Path To Atonement
Chapter Five
Zuberi Joseph loved to run along the Serengeti’s northern highlands and savannahs. Since he was eight years old, he ignored his family’s warnings and ran barefoot through the grasslands
and hills by his village. He stayed away from the lions he occasionally saw resting in the sun or perched on kopjes, rocky outcroppings dotting the plains. Zuberi felt a special connection with animals. He never feared them. They were his distant playmates. He ran with herds of impalas that could bound up to five feet in the air with legs outstretched to form graceful lines with their bodies.
Seeing a small group of sable antelope would take Zuberi’s breath away. These large, majestic creatures, dark brown in color with white underbellies and long, curved black horns, walked the Serengeti liked they owned it. Lions even selected different prey. Dik-dik antelopes were the exact opposite of their larger cousins. Just over a foot tall at the shoulder and weighing only seven to thirteen pounds, they would hide in tall grasses and under bushes. The females make a squeaky, shrill call of warning when predators are nearby. Zuberi befriended several dik-dik family groupings over the years, sitting in the grasses with them.
Zuberi’s daily runs stopped when he was 17. His family lost its crops that year in a severe drought. The Tarime lowlands of the Mara region of Tanzania had never seen such a drought. Even the family’s drought-tolerant cassava crop died. Zuberi’s father borrowed money for his family to survive. Zuberi’s father had to put Zuberi, his eldest son, into debt bondage to repay his loan. Zuberi had gone to work in a large, open pit and underground gold mine, where he cleared rocks and debris six days a week, 12 hours a day. The mine fed him mush in the morning, sweet potatoes and bread at lunch, and beans with whatever meat was available at night. He drank water during the day and occasionally was treated to a gourd of Masai-prepared milk mixed with cow blood. The Masai bleed a cow by piercing its neck with a metal point attached by a sinew to an arrow-like wooden shaft.
The seventh day was Zuberi’s. He would take a bus home and spend a few hours running in his childhood playground.
After a year of working at the mine, only $50 of the $200 debt had been repaid. The mine subtracted the cost of Zuberi’s food from his earnings. He did not know how he could work at the mine for another three years.
Just after his 18th birthday, a white man came to the Mara mine. He was very friendly with the manager. The mine manager called the few hundred workers together, most of them young men like Zuberi, working in debt bondage. The white man looked over the workers, pointing out twenty of the strongest and healthiest looking. Zuberi was one of them. He was still lean, but his upper body was “cut” from all the rock lifting. The manager took the twenty inside the office.
“I’m Mister Rick. My partner and I own a number of hotels in the United States. We’ll pay off your debts and take you to America to work at our hotels. We’ll give you a place to live and food to eat.
Also, we’ll pay you $50 a week.”
There was a gasp from the young men. They thought, All that money and food as well.
“I can see you’re surprised and pleased by my offer. For those who want to come to America, we’ll take you to South Africa by truck, and you’ll leave for the States from there. Once in America, like here, you will work hard, six days a week. You’ll work there for two years and will be sent home after that. Talk to your family about this. I’ll return late next week. I’m off to see one of the beautiful sights of your country, Mount Kilimanjaro.”
Rick’s and Steve’s human trafficking ring facilitated their love of travel and adventure in exotic locations. Family wealth exposed them to this lifestyle, and the trafficking ring helped maintain it.
Rick and Steve met in Arusha for a personal tour to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, which Rick had booked the year before.
On the third night of the climb, Rick was trying to sleep in a lower bunk at Kibo Hut. They started at the Marangu entrance of the national park, elevation 6,000 feet. Cape buffalo and kudu antelope skulls and horns adorned the wood-poled rectangular arch at the park’s entrance. Each day they had hiked eight to ten miles, traversing through different climate regions from rainforest, with lime-green moss hanging from the trees, to moonscape on the saddle between Mount Kilimanjaro and the next highest volcanic cone, Mount Mawenzi. From the saddle, not a piece of greenery was in sight. There was only volcanic gravel interspaced with small boulders against the backdrop of three barren volcanic cones.
