I am an Aviation practitioner and founding chairman of N8tivE bar, and spent the last 4 months in 2017 summiting four of Africa’s tallest mountains in the four corners of the continent, and in doing so, securing a street value worth $15,000 of anti-malarial prevention and cure medication to support the most needy patients of the village of Hope orphanage and hospital in Gomoa Fetteh, Ghana.
After setting myself a personal target to scale Mt. Afadjato (Ghana’s highest mountain), which I did in September last year, the accomplishment of this led me to do the same in Cape-Town, South Africa where I scaled the popular Table mountain a month later in October.
I felt inclined to do more particularly after establishing a daily endurance workout routine, so after engaging with close friends and colleagues, I was encouraged to take it one step further, and my younger brother agreed to join in.
Executives of Humanities Africa, UK – a partner company involved in large scale maize production in Zambia – on hearing my story and reflecting on the challenges with labour on farms in Africa where malaria cases hinder progress particularly in the important rainy seasons – pledged to facilitate the provision of 20,000 tablets of anti-malarial prevention and cure medication to the most needy patients, following a similar project in Zambia.
In November we then embarked on a 3-day hike up Toubkal, Atlas mountains, Morocco (Highest in North Africa and the Arab world at 4,200m) and most recently Mt.Kilimanjaro, Tanzania after a testing 8-day journey (Highest in Africa and the world’s tallest freestanding mountain at almost 6,000m), starting on Christmas day and successfully submitting on New Year’s day, just after crossover before descending.
By far, this has been my greatest personal accomplishment, demanding both physically and mentally after trekking hours each day, a total of 100km which included 11hr trek on the summit night starting at midnight.
The hike took us through rain-forest, dry savannah, rocky cliffs while camping in tents and drinking boiled water from local streams.
As a group we experienced rain, wind, Sun, snow, hail and temperatures ranging from +30 in the dry lowland to -20 at the summit where the effects of tiredness, muscle fatigue, acute altitude sickness and low-pressures/oxygen starvation make each step all the more draining, even 3 of our experienced guides fell ill on the journey, and the trek involved a daily medical – checking for blood oxygen content and heart rate which had to be passed to enable progress.
The sheer scale of Kilimanjaro is intimidating but impressive, the beauty of seeing the bright stars and milky way so clearly by night, walking through a bed of thick clouds and spending time with the hospitable Tanzanian guides whilst observing different types of wildlife made it all the more pleasurable and the accomplishment of starting the New Year at the highest point in Africa was life-changing.
Malaria is one of the biggest killers in Africa and I’m pleased to be able to make a small contribution to this fight.
Author: Kwame Bekoe (Ghanaian entrepreneur and aviation service practitioner)
