Two Degrees South of the Equator

19 341 feet: Kilimanjaro Part VI

The sun rises out the plane window. The wrong side of the plane, mind you. Seat 37-J is still in darkness. I still can’t see Africa out there.

Claire is asleep. She sleeps through breakfast. She wears a face mask, which we all must wear, and an eye shield, and ear plugs. She is dead to the world. She would hate the picture I just took of her.

I ordered a sprite and water, Claire ordered a white wine and water. Then we trade, so that Claire has a White Wine Spritzer, and I have water and water. It works for both of us. I’m sober; she’s not. Or as Claire would have it: she’s fun, I’m sober.

Traveling is a game. A game in which one endeavors to keep one’s devices charged at all times while simultaneously combatting jet lag, exhaustion, and disorientation. Then you have to convert currencies in your head from Canadian to American, to Qatari Rial and then finally to Tanzanian shillings just to make sure you’re not getting ripped off for that coffee and chicken sandwich at 39 000 feet. If you land hungry, tired, and overwhelmed: congratulations! You’ve won.

The plane that takes us from Doha to Kilimanjaro is whiter than the plane that left from Philadelphia. Not the paint on the outside of the plane, but the people sitting inside. It is filled with Kilimanjaro hopefuls, men and women from sixteen to sixty-five squawking in Italian, German, French, and English, as they fiddle with hiking poles and climbing packs in the overhead compartments.

Are all these people climbing Kilimanjaro? It spoils the exotic air of adventure, watching these ninnies struggle with their knife and fork; seeing these routine wooden-heads calling the flight attendant to help unwrap the plastic around their croissant; rolling my eyes as they cackle at the cheap romantic comedy playing in six inches on the seatback. Isn’t this adventure supposed to separate me from this world’s boobs and bores? Surely the ordinary nudniks who watch Dated and Related don’t fly halfway across the world to scale the tallest peak in Africa?

The first surprise comes as we step onto the tarmac at Kilimanjaro Airport. I have been expecting heat. I have been eagerly anticipating the moment they open the plane door, and all that lovely warmth from two degrees south of the equator washes over us. Instead, what I feel is a typical autumn day. A cool breeze. A briskness.

This is Africa: how can the temperature be anything other than blistering, devastating heat?

A man named Penford taxis us from the airport to our hotel. He doesn’t speak much beyond the standard pleasantries, and I’m grateful. I never want the driver who picks me up at the airport to be particularly talkative. I want my mind free and clear to wander outside the window, to inhabit all this foreign scenery. It’s always better to soak in a strange land than to be forced to babble through casual conversation.

There are stereotypes out the window: the termite mounds, the long flat stretches of dry savannah, the umbrella thorns and the acacia trees. I see men and women walking along the side of the road, moving through dust with baskets on top of their heads. I see a van stuffed with humanity, with bags tied five high on the roof with thick rope.

And yet the sky is grey, and with the windows open Claire and I are freezing in the back seat. A pair of Canadians shivering away their first hour in what we were always told was a sweltering continent. There are men and women wearing winter coats as they text on the backs of motorcycles. There are black diesel clouds of smoke spewing from the back of a Toyota. There are Coca-Cola advertisements, and speed bumps, and all manner of ordinary things.

Tanzania has gone ahead and decided to be itself, rather than be the exotic, romanticized country I so naively craved. Thank God.

I do not travel to have my expectations met. I travel to have them shattered. I want to pick up the pieces of what I used to believe so that when I put them back together, I will find my life rearranged. Brand new and beautiful.

Catch the last article in my Kilimanjaro series here: