Once up on a mountain; my year 2015 in review

With a plucky band of friends old and new, I touched Margherita Peak.

Awesome! Awesome!
It had been five long days of sweat, cold, fatigue, mild headache, a little nausea, plenty quickness of breath.

But mental fortitude and sheer grit saw us through. On Saturday, 18 July, Joy Abola, Michelle Barlow, Jacqueline Asiimwe-Mwesige, Peter Mugarura, Penelope Sanyu and I got to the highest point in Uganda at 5,109 metres above sea level. It was shortly past 2pm.

All of us had worked hard on our physical fitness starting early February. Jackie and I had scaled Mt Elgon, and Mt Muhabura, which is part of the world famous Virunga massif (thanks to the mountain gorillas that call this area home), in preparations for the Rwenzoris. Apart from Penny, the others had each climbed either Elgon or Muhabura before hitting the fabled Mountains of the Moon.

The majesty of mountains is one of those things that I think no one has fully described in word or picture. Maybe it defies description. You have to experience a grand mountain like Rwenzori or even Elgon to fully appreciate the utter awesomeness.

The Simu Gorge on Elgon was a most haunting space, a long and narrow gulf between rising rock formations, watered down under by the Simu River. Descending into the gorge on one end and then threading our way on the inner edges, taking in the grand caves, was just wonderful. Then out we emerged into the caldera, said to be the largest mountain caldera in the world.

Over on the Rwenzoris, hiking across the sprawling Margherita Glacier was as challenging as it was dreamlike. We were fully exhausted. Sheer kajanja saw us keep going. Howling winds hammered at us with ferocity.

The roaring sound of a piece of glacier falling momentarily numbed the pain. The sun emerged one moment. It was gone the next to be replaced with a mist that blanketed us reducing visibility to about 15 metres. When the sun came, looking at the unspoilt snow was blinding.

It was too white. Too pure. That’s perhaps nature’s way of preserving the magical and the magisterial. The human eye sometimes carries impure things.

The Rwenzoris served up world-protected wetlands otherwise known us bogs, magnificent rock shelters, serene lakes, thunderous waterfalls, fast-flowing rivers, trancelike peaks, beautiful birds, massive rugged rocks, fluffy snow, leaking glaciers, grand vistas.

This stuff up there, much still in its very natural form, makes for such sharp and brutal contrast with the corruption and pollution and deception down here where we live. Just take a look at the on-going campaigns.

I like sights and sounds, especially if they are edifying and ennobling. Exactly three months after the Margherita conquest, I had another spiritual encounter because once upon a time a Nigerian named Fela Anikulapo Kuti lived.

And so Accra, Ghana’s capital, for the first time put on a celebration of the man and his defiant music. Felabration ran concurrently in Lagos (Nigeria) and Accra.

Young and old performers put on a splendid show at the Alliance Française amphitheatre. The young still have their time. So for me it was the living legends that I was seeing for the first time that had me nearly star struck.

Ebo Taylor, contemporary and friend of Fela, closed out the evening. A grand old man who still has fire, voice and music.