Rick had been careful to conserve his energy, hiking at a slow, steady pace. That wasn’t Steve’s style—he bounced around the trail, taking photos of this and that. Rick was anxious about making it to the top. He was 38 and in pretty good shape. But he had heard that only ten percent of the hikers make it to the top of Uhuru Peak, the highest point on Kilimanjaro’s crater at 19,341 feet.
Rick and Steve only had to carry their water and camera equipment while they hiked. The Tanzanian porters carried everything else, usually on their heads in large burlap bags. At the hut before Kibo, the porters cut tree branches to carry up to Kibo Hut, elevation 15,520 feet, for fires to cook the meals. Every day they had stopped for lunch. One of the porters carried a thermos of hot water so Rick and Steve could have afternoon tea.
Steve was in the upper bunk, coughing and wheezing. It kept Rick awake. Steve had not seemed like his full-of-energy self at dinner. He was tired and went to bed early.
Rick wouldn’t have to try to sleep much longer. It was almost midnight and time to get up and prepare for the night ascent to the crater, over 3,000 vertical feet.
Rick rolled out of his bunk. It was freezing. He put on the parka a guide had provided him. Rick looked at Steve. He was pale. There was a pinkish froth at his mouth. Rick shook him. Steve groaned and didn’t wake up. Rick ran for their lead guide, Peter.
Peter took one look at Steve and said, “We have to get him down the mountain right now. He has HAPE.”
“What in the hell is HAPE?”
“It was in the materials we sent you. It stands for high altitude pulmonary edema. It’s water in the lungs caused by a rapid ascent to a high elevation. He could die if we don’t get him to a lower elevation and oxygen.”
Peter and the porters gently lifted Steve from the bunk, carried him outside, and placed him on a stretcher. The stretcher was balanced on a motorcycle wheel with shocks between the tire and the stretcher. Peter strapped Steve in.
Rick bent over Steve. “You’re going to be okay. They just need to get you down the mountain and give you some oxygen. You’re a lucky son-of-a-bitch. You get a free lift to the entrance gate.”
Steve fluttered his eyes. He mumbled. He tried to raise up from the stretcher and sank back down.
Peter said, “You might as well summit with Omari. You couldn’t keep up with Nabil and myself running down the trail with the stretcher. Steve will be in the hospital in Arusha when you get down.”
Rick tried to say something, but Peter and Nabil were already guiding the stretcher down the trail.
Rick and Omari started up the trail at 2:00 a.m. after tea, biscuits and jam. Rick followed Omari’s kerosene lantern. It was eerie hiking at night. No moon, but there was a plethora of stars alive in the sky. Rick felt he could reach up and grab them—they were so bright, and the night sky was so clear. The Milky Way looked like a creamy arch in the middle of the sky. Rick understood the name for the first time for the concentration of stars in the middle of the galaxy.
After an hour, they started up the hundreds of switchbacks through the pebble-size volcanic scree. Rick had to stop at the end of each switchback to catch his breath. After what Steve was going through, Rick was determined to make it to the summit.
At 18,000 feet, the terrain changed from treading through scree to stepping up and over one-to-two-foot high boulders. Every few steps, Rick had to stop. He never sat down or stooped. It would waste too much energy for him to stand up. He concentrated on his breathing—deep, slow breaths through his nose, exhaling out of his mouth.
A few steps from the top of the crater, Rick felt the sun on his back. He took the last few steps and dropped to the ground. Rick sat up and looked at the sunrise over the plains, 14,000 feet below.
There was a plaque at the crater, a memorial to C. G. Gillman, ESQ. The crater edge at that location used to be named Gillman Point. For some reason, it was now called Gilman Point. Maybe a tour company thought spelling Gilman with one L was a spelling the tourists could remember more easily.
After resting 20 minutes, Omari said, “Are you ready for the hour push to the peak?”
