Williams: A climber touching on ‘Chasing Uhuru Peak’

Scaling the highest point on land in Africa is hard enough.

Still, Rahel Mwitula Williams had to document every step of the way in a thrilling new documentary on YouTube.

Sitting on a cozy couch in her living room in Chicago while narrating her Kilimanjaro expedition for her viewers,

Rahel revealed that she was born in Tanzania and relocated to the US when she was just 12 years old, she would always hear the tales of Kilimanjaro treks and she would always have a sense of pride of Kilimanjaro as her national symbol.

She would hear of all the foreigners who visited Tanzania and climbed the highest peak, even at home she would always hear her father narrate his Kilimanjaro journey that he took in 1979, “apparently, the day I was born, he was at the Uhuru peak” she revealed.

They had an inside joke at their home, where she would say she had to see this mountain that kept her dad from being there when she was born.

As such, she decided she had to make her own way up the mountain.

Later in the documentary, Rahel’s dad, Mr Nobert Mwitula, appears, explaining the mandatory military service and training that the youth in Tanzania with higher education had to undergo, of which he was subjected to climb Mt Kilimanjaro as part of his training.

“I was at the peak when the military communication service informed me that Rahel had been born,” her dad said.

Bertha Mwitula, Rahel’s mother was the first in the family to climb the mountain in 1967, as a young high school girl, she climbed the mountain in search of flowers that do not dry known as ‘living flowers’ that are found at a certain level as you ascend.

Rahel’s chance to take the journey back home to Tanzania came when she got a three-month sabbatical leave with pay, she had fears in the back of her mind that she had to conquer, and the only way was to set foot on the mountain and take one step at a time.

She said, “I had fears, what if I don’t make it, what if I die at the mountain.”

It was on February 2, 2023 when her journey to the top began, after years of telling friends and family of her desire to scale the mountain, even telling one of her best friends Latoya Grey that she wanted a Kilimanjaro tattoo, she was finally at the base and about to embark on a 6-day ascent.

Before her expedition, Rahel was privy to booking with a Tanzanian-owned tour agent, she said that though tourism is one of the major sectors bringing in large amounts of foreign exchange, locals own a merger share of the industry, so she wanted to work with the Tanzanian tour agency as a way to put money directly to the local small businesses, a cause that is dear to her heart.

The six-day Machame route was a lifetime experience, after checking her oxygen level to make sure it was at a recommendable level, she packed all her gear and they started trekking.

The walks would last for more than ten hours before coming in sight of a resting point.

Talking to her camera in a makeshift hut at one of the resting spots, Rehel attributed her friend and travel buddy Tracy to being a much-needed companion in their journey; she wondered how some people would travel solo.

The climbing crew hardly saw Tanzanians trekking the mountain, so seeing Rehel willingly climb the terrain, was a bit of a shock to them, a chef who was part of the crew walked up to her and asked her why she was willingly paying to go through the gruesome summit, they both laughed and started conversing.

Rahel later found out that they chef had retired but he started working again to put his child to school.

She communicated with her husband, parents, and friends every step of the way, and when the communication was not accessible all they could do was pray for her and wait, her dad who had experienced the strenuous climb, kept encouraging her along in his text messages, he knew the difficulty but he let her experience the journey for herself and spared her all the scary details.

“The DMs, texts, and social media posts from my husband, parents, and family, is what motivated me to carry on with the journey,” she said.

 “Knowing that you have so many people supporting you through the journey matters” she added.

With all the people supporting her and cheering her on, Rahel felt the pressure to not disappoint them, so she had to dig deep to find all the strength she needed to summit.

The summit day is the day everyone anxiously waits for, the summit starts in complete darkness in the wee hours of the morning, the wind is gusting fiercely, the fingers are going numb, and the knees are already weak, but this is the last push to the summit and in the documentary.

Rahel narrates seeing a person collapse right in front of their eyes, she looked at Tracy and they squeezed their hands and with determination in their eyes, they knew they could do it.

She said it was the coldest day of all the days they had been climbing the mountain.

She had all the coats protecting her body against the piercing cold and wrapped her grandmother’s khanga around her neck.

She was thinking about the family she was representing and making them proud, but also all the stories she would tell them when she got back.

On the last leg of the journey, the video shows Rahel just a few meters from the famous Uhuru sign, but her legs can hardly carry on, she points at the sign and starts trudging towards it.

When she got to the very top of the sign, she couldn’t believe it, she was 5895 meters above sea level at the highest point in Africa, on the highest free-standing mountain in the world, a world heritage site and wonder of Africa.

Rahel had summited Mt Kilimanjaro, she took enough pictures for her memories, She called her parents, husband, and family to inform them of her success.

She descended and found friends and other people waiting for her, that's when she truly believed that it was over and the excitement was in the air.

Sitting in the living room she displayed the certificate she received from the Kilimanjaro National Park Authority, a true testimony of one lady’s resilience and determination, you can watch the documentary “Chasing Uhuru Peak” a Rahel Mwitula Williams story on YouTube.