This question came up amazingly often during my first week in Tanzania, and I always answered with momentary silence followed by a stupid, awkward laugh. I reflected on this as I spent a good chunk of one early morning evacuating the contents of my bowels into a fairly functional flush toilet in a two-room canvas tent smack in the middle of the Serengeti, a chorus of wildebeest grunts accentuating each uncomfortable heave. Despite my digestive discomfort, there was a hot water bottle nestled in my bed, a plush bathrobe draped on a hook, and I was about thirty minutes away from having a French press full of steaming coffee delivered straight to my front flap. Here, I was rich – or at least rich-adjacent.

It felt sort of weird, this idea of being viewed as wealthy. I felt a complex swirl of guilt and defensiveness, tempered by the reminder that when I asked why there were going to be so many porters on my upcoming Kilimanjaro expedition, the answer was, “Everybody in Tanzania needs a job!” Halfway across the world, I was an eternally unzipped wallet. The Bank of Shawnté. A walking, talking dollar sign.

Except for at the moment, I wasn’t doing any walking or any talking – I was hunched over a cold toilet, groaning to myself, realizing the limits of my intestinal flora. I suddenly remembered the seemingly overzealous suggestion that I avoid all produce for my first few days in the country and immediately made a mental tally of the massive amount of vegetables I ingested in the name of hunger and in the hope of avoiding unidentifiable meat products.

Gurgle.

After some time, I reluctantly left my perch, packed my things, and staggered over to the Land Rover for one last game drive back to the airstrip. Once we touched down in Arusha, I bid adieu to my safari mates Debbie and Dan, then made a mad dash for the bathroom, where I was confronted with The Most Terrifying Thing given my current physical state:

The Drop Toilet.

Also known as a pit or squat toilet, this is basically a hole in the ground over which one hovers to do their business. Once you’re finished, you shake and spray – there’s usually a hose stashed in the corner of the room – or if you were brilliant enough to think ahead, use toilet paper that you smuggled in, then trudge the used bits out to a nearby waste basket for deposit.

Here at the airport, the setup was only vaguely civilized – cracked, wet tile and the stench of a thousand soiled diapers. Every square inch was wet with water or urine or some unidentifiable liquid other. I practiced squatting in various positions with my purse slung across my chest and my duffle balanced on my thighs, but upon realizing that I had no toilet paper and that the morning’s business was as yet unfinished, decided to wait for the clean porcelain familiarity of my sparkling hotel commode.

Waiting for me at the airport was a kind, quiet guy named Nico, a driver employed by the company I’d be trekking with on Kilimanjaro in the coming week. I was glad for his comfortable silence, a rarity so far in my chatty Tanzanian travels, because it allowed me not only to focus on clenching tight every inch of my war-torn digestive system, but also to think about all of the questions I’d been peppered with over the past few days. My drivers were all men, from my first airport pickup to my safari guides to Nico here, and their inquisitions were nearly identical:

Why did you come to Tanzania?

Do you believe in God?

Are you married?

Do you have children?

Are you traveling alone?

Intrusive and awkward? Sure. Malicious and judgmental? Not at all.

I came to Tanzania, I usually explained, because I’ve heard that the people are wonderful, the scenery is marvelous, the animals are magnificent, and because I want to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro.

I want to…well, I want to have an experience.

That last part sounds ridiculous, so in truth, I never said that out loud. Dear sir, I spent a Tanzanian lifetime’s worth of cold, hard, crisp, unwrinkled American dollars so I could drink hot coffee in a fancy tent, shit in a flush toilet on the Serengeti, marvel at a multitude of horned beasts, and traipse up a giant volcano. I want to experience your exotic culture and eat your exotic food and take pictures of your exotic scenery. I want to get away from my regular life for just a little bit and have an Adventure.

Instead, I piled on frothy platitudes about the Wonders of Tanzania and waited patiently for the next question.

“Do I believe in God?” [Noting the rosary draped around the rearview mirror.] “Wellllll, I’m a very spiritual person.” [Glancing at the dalla dalla ahead, where Tupac’s disembodied head floats above a neon pink splash of “GOD LOVES YOU!”] “Very, very spiritual, really.”