Rick thought, I’m not ready. My body isn’t ready. I’ve asked it to do enough. Rick took a long look down at the plains and then turned to look at Uhuru Peak, across the snow-covered crater. It looked like a gradual climb along the circular ridge of the crater. Rick said, “Of course I’m ready. Let’s go.”
The climb did take about an hour to reach the summit. When Rick stood on top of the peak, he was glad he had made the final climb. He felt energized. It only took a half-hour to return to Gilman’s Point.
After hiking through the boulder field and upon reaching the switchbacks that traversed the scree, Rick pretended he was skiing powder on the back side of Vail. He went straight down the scree, taking huge steps, sliding his feet into the three-inch deep scree.
With each stride, he turned his hips slightly as if he was making short parallel turns through snow. He felt exhilarated. Rick’s grin threatened to break through his cheeks. He noticed a hammering in his chest. Rick stopped, gasping for breath.
In his exuberance, he had forgotten that the air at that altitude only contained half the oxygen content as compared to the air at sea level. Rick had put his heart under an incredible strain, pumping blood madly to make up for the lost oxygen. Rick thought, What a way for a couple of fraternity brothers from USC to go out—one by drowning in his own fluids and the other having a heart attack while playing skier on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro.
The rest of the hike down the mountain was uneventful. They spent that night at the second series of huts, Horombo, that had a stream nearby and an alpine meadow above it. Rick, Omari and the porters arrived at the park entrance the next day at noon. It had been a 60-mile, four and a half day hike.
Rick was lost in his thoughts, when he heard, “Hey Rick.
What took you so long?”
Rick rushed over to Steve who was standing next to the gate in flip-flops, a Hawaiian shirt, and baggy shorts. “You’re supposed to be in the hospital. Are you all right?” Rick gave him a bear hug.
“I was in the hospital overnight. They gave me oxygen, some pills and crappy food. This morning I felt fine. I told them, “I have to meet my buddy when he comes down the mountain. Here I am.”
Path To Atonement
Chapter Five
Zuberi Joseph loved to run along the Serengeti’s northern highlands and savannahs. Since he was eight years old, he ignored his family’s warnings and ran barefoot through the grasslands
and hills by his village. He stayed away from the lions he occasionally saw resting in the sun or perched on kopjes, rocky outcroppings dotting the plains. Zuberi felt a special connection with animals. He never feared them. They were his distant playmates. He ran with herds of impalas that could bound up to five feet in the air with legs outstretched to form graceful lines with their bodies.
Seeing a small group of sable antelope would take Zuberi’s breath away. These large, majestic creatures, dark brown in color with white underbellies and long, curved black horns, walked the Serengeti liked they owned it. Lions even selected different prey. Dik-dik antelopes were the exact opposite of their larger cousins. Just over a foot tall at the shoulder and weighing only seven to thirteen pounds, they would hide in tall grasses and under bushes. The females make a squeaky, shrill call of warning when predators are nearby. Zuberi befriended several dik-dik family groupings over the years, sitting in the grasses with them.
Zuberi’s daily runs stopped when he was 17. His family lost its crops that year in a severe drought. The Tarime lowlands of the Mara region of Tanzania had never seen such a drought. Even the family’s drought-tolerant cassava crop died. Zuberi’s father borrowed money for his family to survive. Zuberi’s father had to put Zuberi, his eldest son, into debt bondage to repay his loan. Zuberi had gone to work in a large, open pit and underground gold mine, where he cleared rocks and debris six days a week, 12 hours a day. The mine fed him mush in the morning, sweet potatoes and bread at lunch, and beans with whatever meat was available at night. He drank water during the day and occasionally was treated to a gourd of Masai-prepared milk mixed with cow blood. The Masai bleed a cow by piercing its neck with a metal point attached by a sinew to an arrow-like wooden shaft.
The seventh day was Zuberi’s. He would take a bus home and spend a few hours running in his childhood playground.
