Mary Kate let out a breath of relief as the wheels touched down. The joke her mom had made about having enough in her bags to move here didn’t seem so silly once it occurred to her the only way to get home was to get back on a plane.
Her first up-close look at Tanzania was the small terminal flashing by as they slowed to taxi. It reminded her of the cafeteria at the school where she taught, a square building with a flat roof, but this one had a small tower in the center. Despite the crew’s commands to remain seated, people were already standing to gather their belongings. She had a small shoulder bag for her money, tickets and passport, and the few things she thought she would need during the flight. Her backpack was crammed into the overhead bin.
When they finally stopped, she stood and stretched in the aisle, amazed to realize her second wind, despite being up all night. She was thrilled to finally be here, not because it was the end of her journey, but the beginning of her African adventure.
At the door she got a blast of hot, humid air, not unlike Georgia on its most miserable summer day. They filed off the plane slowly, descending the stairs onto the steaming tarmac. She couldn’t stop thinking that her feet were walking on a whole new continent, and she tried to commit it all to memory. The Kilimanjaro airport was as antiquated as Hartsfield in Atlanta was modern. Grass grew up through the cracks in the asphalt, and the building could have used a fresh coat of paint.
Through a glass door marked Arrivals, signs in both Swahili and English directed them into two lines, one for visitors to Tanzania, the other for residents returning home. Mary Kate was near the back of her line, which made her worry since she could see their bags being delivered in the room beyond. The last thing she needed was for her things to be stolen off the conveyor while she was stuck in line.
She recognized about a dozen people who had gotten on the plane in Atlanta. One was just ahead of her in the line, a young man with short blond hair that stood up in all directions. She had almost spoken to him in the departure lounge at Johannesburg, but when she saw that he was wearing earphones, she guessed he didn’t want to be bothered. That was a nice trick, one she used sometimes on Carol Lee.
She finally reached the front of the line and handed her visa and brand new passport to the agent. He examined both—if one could call a cursory glance an examination—stamped the passport and handed it back without a word. She resisted the urge to page through it right away to check out the stamp, feeling it would make her look like the novice traveler she was.
The first thing she noticed in the baggage claim area was a cluster of people collecting blue bags marked with the name of another tour company. By their accents, she guessed them to be British, or maybe South African. She couldn’t tell the difference. An Asian couple in their early thirties held yellow Summit bags like hers, and she turned in time to see a third Summit bag go by, only to be hoisted by the blond man. His face fell when he read the tag, and he placed it back on the conveyor. Mary Kate tugged it off and caught her other canvas bag right behind it. Her feeling of relief was palpable, as was the obvious despair on the man’s face.
“I see you got your ugly yellow Summit bag,” he said, his face set in a grim smile.
“Yours didn’t make it?”
He shook his head. “No, my flight from Denver into Atlanta was late. I guess they didn’t have time to make the transfer. At least I won’t have any trouble getting through customs.”
She couldn’t believe he wasn’t frantic. “Maybe there are some that haven’t come out yet.” Just as she said that, the conveyor stopped.
“I’d say that’s everything.” He held out a hand and she got her first good look at him. He was about her age, maybe a few years older, slightly built and not much taller. “I’m Drew Harper.”
“Mary Kate Sasser.” Having two first names was not her favorite southern trait. Her friends from college in Savannah knew her as Kate, but all the confusion from her teachers, who had called her Mary, made the whole idea of changing her name more trouble than it was worth.
“I guess I need to go file a claim. You don’t happen to speak Swahili, do you?”
“Afraid not.”
“I didn’t think so. That accent of yours is a dead giveaway. I’ll guess Atlanta.”
“Close. A couple of hours east in Mooresville.”
“What’s that near?”
“Nothing at all whatsoever.”
He laughed. “Sounds like the Denver airport.”
“How’s that?”
“It isn’t near anything either.” Sensing her confusion, he quickly added, “Sorry, that’s kind of a local joke.”
“What are you going to do about your stuff?”
“Don’t know. We don’t go up till Monday. Maybe it’ll come in on the next plane.”
“I hate to tell you this, but there isn’t another one from Atlanta until Wednesday.”
