The air gets thin and the hikers start to huff and puff the higher up the mountain they go. Climbing a mountain is no simple task, and Mount Kilimanjaro, being the fourth tallest mountain in the world, makes it no easier. While mountain ranges are a common sight in Tanzania, living in the state of flat water it’s not so common. After hiking across England in 2014, East High Science Teacher, Ms. Morrow, knew that if she wanted to climb Mount Kilimanjaro she needed to start training early. Training for such an activity as climbing a mountain is difficult, especially when the lack of oxygen and the geography is so different to simulate. Regardless, Morrow “…was in good aerobic shape because I run all the time, but I wasn’t used to carrying a pack or going up hill, which is hard to train for here.” To make a mock environment she “…took my treadmill and put it up as steep as it could go, and to kind of simulate low oxygen I made it go a little faster than I should’ve been [going].”  After doing steep treadmill hikes and participating in the half marathon in May, Morrow was ready to leave.

The plan was to leave out of Omaha’s Eppley Airfield, but her flight was “canceled and that made me miss every single flight along the way, so I had some long layovers in Frankfurt and Addis Ababa.” In Frankfurt they speak German and Morrow doesn’t know German, but apparently many people, in both Africa and England, thought she was German! While she didn’t need to know anything elaborate in German and Swahili, she just needed the basics, (Tanzania’s official language along with English) like “Hello”, “How are you?”, “Please”, and “Thank you”. She went with a tourist group, but that wasn’t the original plan. “The summer before I had climbed Longs Peak, six of us started, three of us made it to the top, and four of us made a pact to go to Kilimanjaro the next summer. Everybody bailed out but me, and I always do what I say I’m going to do, so I was the group of four.”  Going with a group of new people, “You really get to bond with all of your teammates, because it’s the team that gets up and everyone has a job and has to do something.” The team never ran out of food because there were people called ‘runners’. They would go up and down the mountain every day or every other day and give her team food. The tour group Morrow went with had good meals, just like the meals someone would make at home. “We had like lettuce salads, for lunch and dinner. We had eggs pretty much every day, fresh fruit every day, and usually some kind of dessert.” They never had a fear of running out of food, but at high camp, water was a little tight. Other than this little hiccup, no problems presented themselves.

Making it all the way was a big accomplishment for Morrow, but she has bigger things in sight. “What I’m hoping to do is Mount Rainier next summer and Elbrus next summer as well.” While these mountains are quite the way away from Nebraska (Rainier in Washington state and Elbrus in Russia) she is excited to do them and would do Kilimanjaro again “in a heartbeat”.