- I n t r o d u c t i o n -

Changing places,
changing perspectives

By Dolph Tillotson
The Daily News

Published February 3, 2002

I awoke Saturday dreaming of Africa. In the dream, we were seated, exhausted, at Askari Point near the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro. It was treeless, bleak and very cold.

	Sunset at Lava Tower Camp, with Mt. Meru in the background.Kilimanjaro's upper slopes are both beautiful and rugged.

In the weird way of dreams, I also knew I was at home in bed. I was warm and comfortable in a room as familiar to me as my own hunger.

From Jan. 11 to Jan. 25, six friends from Galveston traveled to Africa. We explored a place that was strange, beautiful and sometimes sad because poverty and illness live so close to so much beauty.

We saw so much it would be impossible to cram it all into a 500-word column.

First, we climbed. The mountain is, at 19,344 feet, the highest peak on the African continent, nearly a mile higher than any mountain in the lower 48 states.

The climb was by far the most difficult physical challenge I ever faced.

We saw our porters, members of the Chaaga tribe who live on the slopes of Kili, dashing blithely past us, 75-pound bundles balanced atop their heads.

We made it to the top but could only last 15 minutes in the freezing wind. Our fingers were numb, our water frozen, and our cameras, damp from days of walking, froze instantly.

We saw nations where institutions we take for granted (police, courts, hotels with hot water) don’t seem to work. We were warned in Nairobi — don’t go out; you’ll be mugged.

We saw thousands in the streets of Nairobi and in Arusha in Tanzania, some begging and some in an army of fierce, persistent trinket salesmen.

The American’s temptation is to reach out and help, especially to help the children, but beware — helping one attracts hundreds more, and it reinforces the infinite difficulty of “improving” a culture we can’t comprehend.

We also met people whose and friendship over-reached the gulf that exists between their African world and ours. We heard music and laughter that was beyond beautiful.

We saw the land itself, a world of fire and ice, of volcanoes and ice blue glaciers and rainforest with monkeys barking from the green canopy overhead. We saw elephants and zebra and eland and gazelles and monkeys. We saw giraffe grazing on acacia thorns. One night we slept on the ground in the Serengeti, our sleep disturbed by the roar of lions hunting nearby.

After all this, we came home. We were tired, filled with visions of another world, focused on the routine of our lives at home.

The story of travel is the story of coming back home again. From Homer to L. Frank Baum and the Wizard of Oz, literature is filled with fantastic voyages that become, in the end, meditations on home.

We’re home again, and home looks very good. But — and this is what I thought about as I woke from my dream of Africa — home also looks different somehow.

We don’t see the world around us through its familiarity. We see it through contrast. Its shadows and shading become clearer in the light of other worlds.

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