On top of a mountain...

So we went camping on Mount Sangalo last night. It was an adventure. I am so glad we did it. We had to take boda bodas to the mountain. It took close to an hour. There were huge hills that we had to get off the bikes and walk up. These men that drive the bikes have some crazy indurance. We both had on huge hiking backpacks so we were at least 20 to 40 pounds heavier.
Once we got to the mountain we had to climb a really steep incline. It was a mixture of trails and rocks. We had to do some climbing. A couple times there wasn’t a trail so we were literally creating our own by pushing through trees and bushes. One of our backpacks was huge so we took turns carrying it. I felt like He-Man, or She-Ra, going up there. You could really feel the burn in the thighs. If you did that regularly, you would be in the best shape. We were sweating through our clothes.
There was one little girl that followed us up the whole way. She laughed at us a couple of times when we were clearly taking the dumbest route possible. After a while we would ask her which way, and she would point. She ended up hanging out with us fo r about six hours. We were warned that the locals would follow us. Belafy, the little girl, was the only one until we got to the top. Once we were up there we did some exploring. We stumbled across people praying and chanting at the top. Crazy. Of course we had to get closer to spy a little. I guess people go up there to fast and pray for days at a time. It is normal, so they just ignore you and you go on your way. We heard drums all night. Kinda creepy.
So! Once we found our place to camp we had Belafy and two little boys hanging out with us. More like staring. Then as we started setting up our tent we had a family with a camera- staring. Then we had about four adult males- staring. I have noticed that our idea of privacy and personal space is much, much different than the Kenyans’. We were nice for a few minutes. We said ‘Hi’ snapped some pictures with the little ones, and then we wanted them to leave. It started to rain so we decided this would be a good time to hide out and wait for them to leave. We got in our tent and waited. And waited. We stayed in there for over an hour, and the crowd was still outside watching our tent for any movement. If we peered out we would see the the kids looking in. So crazy. Finally, Candice got fed up and told the man with the kids that we needed privacy to pray. He claimed he was just resting. She asked him how he would like it if we came to his house and stared at him for hours. Then he left. He was kind of mad, but he got the hint. The kids followed except for Belafy.
We kept seeing a little head peeking up here and there. After a while she came over with a squash and asked if we had a knife. We did our best cutting the squash with our little pocket knife just to realize that it was not ripe. It actually tasted like poison. Belafy did not speak a lick of English, by the way. We were trying to ask if she had a family because it was getting late. Her clothes were in tatters, so it made us wonder. After we found that the squash was not ripe enough to eat we decided to offer her our last little bit of prize Ramen Noodles (We cooked them on the fire, mind you. Pretty cool.). She took one bite and said she didn’t want it. Alright, so the little girl was not starving. It was getting really dark and late and the fire was burning out. After about a half an hour of going back and forth about feeling guilty for leaving her out in the cold, we gave her a blanket and went into the tent. We said our good nights. About 10 minutes later we realized that she was gone. The only thing out there was the burned out fire and the blanket. The little rascal just wanted to hang out with the Mzungus.
There were monkeys on top of the highest rocks. You could barely see them, but you could really hear them. They may have been mad that we were there, because it sounded like they were cussing us out. The sleep was nonexistent. The wind was blowing the tent causing a constant commotion, and we were sleeping on a rocky incline. We were alert all night just trying to be cautious. We woke up early and decided to go eat some good food in town. It looked like it would rain anyway, and we were sick of being in the tent. We did it. We were troopers. I would go again for sure. With an air mattress.