Once the driver replied with the usual praising of Jesus, I was then hit with the one-two punch of “Where is your husband? Where are your children?” In as many words, I replied that I was a childless singleton and patiently awaited the flood of gently pity-filled questioning that followed. “Ohhhhh, why are you not married? Why don’t you have children? How old are you? Do you want a husband? Why do you travel alone?”

After hearing this round of questioning often enough during my trip, I settled on the belief that there’s some sort of government-mandated pamphlet issued to all drivers titled “How To Make Small Talk With American Women.” It was like a mobile version of Groundhog Day.

One morning late into my trip, I was in a van driven by a talkative man named Abdullah, headed towards the grassy shores of Lake Duluti for a canoe trip. When he asked if I was married, I blurted out, “Why does everyone keep asking me that question?” I mean, outside of family reunions, I’d never had so many people interested in my relationship status as I did in Tanzania.

Abdullah chuckled. “Well, because when we see a woman traveling alone and we find out that she is not married, we know that she is honest and brave, and we think she is a warrior to come to Tanzania by herself.”

Ohhhhhhhhhhh. I let loose a huge, strangely proud smile. I could be into this.

Not a half hour later, my canoe guide Emmanuel unsurprisingly drilled through the requisite conversational blitz and after I responded that I was unmarried and traveling alone, he grinned and exclaimed, “Ah, you are like a female Maasai warrior!” I wanted to high-five him in the most serious way, but considering we were about two feet away from a toothy monitor lizard the size of a small child, I thought I’d better keep both hands on my paddle.

In my glorious Wonder Woman haze, I was reminded of a conversation I had earlier with Victor, after I asked him if women ever became safari guides. He said that he only knew one female guide, and explained that women weren’t usually as tough physically as you needed to be in order to deal with the very real dangers on safari, especially considering the violent poachers that roamed the area. “African women just aren’t raised to want to be that way,” he shrugged. “In the Western world, especially in the United States, women are raised to be human beings, but here, they’re raised to be women.”

I realize how that might read, but Victor wasn’t judging me, or American women, or Tanzanian women, for that matter – he was just making an observation based on his life experience in contrast to that of the constant influx of tourists he meets, same as any of the other men I conversed with during my trip.

When they found out that I was traveling alone and planned to climb Kilimanjaro, I suddenly commanded a strange sense of respect from the local men. “Oh, you must be tough! You must be strong!” But was I stronger than the countless mothers and sisters and daughters I saw lining the dusty roads, packages piled on their heads and across their broad shoulders, the weight of the world hung from their eyes? Did these men look at them and think they were tough, they were strong?

I don’t know. I didn’t expect to be hit with a wave of feminism in the shadow of Kilimanjaro, but I would think about these things during my coming week on the mountain – my place as a female traveler, as a female “climber,” as a female no different, yet so very different than those who surrounded me at the moment.

Well, I would think about those things until I was preoccupied with other things, I should say – like gasping for air at 18,000 feet whilst clung to a volcanic outcropping, pants around my ankles, freely blessing the frigid flanks of Kilimanjaro with arcs of champagne-colored urine under a starlit sky.

Yes, sometimes there were other things on my mind.

(To be continued…)

<< Previous: AFRICA, PT. 3 – Just Call Me Serengeti Jones

As it was with Kilimanjaro.

In 2010, along with my friends Casey and Rebecca, I decided to hike Mt. Whitney and spent months on end buried deep inside a glorious pile of mountain mysticism. Summits were sexy, and though Whitney was our desired goal, Kilimanjaro began seducing me from afar.

The first external record of my Kili infatuation was on June 3^rd that year. Casey emailed that he was organizing a charity hike up a local icon, Mt. Baldy, and I volleyed back that we should also consider a charity hike up Kilimanjaro the following year; “Dream Small” has never been in my vocabulary.

