 |
travel / adventure zone
| The Adventure Zone |
|
|
 |
| Photo courtesy Alison Wiley |
Reach for the top
A team of Toronto women climb Kilimanjaro for the kids who live in its shadow
By Tracy C. Read
 |
|
Photo courtesy Alison Wiley |
Four years ago, world-class Canadian runner Alison Wiley stood
on Mount Kilimanjaro’s 5,895-metre-high Uhuru Peak and looked
out over the magnificent African landscape, bone-tired but filled
with wonder. Yet it was a lesson Wiley learned in the bustling town
of Moshi, Tanzania, at the foot of the continent’s highest
peak, that is bringing her and a team of 11 other Canadian women
back to the mountain for a six-day climb in January 2008.
In Moshi, after her initial 2004 summit, Wiley met Valerie Johnson,
a young American who had founded the town’s one-room Amani
Children’s Home, a facility that offers local kids food, clothing,
love — and hope. “It was my big take-away from the adventure,” explains
Wiley, a mother of two. While the town serves as the gateway to
Kilimanjaro, it is also home to a growing population of young children
left orphaned and homeless by the ravages of HIV-AIDS in Africa.
Inspired by Johnson, Wiley returned to Toronto and formed Friends
of Amani Canada, throwing herself into an international fundraising
effort that saw the opening of a beautiful new full-sized Amani
Children’s Home in Moshi in 2007.
 |
|
Photo courtesy Alison Wiley |
Wiley, who won a silver at the 1983 World Cross Country Championships
while attending Stanford on an athletic scholarship, is no stranger
to working hard to make her dreams come true. As a means of providing
ongoing support for the Moshi project, she put a fundraising climb
of Kilimanjaro into play in the summer of 2007. A group of enthusiastic
40-something friends and colleagues signed on, though few had ever
put climbing a mountain on their “to do” list.
Undeterred, Wiley pulled out all the stops to get her team in
shape. She assessed fitness levels among participants and set training
programs, while organizing team inoculations, providing visa information
and arranging meeting schedules to suit a busy group of professional
women and working mothers. “Over the five-day ascent, we’ll
be climbing through a range of terrain, from tropical rainforest
and scrubland to loose rock, snowfields and ice cliffs, all at the
equator,” she says. “Kilimanjaro is known as ‘Everyman’s
Everest’ because it isn’t a technical climb, but acclimatizing
to altitude is vital. You have to be smart. You have to walk slowly
and hydrate responsibly. If you don’t, you’ll pay the
price in headaches, nausea, diarrhea and hypothermia. You might
even pay it by not being able to summit.”
Wiley is confident that her team, which includes her sister Kate,
a physician, is ready. “These women will be exposed to a whole
new world,” says Wiley. “Physically, culturally and
mentally. They’re all extremely accomplished and competent,
but now they’ll be doing something completely outside their
comfort zone. Being unsettled, doubting one’s abilities but
forging ahead and figuring out how to survive — that’s
all part of this challenge.” Accompanying them as technical
guide is brother-in-law Angus Murray, an experienced international
climber; Tanzanian Michael Nelson of Chagga Tours, who has been
up Kilimanjaro more than 200 times, will be their mountain guide.
After four days on the mountain, Wiley and her friends will don
headlamps and start their evening trek to the summit under a full
moon that will help light their way across the expanse of frozen
snow. For those who succeed in making it to the top, the summit
will be a sweet reward.
For Alison Wiley, the sweetest moment of all will come after the
one-day descent and celebration, when the team presents a $50,000
cheque to The Amani Children’s Home. It’s money that
will help ensure that the street kids of Moshi, Tanzania, have a
chance at building a future. Says Wiley, “Being able to leave
the mountain and Tanzania a better place than when we came is part
of what this climb means to all of us.”
For more information, visit www.amanikids.org
|
|
| ADVERTISEMENT |
|
|
|
|
