It All Started With A Text...

“By the way, how do you fancy climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro with me?” interjected my best friend, Bryony, in a texting conversation. You can guess my answer. Since you’re reading this, it’s pretty obvious.

100% Y.E.S.

It was for charity, she added, and there was to be a meeting about it at her university tomorrow. She sent me a link to the website (http://www.studentadventures.co.uk/) and loads of long emails detailing the meeting and information about the trip. The only difficulty? We’d both separately have to raise £2,500 to be able to go, excluding the signing-up fee.

However, the more we talked about the challenge, the more we fell in love with the idea. It was a once in a life-time opportunity. We’d be trekking through five different eco-systems. We’d encounter the wildlife, such as the monkeys and giraffes, on the way. We’d reach the summit of the tallest free-standing mountain in time to watch the sun break free from the horizon and rise over the African landscape.

When the official registration day dawned, we were sending texts to each other counting down the minutes until the site enabling us to sign-up opened. Half an hour to go! Twenty-five minutes! Ten minutes! Five! One minute—and it’s the slowest minute I’ve ever endured! OH MY GOD, IT’S NINE O’CLOCK!

Minutes later, it was confirmed. Our applications had been accepted. Our registration fees paid. Our chosen charity (Practical Action http://practicalaction.org/ ) had sent us emails of welcome and support.

This was four days ago. Before we’d even applied, we’d both trawled through the internet looking for ideas for raising the money. Lists of A-Z of fundraising provided some odd ideas in order to fill each and every letter category. When telling friends of the planned event, it was suggested jokingly that we could gather the money by doing bikini car washes. In fact, a fair amount of different people have suggested this idea. Hmm. :/

Bryony returns from university at some point during this week. We’ll be doing the majority of our event planning, fundraising ideas and raising publicity then. In the meantime, if anyone is actually reading this, any ideas would be very much appreciated! Any small thought or taking-over-the-world kind of plan is very welcome.

Thank you for reading.

Wish both of us luck!

Emma,

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