He made a face. “I forgot about that. I guess I could be an optimist and imagine they got as far as Johannesburg. But since neither of mine made it and both of yours did…” He shook his head, apparently resigned to the likelihood they wouldn’t arrive in Tanzania before the start of their trek. “I’m sure I’m not the first person this has happened to. Maybe I can pick up a few things tomorrow.”
“Here?” As soon as she said it, she remembered her irritation at Bobby for assuming there wouldn’t be 7-Elevens in Tanzania. She had no idea what sort of shops they had near Kilimanjaro, but it made perfect sense someone would sell hiking gear. “You’re probably right.”
They were joined then by the Asian couple with the Summit bags. “Are you both with Summit?”
Mary Kate felt stupid for being surprised at the man’s American accent. “Yes, I’m Mary Kate. This is Drew.”
They shook hands as Drew explained about his lost bags. The newcomers were Neal and his wife Mei, from Seattle. Mei was looking over the papers Tom Muncie had sent and noted that the bus to Moshi, which was the base for their expedition, was due in a half hour. That was plenty of time for Drew to file his claim and the rest of them to clear customs.
Customs amounted to handing over the form she had filled out on the plane saying basically that she had nothing illegal in her bags—no drugs, no weapons, no piles of cash or jewelry. From there, she went outside to an open-air café to wait with Neal and Mei.
Mei found a table and promised to watch their things while she read more about the trip. Mary Kate and Neal bought bottled sodas and took the opportunity to stretch their legs along the sidewalk in front of the terminal. Neal finished his drink in about four gulps and covered his mouth to belch. “Did you see the mountain from the plane?”
“God, yes. It scared the crap out of me.”
“Me too. Hard to believe we’ll all be up there this time next week.”
“I hope we’ll all be up there. I thought I was ready until I saw it up close.”
“Mei said the same thing. We’ve hiked up to twelve or thirteen thousand feet in the Cascades, but this makes those look like foothills.”
Mary Kate was embarrassed to tell him about her climb up Rabun Bald, which wasn’t half that high. If they weren’t ready for this, she figured she didn’t have a prayer. “What made you guys decide to try this?”
“Tom Muncie talked us into it. We met him at a Christmas party last year and he was telling all these great stories. We got excited about it and decided to make it happen.”
“That’s cool you met Tom.” She had talked with the tour organizer on the phone, but had forgotten the main office was in Seattle. “I saw a program on public TV and got excited too. But I couldn’t talk anybody into coming with me.”
“They’ll all be kicking themselves when you get home with pictures.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Deb was probably the only one who cared. Of course, once Mary Kate got home and broke up with Bobby, Deb would probably be the only one in town talking to her anyway.
“Besides, Tom says a lot of people come by themselves. That list he sent us had people from all over.”
Tom had promised to pair her with somebody for the safari part so she wouldn’t have to pay the single occupancy rate, but he hadn’t worked out anything firm as of the last update. There were eight of them slated to go on safari after the climb, including Neal and Mei, another married couple and three women besides herself. She hoped it was someone interesting since they would be spending a lot of time together.
They reached the end of the walkway and turned back toward the café. In just the few minutes they had been walking, she had already begun to sweat. “Poor Drew,” she said, feeling nothing but relief that it was his bag missing and not hers.
“He’ll be okay. If the rest of us throw a couple of things into his pile, he’ll have enough to make it.”
She did a quick mental inventory of what she might be able to share. Drew wasn’t much bigger than she was, but it was doubtful he could wear any of her clothes. Still, she could spare some socks and maybe a T-shirt.
Mei looked up from her papers as they joined her. “The others must be coming from Amsterdam. That plane gets in late this afternoon.”
“Or they could even be coming in tomorrow,” Neal added. “At least we’ll get an extra day to rest before we go up.”
Drew came out and dropped his backpack next to Mei. “The good news is they have someone here who will watch for the bags when the next plane comes in on Wednesday. The bad news is they lock them in storage until I show up with the claim check.”
“So you’re screwed, man.” Neal summed it up pretty well.
“Basically. But he told me to ask at the hotel about borrowing some things, so I’ll try that. All I really need is a sleeping bag, a warm coat…”
“Mei and I probably have a few things you can use. You don’t have any issues about wearing women’s underwear, do you?”