That same day, I emailed my friend Laura:

I’d like to put in an advance request to go on a trip together someday. Somewhere European. Or Buenos Airesian. I’m also thinking about climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa next year. Weird, right? Yeah. I know. Listen, if Jessica Biel can do it, I can do it.

Once you invoke the competitive playground spirit of celebrity comparisons, it’s essentially Game On.

From there, the fever grew hotter and more all-encompassing. I pored over message boards, devoured articles, nudged Casey incessantly, and generally fantasized about standing on top of Africa belting out various numbers from The Lion King soundtrack at full volume. But as with all great crushes, I was too chicken to take action, so my mountain madness was relegated to local ranges while I quietly pined for something more.

***

Many peaks and valleys later, about a year after we summitted Mt. Whitney, my mind wandered back to the enticing flanks of Kilimanjaro, courtesy of a handsome gentleman my friends and I refer to as “Mountain Husband,” or “MH” for short.

Yes, that’s a nickname for a nickname.

Allow me to explain.

MH is a total Sierran stud. He runs a mountaineering company, guides mountaineering trips, and spends his free time…mountaineering. He’s been on top of Mt. Everest several times. Sev-er-al tiiiimes. I first caught wind of this prince of the peaks through his talks about Mt. Whitney at a local sporting goods store; he was tanned and taut, smart and smiling – how could I not bat my little SmartWool-clad eyelashes in his direction?

Alas, between the fact that this alpine Adonis lives 80,000 miles away and the fact that he was not aware of my existence, a romance was not to be. Instead, I admired him from afar and leapt at any chance to gaze upon his hunky face and learn stuff about mountains. Thus I forwarded Casey and Rebecca information about an upcoming MH appearance in the autumn of 2011, along with the following message:

Please scroll to the bottom and notice that my Mountain Husband is doing a presentation on Kilimanjaro on Friday, October 14th at the West LA Adventure 16 at 7pm. I will be in attendance, and I hope you will, too.

Ever the crush-enabler, Rebecca joined me that evening and successfully Svengali’d multiple opportunities for me to engage with this granite god. From my middle school diarist brain came this play-by-play email to Casey afterwards:

Rebecca picked some strategic seats for us during the presentation (aka right next to the projector, where he ended up sitting all night, and I ended up feeling like a schoolgirl with a crush all night). At one point, MoHu stood in front of us, kind of fidgeting with his nalgene, sort of chatting while applying a fresh A16 sticker. It seemed he was attempting to engage us, so we became engaged. I told him of Michael’s comment that morning at work that my nalgene made me look like I was drinking from a mason jar. He found that funny and said it was important to stay hydrated, especially during his presentation. It was then that I held aloft a plastic cup filled with delicious wine and said, “I am.” He then inquired about my wine and we talked briefly about wine and talked about Chile and Argentina and Patagonia and my desire to climb mountains and travel and I got really red and I could feel how shiny my face was and after it was over, I promptly got an A16 sticker and like a schoolgirl, affixed it to my nalgene when I got home.

Yes, I am a dork.

And yes, that was a nickname for a nickname for a nickname embedded in that missive.

Sigh.

I wrote MH a casual (read: NOT CASUAL AT ALL) email via Facebook mentioning our monumental discussion of South American wines and my desire to join him in a romantic climb of Kilimanjaro at some point. He responded by giving me his personal email (!!!) and offering to climb with me in Southern California, which provoked an internal meltdown and subsequent declaration to my friend Mo: “I’m a bunny slope, and he’s a double black diamond. OMG. I’m mildly freaking out.”

(This is quite embarrassing.)

MoHu also sent me a gigantic packet of Kilimanjaro information and informed me that his company offered trips in February and June…and after diligently and excitedly reading every single word of every single thing he sent to me, I came to the sudden realization:

Climbing Kilimanjaro costs a bajillion dollars.

Well, damn.

***

I shelved my dream of African adventure for well over a year until this past March. Inspired by a patch of deep, deep thinking about what really, really makes me happy, I once more started swishing around the possibility and came to the conclusion that in addition to friends and family, I also need:

Travel. Nature. Adventure. Curiosity. The inspiration of The Great Unknown.

