Corinne Hofmann: Back from Africa

I find myself sitting in my tent waiting for lunch. I've nobody to share my experience with because nobody else is interested. At least I can send a text message to my nearest and dearest, even if I haven't got enough battery power left to actually make a call. Napirai comes straight back with: ‘Super Mama, I always knew you'd do it!’ Markus is equally proud of my achievement and says he'll tell the rest of the family.

Our descent takes us back through all the different climatic zones in reverse order. Delving back into the increasingly thick jungle I'm delighted to see all the exotic plants in bloom, but the downhill trek is hard on the legs and knees in particular. After two hours of it I'm no longer paying attention to the pretty blossoms on the bushes or the broad valleys spread out beneath us. All I'm aware of is the blisters starting to form at various places on my feet. I put sticking plasters over the worst but it only increases my desire to reach the camp as quickly as possible. As we descend the humidity increases and everything is sticking to my body. Eventually after three hours we reach the camp and just manage to scramble into our tents before the heavens open. It pours down in stair rods for fifteen minutes and afterwards everything is sodden and even the interior of the tent feels damp. I couldn't care less as long as I don't have to do any more walking, after twelve hours on the trot! It's late afternoon now and we have time to kill before dinner. I long for the orange basin full of hot water like I've never longed for anything in my life. I also need to do something about my feet as we have another long trek downhill tomorrow.

I'm starting to look forward to getting home now. There's a general end-of-trip party atmosphere around the camp. For the guides and porters it's the last tour before the summer as the monsoon season is about to start. They're also worried about America's impending invasion of Iraq because it'll put tourists off traveling. None of them knows when they'll earn more money, but even so they're all good-humored and concerned about our well-being. I lie there in my tent listening to the voices of the natives. They've always got something to talk about. All day long they laugh and chat and still manage to get their hard work done. They're far advanced on us white people when it comes to being carefree and communicating with one another. The members of our group are all sitting on their own in their tents with nothing to say to their fellow travelers, even after spending eleven days together.

Over dinner we discuss the amount of a tip to give. I reckon that in addition to the normal cost I'll add another hundred dollars for the porters. I would actually like to give more but when I hear the others’ suggestions I don't want to appear too extravagant. Later I only wish I had been when my last two hundred and fifty dollars goes missing back at the lodge.

I sleep so deeply that night that I don't hear a peep from the little party the porters have to mark the end of the season. Even on our last day we're woken with our usual morning tea. After breakfast however, the camp is dismantled faster than usual. Virtually the whole team has gathered now as we're to say our farewells up here. Petra makes a little speech and hands over the tip to the main guide. Then I take my hundred dollars and say I want to donate them exclusively to the porters, the real heroes of Kilimanjaro. Their faces brighten immediately and they throw their hands in the hair, embarrassed and delighted all at once. I hear them call out ‘Asante Mzungu. Then they burst into a song about Kilimanjaro and I'm more moved by it than by anything else on the whole tour. Finally each one of the porters thanks us individually, shakes our hands and then piles all the luggage onto their heads before dashing on in front of us downhill.

After another three hours we get to the Machame Gate again to wait for our transport to the lodge. The porters are all busy washing and cleaning, some of them cleaning the tents and pots we used, others just washing themselves. After seven days we're also longing to get to the showers back at the hotel.

The guide hands Hans and me a certificate each and tells us that that night was so cold — minus twenty-five degrees Celsius at Stella Point — that only one fifth of the normal number of people making the final attempt actually reached the summit. That makes us feel a little bit proud after all.

Sitting on the plane the next day, tired and drained, I finally have time enough to reflect on my adventure. I'm rather disappointed to realise that this trip has not quelled my recurrent nostalgia for Africa. Maybe it's because Tanzania isn't Kenya, but maybe it's because so much has changed that ‘my’ Kenya no longer exists.

I've realised that as a tourist on this continent I'm always going to be torn two ways. I can't simply enjoy it as a white person just visiting, because I see too many things from the point of view of a native. And from their point of view I can see some of what we do there must seem incomprehensible. Lketinga and his family would never have understood the fact for example that we Europeans almost kill ourselves trying to climb a mountain and then pay for the torture of doing so. He would just have laughed and said: ‘Corinne, why do you do it? It doesn't bring in food or water, it just causes you grief. It's crazy!’

And in some ways he'd be right. People who need to use all their energy and strength just to survive would never dream of expending effort to no purpose. So I now look on my Kilimanjaro trip from two points of view: on the one hand it seems absurd and crazy, but on the other I'm proud and happy that I didn't give up and reached the summit, the roof of Africa.

But this journey also proved to me that I couldn't live in Africa any more. My place is back home with my daughter and my current partner. When Markus throws his arms around me at Zurich airport and we drive back to Lugano, then I realise that this is where I feel at home.

Often people ask me if I ever regret having fallen in love with a Samburu warrior. It is a question I can answer without the slightest doubt: Never! I had the privilege to become part of a culture that in all probability will not exist for very much longer, and at the same time to know what a great love can be like. If there is any chance that we really have lived several lives then I am certain that at one stage I was born into a Samburu tribe. That's the only explanation I can imagine for the feeling I had back then that I had arrived home and that despite all the problems, I felt so safe and protected among Lketinga and his family.

I know for sure that if I hadn't listened to this inner voice I would have felt my whole life long that I was missing something important and decisive. And I also would never have had my darling daughter Napirai whom I love more than anything.

But even if I was a Samburu in some other existence, I know that in this current life I was born and brought up in Switzerland and imbued with our central European culture. That is the real reason why the love Lketinga and I felt for one another couldn't last. We were simply too different.

Apart from anything we had no means of carrying out a deep meaningful verbal conversation. In my current relationship I realise how important and good it is to be able to use words to share thoughts and feelings. And I can no longer imagine giving up the comforts we take for granted in our lives today, even if it was my African experiences that made me enjoy them all the more.

No, I couldn't go back to live in Africa. But what remains is my bond with my former family and a huge curiosity about Kenya today. Maybe one day I will satisfy my curiosity, when Napirai is grown up and wants to meet her African relatives. Who knows?