“None at all,” Drew answered deadpan. “That’s pretty much what was in my bags.”
Mary Kate snorted at that. If first impressions were worth anything, she was going to like these people. “Are you guys doing the safari afterward?”
“Not me,” Drew said. “I couldn’t get that much time off work.”
“I’m off for the whole summer. I teach special ed, emotionally disturbed kids.”
“That might come in handy this week,” Drew said with a chuckle. Then his voice changed to a more serious tone. “To tell you the truth, I won’t be surprised if this turns out to be a lot tougher emotionally than physically.”
“I don’t see how anything could be tougher than the physical part,” Neal said.
“I had a couple of friends who did it last year,” Drew explained. “One of them had to turn back on the last night because he got disoriented. He got really depressed about it. He said it was the biggest letdown of his life.”
Mary Kate certainly understood that. She would be devastated if she didn’t make it to the summit.
“I’d like to get to the top,” Neal said, “but I’ll be okay with it if I don’t. Mei’s the one who really wants it. I just came along so we could do this together.”
“I’ve worked hard. I want a payoff,” she said.
“It could take more than hard work, though,” Drew said. “You never know how a climb’s going to go. I did a fourteener with one of my friends a couple of weeks ago. That’s a whole mile under Kili, and he was puking his guts out because of the altitude.”
A fourteener. Mary Kate gathered that meant a mountain that was fourteen thousand feet high. It was ironic that the folks back in Mooresville were worried about things like her falling off the mountain. By everything she had read, altitude sickness was the biggest threat on the mountain. Vomiting and diarrhea, like what Drew was talking about, were relatively minor as long as they subsided. The bigger worries were pulmonary or cerebral edema, which could be killers for anyone not smart enough to head back down immediately.
Irony aside, it was freaking her out to hear these guys talk about their chances for getting to the top, given their experience walking up real mountains. They probably parked higher than Rabun Bald.
A white Toyota bus pulled into the circle in front of the café, its faded paper sign reading “Moshi.” Two young black men dressed in ill-fitting workpants and wide-collared dingy white shirts exited and began loading baggage onto the roof of the bus.
Mary Kate waited on the curb until she saw her bags secured on top, studying the whole scene for details that made it unique to Africa. Besides the language difference, there was the bus itself, more utilitarian than comfortable. Such a vehicle would never roll out of Atlanta with luggage piled so casually on top. The windows were down, a sure sign this bus wasn’t air conditioned. As hot as the terminal had been inside, she guessed there was no such thing as Freon in Tanzania.
A few dozen people, presumably locals, joined them on the bus. Mary Kate took a window seat and Drew slid in beside her. Neal and Mei sat in front of them, Mei now studying a travel guide.
The narrow road out of the airport was paved, but filled with potholes. Building a road in Tanzania was probably a one-shot deal, she figured, with little maintenance. They turned onto what she guessed was the Tanzanian equivalent of a highway, two lanes wide, but without center and shoulder stripes. Soon they were riding by large open fields dotted with small dome-shaped huts.
“Maasai,” Mei explained, turning as she held up her book. “They used to be warriors. Now they herd cattle, which are sacred to them. Most of them wear the traditional red cloths. They’re supposed to be very noble.”
Neal turned to face them also. “Everywhere we go, Mei reads all about it. I never have to worry about anything because she’s going to tell me everything I need to know.” He flinched as his wife poked him in the side. “Being married to her is like being in continuing education classes all the time.”
“It’s true. When I’m not dragging him out on an adventure, he’s happy to be just a couch nerd. Sometimes I let him lie there and I go off with my friends.”
That was exactly the kind of relationship Mary Kate wanted with Bobby, where they would share the really important things, but give each other the freedom to do their own thing sometimes. It was one thing for Bobby not to want to come, but at least he could have sent her off with his support. Instead, it was as if he was punishing her for wanting to do this, like she wasn’t entitled to her own—
Suddenly, the bus hit a speed bump that sent them sailing out of their seats.
“Samahani,” the driver called, taking his eyes off the road for an instant to turn around.
“That was probably Swahili for bite me,” Drew whispered.