Mix those things up with a bit of hard-earned savings and an understanding boss and you have a recipe for Well, What Are You Waiting For, Woman?

And so I knew. It wasn’t just that my bank account was ready for the smackdown or that the guy who writes my paychecks was perpetually understanding of my flights of fancy – it was that my heart and soul (and hindquarters) were ready for this mountain.

Thus I devoured the internet’s cumulative Kilimanjaro content in an impressive flurry, chewing through blogs, route descriptions, packing lists, Flickr albums, and outfitter reviews at a feral pace. In my obscenely manic state, I created a digital empire of spreadsheets, tables, and lists. I ordered a multitude of Kilimanjaro and Tanzania-related books from Amazon. I priced out an assortment of air travel options. I started peppering “Kili” into most conversations, probably if anything to convince myself that I was actually going to do this thing.

During this adrenaline-stoked phase, I slowed down only to have a good think about a travel buddy. I batted the idea around with a few people, none of whom were ready to commit to my particular brand of mountain insanity, and in the process acknowledged that despite all the silliness about Jessica Biel and MoHu, this trip was really about something tucked deep inside of me…and I was going to go it alone.

There are a lot of fears that buck up when you make decisions like this: fears that I wasn’t physically ready, that I wouldn’t be able to afford the trip, that I would feel lonely, that I would find answers to questions I’d been asking myself for a long time and then not be able to deal with those implications.

So yeah – this was about more than just a mountain.

I spent the better part of two months with my head down, chewing through research and engaging with companies near and far until I finally chose an outfitter. When I did, it felt like the completely, absolutely right decision, ordained by the cosmos or something equally fantastical, as if delivered by a unicorn blazing across the sky with a rainbow shooting out of its butt, shouting “YES, SHAWNTÉ, THIS IS MEANT TO BE!”

As I paid the deposit for my trip, I almost physically felt the fear slip from within me, and the seemingly impossible dream became reality:

I was going to Africa to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro.

In three months.

By myself.

***

The summer blew by in a flurry of sweat and commerce. I spent my time divided between work, mountains, and the overpriced aisles of REI, and watched as my bank account went from healthy to ohdearlordwhathaveyoudone. Typical entries on my calendar included “hike,” “climbing gym,” “squats,” “abs,” “stairs,” and “Yoga Booty Ballet” (don’t judge), and I’m surprised that none of my friends punched me after my constant declarations of “Sorry, I can’t do _______, I gotta get some elevation in this weekend.”

In mid-July, my buddy Anna hosted an awesome birthday slumber party in my honor. During a particularly heated round of Mall Madness, she interrupted our game with a blunt announcement: “This is your birthday gift.” With that proclamation, she flicked on the television and I spent two and a half minutes flooding my face with tears:

My incredible, loving friend MaryEllen organized and created the whole thing in secret; in addition to producing that amazing video, she encouraged friends near and far to chip in a few bucks to help with the cost of my trip – and their insanely generous contributions paid for my (very expensive) plane fare halfway across the world.

That was one of the most beautiful and humbling things I’ve ever experienced; I still reach for a tissue (or twelve) watching that video today.

The next few weeks passed in a blur. In the dwindling days of my pre-Africa life, I took stock of my situation – over the course of several months, my ab (sort of) developed a partner, I could go for a short run without completely blowing out my soccer-damaged knees, and I was able to motor up to my favorite high-altitude alpine lake without panting like a dog in the desert. I also now owned a metric ton of fresh gear – gigantic ski gloves, glacier glasses, a pee funnel…

Oh, don’t worry – you’ll hear all about that one soon enough.

My workload was covered, my cat would be watched, and I had a wad of crisp, post-2006 cash in hand (turns out Tanzania is a bit anal-retentive about these things); there wasn’t much else to do, so I spent my last weekend swaying in a hammock in the Sierras, watching the clouds pass and reflecting on what Africa had in store for me.

Then on August 14, 2013, I bid adieu to life as I knew it and stepped on a plane bound for The Great Unknown.

>> Continue reading: “AFRICA, PT. 2 – Takeoff”