Featured Writer: Jenna Brook

When I was at university, I had a book that I wrote little bits about life in as I learnt them. It had quotes, recipes, tickets from events I’d been to and at the back a list of things that I titles “things to do before the end”. Morbid I know, but it was my bucket list. It was constantly changing as I crossed things off and added new things. One of the things on it was climb Mt. Kilimanjaro.

After getting dumped and quitting my job, I decided it was time to hot foot it overseas for a few months and picked Africa as my destination. Even in 5 months I saw nothing but a snippet of what Africa had to offer, but I did cross a couple of things off my list with the main one being making it to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Before Kili, I ventured to the top of Mt. Meru (the second highest mountain in Tanzania) and to be honest I found it a far more gruelling trek as you ascended much quicker and I was up and down inside 3 days, whereas Kili took 9 days in total. It was on Meru that I learned the practical use of the words poley poley, which translates into slowly slowly. You can do Kili much faster on different routes, but not wishing to spend my entire trek vomiting and with a pounding headache I opted for the longer option and avoided both of these things, suffering only from a drum being played inside my head and the urge to vomit when sleeping inside at crater camp inside the mountain. Continue reading →