After a year of working at the mine, only $50 of the $200 debt had been repaid. The mine subtracted the cost of Zuberi’s food from his earnings. He did not know how he could work at the mine for another three years.
Just after his 18th birthday, a white man came to the Mara mine. He was very friendly with the manager. The mine manager called the few hundred workers together, most of them young men like Zuberi, working in debt bondage. The white man looked over the workers, pointing out twenty of the strongest and healthiest looking. Zuberi was one of them. He was still lean, but his upper body was “cut” from all the rock lifting. The manager took the twenty inside the office.
“I’m Mister Rick. My partner and I own a number of hotels in the United States. We’ll pay off your debts and take you to America to work at our hotels. We’ll give you a place to live and food to eat.
Also, we’ll pay you $50 a week.”
There was a gasp from the young men. They thought, All that money and food as well.
“I can see you’re surprised and pleased by my offer. For those who want to come to America, we’ll take you to South Africa by truck, and you’ll leave for the States from there. Once in America, like here, you will work hard, six days a week. You’ll work there for two years and will be sent home after that. Talk to your family about this. I’ll return late next week. I’m off to see one of the beautiful sights of your country, Mount Kilimanjaro.”
Rick’s and Steve’s human trafficking ring facilitated their love of travel and adventure in exotic locations. Family wealth exposed them to this lifestyle, and the trafficking ring helped maintain it.
Rick and Steve met in Arusha for a personal tour to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, which Rick had booked the year before.
On the third night of the climb, Rick was trying to sleep in a lower bunk at Kibo Hut. They started at the Marangu entrance of the national park, elevation 6,000 feet. Cape buffalo and kudu antelope skulls and horns adorned the wood-poled rectangular arch at the park’s entrance. Each day they had hiked eight to ten miles, traversing through different climate regions from rainforest, with lime-green moss hanging from the trees, to moonscape on the saddle between Mount Kilimanjaro and the next highest volcanic cone, Mount Mawenzi. From the saddle, not a piece of greenery was in sight. There was only volcanic gravel interspaced with small boulders against the backdrop of three barren volcanic cones.
Rick had been careful to conserve his energy, hiking at a slow, steady pace. That wasn’t Steve’s style—he bounced around the trail, taking photos of this and that. Rick was anxious about making it to the top. He was 38 and in pretty good shape. But he had heard that only ten percent of the hikers make it to the top of Uhuru Peak, the highest point on Kilimanjaro’s crater at 19,341 feet.
Rick and Steve only had to carry their water and camera equipment while they hiked. The Tanzanian porters carried everything else, usually on their heads in large burlap bags. At the hut before Kibo, the porters cut tree branches to carry up to Kibo Hut, elevation 15,520 feet, for fires to cook the meals. Every day they had stopped for lunch. One of the porters carried a thermos of hot water so Rick and Steve could have afternoon tea.
Steve was in the upper bunk, coughing and wheezing. It kept Rick awake. Steve had not seemed like his full-of-energy self at dinner. He was tired and went to bed early.
Rick wouldn’t have to try to sleep much longer. It was almost midnight and time to get up and prepare for the night ascent to the crater, over 3,000 vertical feet.
Rick rolled out of his bunk. It was freezing. He put on the parka a guide had provided him. Rick looked at Steve. He was pale. There was a pinkish froth at his mouth. Rick shook him. Steve groaned and didn’t wake up. Rick ran for their lead guide, Peter.
Peter took one look at Steve and said, “We have to get him down the mountain right now. He has HAPE.”
“What in the hell is HAPE?”
“It was in the materials we sent you. It stands for high altitude pulmonary edema. It’s water in the lungs caused by a rapid ascent to a high elevation. He could die if we don’t get him to a lower elevation and oxygen.”
Peter and the porters gently lifted Steve from the bunk, carried him outside, and placed him on a stretcher. The stretcher was balanced on a motorcycle wheel with shocks between the tire and the stretcher. Peter strapped Steve in.