She chuckled and shook her head, feeling a rush of delight at being here with fun and interesting people. This trip was more than just an opportunity for a unique adventure. For Mary Kate, it marked the beginning of her new philosophy—carpe diem. It was silly to miss things in life or to want them to be different when all one had to do was “seize the day.”
After almost an hour of bouncing over the rugged paved road, the bus finally entered a roundabout in what looked to be a small town. The structures weren’t exactly modern, but compared to the Maasai huts, they were castles. Some of the small buildings were wood frame, though most were made of cinderblock. They were painted purple, bright blue or orange, and few were larger than the average garage back home.
“Who goes to View Hotel?” the driver asked.
“That’s us,” she said, pointing to herself and her three companions.
“You change here to other bus.” He gestured.
They collected their backpacks and stepped off the bus. The two young men who had loaded the bags at the airport hopped off and climbed to the top to pass down the gear. Mary Kate got her Summit bag, but not the other duffel.
“Wait! I have one more bag, a green one.”
After a fruitless search through the towering pile, the man proposed a solution.
“We take others to their hotel. We bring your bag to the View.”
The idea of separating from her things was one she wouldn’t consider at all. “No, I’ll find it.” Before anyone could stop her, she climbed the ladder on the back of the bus, crawled through the bags until she spotted hers peeking out from the bottom of the pile. “This one’s mine.” She stepped back as the two young men extracted it and passed it down. Another man loaded it on a smaller vehicle, and she climbed aboard, claiming a bench seat all to herself.
Neal turned around and spoke softly. “That was pretty gutsy, Mary Kate. Never mind that you just violated the most sacred laws of their religion.”
Her stomach dropped as she tried to figure out if he was kidding or not. If he was, then he did deadpan as well as Drew.
“I read somewhere that women weren’t allowed to climb anything that put them higher than men.”
Mei saved her from a panic attack. “Don’t listen to him. If he ever says he read something, he’s lying.”
The View Hotel was almost a mile out from the center of town along a road that was rougher than any they had been on so far. Still, it was a wonderful surprise after seeing the simple structures in the center of town.
As they peered out the window, Neal summed up what Mary Kate was thinking. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m relieved.”
Tom had described the View Hotel as a family-owned inn with a bar and a restaurant. White with a red roof, it reminded her of one of the old frame homes in Savannah, but larger. It had a wide porch at the entrance and picture windows all across the front. The second floor had a long row of small windows, which Mary Kate assumed were the guest rooms.
Two young men dressed in black pants and crisp white shirts—a sharp contrast to the ones who had handled their bags on the bus—bounded off the porch and began shuttling the bags inside. Mary Kate and the others followed them up the stairs to the lobby, where red velvet benches and chairs added an elegant touch to the rustic ebony floors and long mahogany counter. A portrait of Tanzania’s president like one she had seen on display at the airport was mounted prominently on the wall behind a young African woman who greeted them. AAA would probably have given the place two stars, but here in Tanzania, Mary Kate was willing to bet it was one of the finer establishments.
Neal and Mei checked in first and followed a bellman up the stairs. Mary Kate went next, since Drew had to make arrangements to borrow things. She couldn’t wait to get a shower and change into fresh clothes. The overnight trip was taking its toll.
She stepped up to the counter and handed over her passport, which she had seen Neal and Mei do. “I’m Mary Kate Sasser. I’m with Summit too.”
“Yes, I have it. You are a single for two nights, then another night when you return.”
“That’s right.” Though she had agreed to be paired with someone else for the safari, the single room at the View was only fifteen dollars more a night.
The woman filled out a form by hand, something Mary Kate hadn’t seen in years. Apparently, computers hadn’t spread to Tanzania yet. “Dinner is from seven o’clock to nine o’clock. Breakfast is from eight thirty to ten o’clock. Electricity is off from ten o’clock each night until seven o’clock in the morning.”
Tom had warned them about the periodic interruptions in electricity. Another good reason to shower right away. A bellman picked up both of her duffel bags and started up the stairs.
“Good luck getting what you need,” she called to Drew.
“Thanks. It’ll all work out.”
For his sake, she hoped he was right. She trudged up the stairs behind the bellman, hoping she could stay awake long enough to eat dinner. After that, all bets were off.