Kenyans pursue peace on a mountain peak

MOUNT KENYA, KENYA

Woozy, exhausted and freezing cold, Alex Kachu had just a few more steps to go.

After two days of slogging through forests and bogs, scampering over scree and enormous boulders, he saw the peak of the mountain right there, just above him, looming like a giant, jagged black tooth that blotted out the sun.

But Kachu, an 18-year-old high school student who grew up in a slum, was spent. He had tossed and turned the night before in a frigid stone house infested with rats. He had lived off custard cream cookies for the past couple of days. He had been soaked to the bone by a mix of rain, sleet, hail and snow, not your typical weather on the equator in Africa.

"I'm not feeling so good," he said.

Neither was anyone else.

This was the make-or-break moment of the peace climb, an event organized by a group of Italian priests this month to reconcile the rival ethnic groups that had slaughtered each other after Kenya's disputed election in December.

The idea was to bring together about 25 people from different walks of life and different ethnic groups -- like Kambas, Kikuyus, Luos and Luhyas, to name a few -- and overcome an obstacle, together. That obstacle was a peak of Mount Kenya, all 16,000-plus feet of it, the second-highest mountain in Africa after Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Mount Kenya is known as tough but doable for amateurs. Though the top is steep and icy, no special equipment is needed to reach most peaks.

That was a good thing, because most of the climbers, like Kachu, were hardly mountaineers. They were students, musicians, soccer coaches, local environmentalists and even a member of parliament. Many came from the shanty towns ringing Nairobi, Kenya's capital, and they had never been this high, or cold, before. They showed up for the climb in thin jackets and baggy jeans, baseball caps and cotton goalkeeper gloves. During the ascent, some wrapped their feet in black plastic bags to keep warm and stuffed them into wet, borrowed boots.

As the group set off from a church parking lot in Nairobi, the Rev. Daniele Moschetti, the organizer of the climb, bowed his head and said, "Pray for us."

Father Dan, as the climb organizer is known, has worked in Nairobi's slums for 11 years. He said he witnessed firsthand the violence that exploded after a flawed election in December plunged Kenya into its deepest crisis since independence in 1963. More than 1,000 people were killed and an estimated 1 million were displaced in fighting that was fueled by politics, land disputes, class issues and long-simmering ethnic tensions. A power-sharing government eventually brought an end to the bloodshed. But the tensions -- and memories -- are still fresh.

"These weren't skirmishes," Father Dan said. "This was war."

But nobody really talked about the war on the drive to the mountain. The bus ride was full of jokes, like how one musician named Gidi Gidi had brought an enormous backpack that was about three times the size of everyone else's.

"What you got in there, Gidi Gidi, a stove?" asked Jacob Mulee, a soccer coach and former soccer star known as Coach Ghost for his ability to smoothly float across the field.

That nature soon turned nasty. It started drizzling, then raining, then pouring, then snowing. The snow blew down in thick, wet flakes.

"It's horrible," said Byron Oluoch, a volunteer youth counselor who had never seen snow before.

The path grew steep, lined with slippery stones and sucking mud. Most people were both sweating and shivering. The vegetation thinned. The tall trees disappeared. Wispy yellow bushes carpeted the slopes, along with strange, spongy plants shaped like overgrown microphones.

At 14,200 feet, which is not headache-high yet but close, a long, stone house appeared. It was Mackinder's Camp, base camp to make the ascent.

The stone house was drafty and lined with rock-hard benches. Rats scampered along the concrete floors, nibbling on cookie crumbs.

"The rats remind me of home," Kachu said.

The group was feeling ill. Upset stomachs. Numb toes. Foggy heads. Most people said they felt filthy, exhausted, hungry and worn. Mount Kenya is no Mount Everest, but the rapid ascent can be dangerous, and every year Kenyan rescue teams pluck sick climbers off the slopes, sometimes with helicopters.

Time for another Father Dan pep talk.

"Everybody," he said, gathering the teeth-chattering group together, "it's an achievement just to get here. Nobody has to be heroes. If you don't want to go the next step, just tell me."

The next morning at 2:30, powered by some chalky biscuits and a few thermoses full of tea, 23 of the 26 climbers set off for Point Lenana, Mount Kenya's third-highest peak at 16,355 feet.

It was freezing, with ice crystals crunching underfoot. The sky was perfectly clear, glowing with stars.

The group moved slowly and stiffly.

"There better not be another war," Coach Ghost said. "Because I ain't doing this again."

The night was silent except for the labored breaths. The altitude had gotten to just about everyone. Even Father Dan was fading.

"Everyone must know their limits," he said. "I've reached mine."

He turned back down and disappeared into the darkness. Later he explained that his feet had felt like ice cubes. Had he stayed on, Father Dan would have seen the fruit of his labors.

He would have seen the group taking the final, treacherous steps together, often holding hands, helping one another up over the rocks. He would have seen Ras Luigi, a burly reggae singer, offering a steady arm of support to Amina Darani, a Muslim woman who was weak from fasting for Ramadan. And Coach Ghost gently rubbing the hands of Brenda Mulinya, a local television reporter who could not stop crying, saying she had never been so cold.

At the rocky peak, Kachu stood triumphantly, waving two flags, Kenya's national flag and another one that said peace. The sun rose. The plains below stretched for hundreds of miles. And a blanket of clouds spread across a land clearly worth saving.