took the liberty of using "Howie" because we felt like we'd known him for a lifetime) left twin ten-year-old daughters and a wife who "would never poop in a box" behind in Ohio for this little adventure. Howard confessed early on our first day to being a germaphobe (or perhaps it was just obvious by the way he forked his bread from the serving plate at lunch and looked on with disdain as the rest of us used our grubby little fingers to pick up our sandwiches). A phobia of germs is tricky to indulge on the trail when cooped in small, grubby tents and sharing dirty trail toilets with the sniffling, sneezing, unwashed heathens who are, in fact, your climbing companions (and only source of entertainment) for an entire week. Howard merits three photos because, although we left him after our climbing adventure, his presence in the form of a cell tower or a soap eating raven seemed to watch over us for the remainder of our African journey. It was spiritual in a creepy sort of way.
Jeff: Surgeon by day, covert mountain-top pharmaceuticals dealer by night. Jeff instilled a sense of confidence in us all by reassuring us that if anyone lost a finger on the trail, he was definitely qualified to reattach it to his/her rectum (since that is apparently his area of expertise in his professional life). Jeff arrived in Tanzania with Gayle and Howard by way of a longer than anticipated layover in Amsterdam where they watched TV and fretted about missing luggage. Fortunately, Jeff had packed his fully stocked mountain first-aid kit overflowing with any possible drug you could anticipate needing on this climb. We should have paid extra to travel with this guy (or at least contriubuted a copay). Jeff and Gayle were celebrating their 20th anniversary (although Jeff assured us there would be no real "celebrating" going on in their tent at altitude - claiming it would be physically impossible. The rest of us were curious about this hypothesis and encouraged Jeff and Gayle to report back to us on the results of experimentation. Gayle shook her head and claimed to be suffering from altitude headaches). Jeff and Gayle were also celebrating their 50th birthdays with this adventure. 
Gayle, pronounced "Gay Lee" by everyone on the Team Kilimanjaro staff due to the Swahili habit of pronouncing every letter in a word): First, Gayle's clean appearance and cheery smile is due to the fact that her picture was taken on the first day of our hike (not our last). I have made an exception in her case because A) she had just survived an enormous dust storm when we last saw her and was somewhat scantily clad as her wet laundry had been drenched in sand and B) she was just a sweet woman who deserves a break for having bravely endured this adventure in the company of Jeff and Howard. The story goes that it was Gayle who was the mastermind behind the Ohio crew's climbing effort. Howie and Jeff both blamed their presence on the mountain on this persistent nurse/marathoner/mom who got it in her mind that they needed to climb Kilimanjaro. Gayle was due to celebrate big #50 shortly after her return from Tanzania. Gayle and Jeff left their three children, ages 19, 17 and 15, at home to cheer from them from afar.
Sue (pronounced "Sue Eh" by the TK crew): This lone Australian in our group really had no idea what hit her for seven days. Somehow this mother of two and grandmother of two, who ran away from Australia to escape her 50th birthday celebration, ended up with this crazy group of people headed up Kilimanjaro. Her African itineraries had gotten jumbled. She was supposed to be seeing gorillas in the mist but somehow ended up seeing out of only one eye from the roof of Africa (but that story will come later). Consequently, Sue's trip preparation was a bit limited. By the third day on the trail, we convinced her that she should zip her tent closed to stay warmer at night (it was below freezing mind you). By the seventh day, Sue learned how to tie her hiking boots. She provided comic relief for all of us. Throughout it all, Sue maintained a great sense of humor and her success was a tribute to how far you can go on sheer willpower.
Eva: An energetic and athletic, 23-year-old hailing from Alaska (but coming to us via Mexican and South African travel adventures) is Lisa's cousin. She likely spent most of this trip wondering how exactly she ended up with this group of old geezers climbing the mountain. Younger than everyone in our group by a decade or two or three, Eva dealt admirably with the slow pace and sophisticated conversations (mostly about bodily functions) of her geriatic trail mates. With an Alaskan tolerance for cold, Eva's choice of shorts for hiking attire (and the glimpses they provided of her well-toned hiking legs) was likely responsible for motivating all twenty-plus porters and staff with our group to carry on up the trail every day.
Lisa: A dear friend from our junior-year-abroad in France and my connection to Africa, Lisa is my heroine. I live vicariously through her as she jets around the world single-hendedly fighting poverty and hunger, protecting children and empowering communities. At the end of the day, this super woman comes home to her seven-year-old African princess, Bella, who generously shared her home and her mom with us. Africa is "home" for Lisa. She speaks fluent Swahili and is a tremendous asset to all travel adventures in this part of the world. She was excited to join us on Kilimanjaro and "do something touristy" for a change. We were thrilled to have her as part of our group - teaching us all of the necessary middle school locker room vacabulary in Swahili so we could describe various body parts we saw along the trail and various bodily functions we experienced along the way. Lisa made sure we didn't miss out on the guides' gossip, made various special requests in Swahili and, generally, just kept the story straight for us for the entire week. 
Chris: a.k.a. Smurf, Chris was the Kilimanjaro planner in our group. After an sunless few weeks spent frolicking in the rains of Vietnam, he was ready for another travel adventure – ideally one with less precipitation and mold. A few weeks after he and the Smurfette returned to Vermont from Vietnam, I got the email. “Are you serious about Kilimanjaro?” My answer was, “Yes.” The next thing I knew, we were signed on with Team Kilimanjaro, and the motivational links to videos and blogs of everyone and their mother climbing Kilimanjaro began arriving in my inbox. Chris is a planner. He did the research, studied the route, evaluated the proper number of days to spend on the mountain, did comparisons of success rates based on age, athletic ability, route choice, average temperatures and the phases of the moon (and I refuse to let him forget that he did not schedule our summit attempt on the night of a full moon). On our first day on the trail, most of us were still trying to figure out exactly how many nights we were going to have to sleep in a tent. Chris knew the mileage of our hike, the altitude we would gain, the type of forest we would be hiking through and what we should expect to see along the trail. Thankfully someone knew what we were doing, because, by day five, we were all questioning what, exactly, we were doing. And why?
Kelly: a.k.a. Smurfette, Kelly ended up on this adventure by virtue of being married to the Smurf. There had been some decision making involved in the choice to leave behind sweet Atilia, the two-year-old Smurf baby, but in the end Kelly was game (if not completely clear on why she was doing this). Kelly’s main contribution to our climbing group was her running commentary on the experience of the “Fat Woman on the Mountain” (a large Vermont woman who has summited Kilimanjaro three times). Kelly contacted the Fat Lady before coming to Africa and showered us with useful tidbits of information throughout our hike (ie. always use condoms at altitude, even if you have had a vasectomy, because you never know what your body will do on the mountain). Some tidbits may have gotten slightly twisted along the way, but Fat Lady trivia made for excellent conversation nonetheless. For you naysayers among us who were convinced this woman was a complete hoax (after having experienced the effort it took to haul your skinny little asses to the summit), here's her link http://fatwomanonthemountain.com/. 
Jennifer (So I made a small exception to the "no hats" rule for myself...let's call it artistic license. There is no way was I going to post a picture of myself on day seven): Yours truly has been dreaming about the Kili climb ever since I skipped it fifteen years ago (having just vomited my way up and down Mt. Kenya). It was on my bucket list for my fortieth year, but that turned out to be a very long year. So, footloose and forty-three seemed like as good a time as any to finally get to the mountain. Leaving behind Foster, Brianna and Nolan was the toughest part. Knowing that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” made the separation possible.
