UPDATING THE MUFINDI MOUNTAINEERS 2014 CHALLENGE BLOG WITH OUR PHOTOS

This blog TO DATE has focused on our visit to the Mufindi Children's Project and our commencement of the climb of Mt Kilimanjaro (19,340 ft.). 

Location of orphan's housing.  Karibu means welcome.

Geoff Fox explaining to Rich Wortley, Jennifer Lindwall, and David Still
why and when the Mufindi Children's Projects was established.

One of the young "helpers" in the community!

Geoff Fox in hat introducing Mufindi Mountaineer visitors to
 local teachers, students, and the interim project director, Amari Alexander.

Local students dress smartly for school all over Tanzania.

These young girls were glad to see us and full of energy and questions.

The purpose of the climb was to help us raise funds for the Mufindi Children's Project, relying on the friends, relatives, and networks of the Mufindi Mountaineers to help us generate donations.

Those portions of the first blog posts relating to the Mufindi Children's Project in the south central highlands of Tanzania included CURRENT PICTURES taken during our site visit 15-19 September.

That 4-person visit team to Mufindi included Rich Wortley, David Still, Jennifer Lindwall, and Gary Drobnack. 

We were hosted there by Geoff and Vicki Fox who started the Mufindi Children's Project in 2005, and by members of the local non-profit organization that manages the project on a day to day basis.  We wish to thank Geoff and Vicky Fox for their hospitality and to volunteers Amari Alexander and Sasha Bill for bringing us up to date with recent developments in the Mufindi Children's Project and for showing us current initiatives underway and explaining future funding priorities.  These programs and priorities have already been described in the earlier blog posts.

Now that the Mufindi Mountaineers are down from the summit of Kilimanjaro, we wish to revisit the climbing portion of the blog, and this time, UTILIZE OUR PHOTOS taken while we were on the mountain.  The climb portion of the initial blog relied heavily on stock photos of the mountain and occasional updates by satellite phone to describe our progress during the trek.  Now we can share the faces and places we actually visited.  It was not possible to transmit these photos while we were on the mountain unfortunately.

The next posting in this series will start at the Ndarakwai Lodge just west of Mt Kilimanjaro where the climbers met the head guide for the trek and received instructions on packing and getting rental equipment issued.  Two nights were spent at Ndarakwai Lodge recovering from jet lag and preparing for the start of the hike which commenced on the morning of 22 September.