Rick bent over Steve. “You’re going to be okay. They just need to get you down the mountain and give you some oxygen. You’re a lucky son-of-a-bitch. You get a free lift to the entrance gate.”
Steve fluttered his eyes. He mumbled. He tried to raise up from the stretcher and sank back down.
Peter said, “You might as well summit with Omari. You couldn’t keep up with Nabil and myself running down the trail with the stretcher. Steve will be in the hospital in Arusha when you get down.”
Rick tried to say something, but Peter and Nabil were already guiding the stretcher down the trail.
Rick and Omari started up the trail at 2:00 a.m. after tea, biscuits and jam. Rick followed Omari’s kerosene lantern. It was eerie hiking at night. No moon, but there was a plethora of stars alive in the sky. Rick felt he could reach up and grab them—they were so bright, and the night sky was so clear. The Milky Way looked like a creamy arch in the middle of the sky. Rick understood the name for the first time for the concentration of stars in the middle of the galaxy.
After an hour, they started up the hundreds of switchbacks through the pebble-size volcanic scree. Rick had to stop at the end of each switchback to catch his breath. After what Steve was going through, Rick was determined to make it to the summit.
At 18,000 feet, the terrain changed from treading through scree to stepping up and over one-to-two-foot high boulders. Every few steps, Rick had to stop. He never sat down or stooped. It would waste too much energy for him to stand up. He concentrated on his breathing—deep, slow breaths through his nose, exhaling out of his mouth.
A few steps from the top of the crater, Rick felt the sun on his back. He took the last few steps and dropped to the ground. Rick sat up and looked at the sunrise over the plains, 14,000 feet below.
There was a plaque at the crater, a memorial to C. G. Gillman, ESQ. The crater edge at that location used to be named Gillman Point. For some reason, it was now called Gilman Point. Maybe a tour company thought spelling Gilman with one L was a spelling the tourists could remember more easily.
After resting 20 minutes, Omari said, “Are you ready for the hour push to the peak?”
Rick thought, I’m not ready. My body isn’t ready. I’ve asked it to do enough. Rick took a long look down at the plains and then turned to look at Uhuru Peak, across the snow-covered crater. It looked like a gradual climb along the circular ridge of the crater. Rick said, “Of course I’m ready. Let’s go.”
The climb did take about an hour to reach the summit. When Rick stood on top of the peak, he was glad he had made the final climb. He felt energized. It only took a half-hour to return to Gilman’s Point.
After hiking through the boulder field and upon reaching the switchbacks that traversed the scree, Rick pretended he was skiing powder on the back side of Vail. He went straight down the scree, taking huge steps, sliding his feet into the three-inch deep scree.
With each stride, he turned his hips slightly as if he was making short parallel turns through snow. He felt exhilarated. Rick’s grin threatened to break through his cheeks. He noticed a hammering in his chest. Rick stopped, gasping for breath.
In his exuberance, he had forgotten that the air at that altitude only contained half the oxygen content as compared to the air at sea level. Rick had put his heart under an incredible strain, pumping blood madly to make up for the lost oxygen. Rick thought, What a way for a couple of fraternity brothers from USC to go out—one by drowning in his own fluids and the other having a heart attack while playing skier on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro.
The rest of the hike down the mountain was uneventful. They spent that night at the second series of huts, Horombo, that had a stream nearby and an alpine meadow above it. Rick, Omari and the porters arrived at the park entrance the next day at noon. It had been a 60-mile, four and a half day hike.
Rick was lost in his thoughts, when he heard, “Hey Rick.
What took you so long?”
Rick rushed over to Steve who was standing next to the gate in flip-flops, a Hawaiian shirt, and baggy shorts. “You’re supposed to be in the hospital. Are you all right?” Rick gave him a bear hug.
“I was in the hospital overnight. They gave me oxygen, some pills and crappy food. This morning I felt fine. I told them, “I have to meet my buddy when he comes down the mountain. Here I am.”