{"id":2829,"date":"2019-11-04T14:53:44","date_gmt":"2019-11-04T14:53:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uniofglos.blog\/history\/?p=2829"},"modified":"2024-11-07T14:31:56","modified_gmt":"2024-11-07T14:31:56","slug":"history-students-climb-mount-kilimanjaro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/2019\/11\/04\/history-students-climb-mount-kilimanjaro\/","title":{"rendered":"History Students Climb Mount Kilimanjaro"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This post comes from second year BA History students Josh Oliver and Sam Webber.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, for those of you who are unaware, the two of us spent a two-week chunk of our Summer in Africa, specifically Tanzania. The main purpose of our visit was to conquer Mount Kilimanjaro – the tallest mountain in Africa – to raise money for \u2018Dig Deep\u2019, a charity that works to provide clean water and sanitation to children in south-west Kenya. You can read more about their mission here<\/a>.               <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Josh (left) and Sam (centre)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

We began our\nclimb on the 25th<\/sup> of August with a team of around thirty or so.\nWe had several main guides who\nwere great and told us about the history of the mountain, about Tanzania, and\nits cultures and traditions. They even taught us some basic Swahili, their\nnative language, which proved to be the only real-life opportunity to say \u2018hakuna\nmatata\u2019 (no problem). On day three of the climb we could see the peak of\nKilimanjaro clearly for the first time. It was at this point that one of our\nguides informed us that Uhuru Peak (the tallest point of the mountain and our\nfinal destination) actually used to be the shortest peak of the mountain. We\nlearned that there once were to be two higher peaks, but one (Shira) was\ndestroyed in a volcanic eruption 200 years ago (as Kilimanjaro is a dormant\nvolcano), and the other two (Mawenzi and Kibo) melted together to form Uhuru\nPeak. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Our guides\nalso told us a lot about the Zanzibar Revolution in 1964, in which the people\nof Zanzibar fought to overthrow the Sultan of the islands after becoming\nindependent from the United Kingdom. After the war was won, Zanzibar united\nwith the nation of Tanganyika to become Tanzania \u2013 a combination of the two\nnames. The guides also spoke to us about Hans Meyer, a German geologist who was\nthe first person recorded to reach the summit of Kilimanjaro in 1889, although\nthey acknowledged that it was more than likely that native Africans had\nprobably done this beforehand without acknowledgment. They also spoke of Gertrude\nBenham, an English explorer from London who was the first woman to conquer\nKilimanjaro in 1909, something she did completely alone, as her porters feared\nthat the melting snow was somehow bewitched.   \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It took us\nfive days to climb to the top of the mountain, and only one day to get back\ndown to the base. The hardest part of the experience was definitely summit\nnight. We were awoken at 11pm and started our ascent to the peak at around\nmidnight. The two of us had to scramble up to the peak in the dark with only\nheadtorches to light our way, with temperatures reaching around -7 degrees\nCelsius. It was so cold that our water was freezing in the tubes of our\nCamelbaks. Altitude sickness was also a big problem, causing headaches and\nsickness for a lot of us. While drinking water helped to alleviate the symptoms\n(as water contains oxygen which the brain is struggling to obtain at those\naltitudes), it became very difficult to drink once it was starting to freeze.\nWe finally summited at about 9am after nine hours of gruelling hiking in\nfreezing conditions and little to no oxygen \u2013 but it all became worth it once\nwe were stood 5895m above sea level and on the nicknamed \u2018roof of Africa\u2019, the\nworld\u2019s highest free-standing mountain.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post comes from second year BA History students Josh Oliver and Sam Webber. So, for those of you who are unaware, the two of us spent a two-week chunk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":2833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[341,767,376,782,770,368,769,771,780,690,43],"class_list":["post-2829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-africa","tag-events","tag-higher-education-2","tag-humanities-field-trips","tag-libraries-and-archives","tag-media-2","tag-methodologies","tag-opportunities","tag-seminars","tag-students","tag-university-of-gloucestershire"],"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2829"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3433,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2829\/revisions\/3433"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}