Moose Jaw Times-Herald: Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro to support Canadian charity

By Lisa Goudy


Despite harsh weather conditions and other challenges, Moose Jaw’s Keith and Rynette Guillaume climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with a group in support of a charity.

“We blew around a little bit and froze (at the summit),” said Rynette.

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WaterCan Kilimanjaro Climb for Life website

Canadian charity WaterCan website

Additional comments about the trip

Going back down Mount Kilimanjaro was a difficult task.

“It was a lot harder going down than it was going up,” said Keith Guillaume.

Keith and his wife Rynette made the climb with a group as part of the Canadian charity WaterCan’s Climb for Life. The group consisted of 23 people and 22 of them made the climb.

In order to visit Tanzania, the climbers required vaccinations for yellow fever and typhoid, malarone for malaria, diamox for altitude sickness and cipro, a general antibiotic for travel abroad.

Each climber burned an average of between 4,000 and 6,000 calories per day and drank around four litres of water per day to maintain energy and hydration levels. Moose Jaw’s Keith and Rynette Guillaume said it was hard on the body to make the climb.

Keith said the first three days of their trip were spent in the Kiteto district in central Tanzania. The district had a new health clinic built, but because there was no clean access to clean water it was shut down. The only water the village of 1,100 people had access to was a well 20 minutes away by foot.

“It was a well, but it was just a hole in the ground,” said Keith. “It was probably close to 60 feet deep, but it only had six inches of water in the bottom and the water that was in the bottom of it was just black and polluted.”

The couple said seeing poverty firsthand is different than hearing about it.

“We visited some of the projects that are both being evaluated and have been completed and got to see firsthand the challenges that they face,” said Keith. “It was about a nine-hour drive from the city out to where we spent a few days. The drive was an experience. The roads were not very good at all. They made our bad roads look really good.”