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Pole Pole: Three Women Climbing Mount Kenya and a Mission That Continues
Updated: Aug 19
I did it! The climb is over. The journey continues but at least I can now officially say it... "I climbed Mount Kenya!"
Even writing those words still feels slightly surreal. A few months ago, Mount Kenya was a date on a calender. It was something on the horizon. Something to aim for. Something to help raise much-needed funds for a charity that's become very important to me.
For almost six months, there were training walks, preparation, anticipation and more than a little uncertainty about quite what we had signed ourselves up for. Now we have stood on the top of that mountain.
In August 2026, three women...aged 57, 60 and 66 conquered the second highest mountain in Africa!
We decided that climbing Mount Kenya would be a good way to raise money and awareness for WENDO, for which I'm a Trustee, and the girls they support in Kenya.
At some point during the climb, I think all three of us probably questioned whose bright idea this actually was! It's still up for debate. There's no denying it was exhausting. It was definitely challenging and at times it was uncomfortable, but reaching the top was also one of the most exhilarating experiences I have ever had. And yes, we all made it. Pole pole....
The Joy of Joy
Before we took on Mount Kenya, we also had the opportunity to visit Bethany Joy School in the Kawangware area of Nairobi. That visit brought the purpose behind our challenge into much sharper focus.
Standing in the school and seeing the environment in which children are learning makes the idea of supporting girls' education feel very different from simply talking about it. It puts faces, voices and real lives behind the fundraising.
In the Headmaster's office after the interview Visiting on the school we are raising funds for. Looking over the play area at the school Myself and Mr Orlando in the school's kitchen Definitely not disrupting class!
Thanks to Mr. Orlando, the Headmaster, we were able to see the importance of creating an environment where young people can learn, develop confidence and begin to imagine what their futures might hold. For me, that visit stayed in my mind throughout the climb.
Whenever the mountain became difficult (and it did) and my body was telling me that it had had enough (which it had), I could think back to the children and the other communities we were there to support and those challenges seemed to melt away.
Whilst the summit was our immediate goal for this trip, helping create opportunities for girls to remain in education was the reason I became part of WENDO, and the drive behind why we had come to Kenya in the first place.
Climbing Mount Kenya. Slowly, Slowly.
Whilst the visit to the school was exciting, the mountain still awaited us. If there are two words I will always associate with Mount Kenya, they are "pole pole", which is Swahili for "slowly, slowly", and believe me, they really do mean sssssssllllloooowwwwlllllly.
At the beginning of the hike, when you're all feeling reasonably fresh and confident, your natural instinct is to walk at your normal pace. You soon discover that the mountain has other ideas.
The higher we climbed, the thinner the air became and the harder our bodies had to work. Walking slowly wasn't about whether we were fit enough to go faster. It was about allowing our bodies time to adjust to the altitude and conserving enough energy for everything that still lay ahead.
There is something remarkably humbling about discovering that a pace you would normally consider a leisurely stroll can suddenly feel like serious exercise. So we walked, pole pole... and then a little more pole pole.
Eventually, I stopped worrying about how 'pole' we were moving. I just wanted to keep moving and perhaps that is one of the most important lessons the mountain gave me.
Progress doesn't always look dramatic and it isn't always fast. Sometimes progress is simply putting one foot in front of the other. Just like life really.
When Your Body Says "That's Quite Enough, Thank You"
I had obviously prepared for Mount Kenya, you can read more about the prepartion in the blogs linked at the bottom of this post, but no matter how much preparation I undertook, I still knew climbing in Mount Kenya would be physically demanding.
As it turns out, knowing something and actually experiencing it are two very different things.
As we climbed higher, I became increasingly conscious of my breathing. The lack of oxygen at altitude is something you hear about, but it's real.
Your legs feel heavier, your energy disappears more quickly and things you would normally do without thinking suddenly require effort. Then there was the cold... and the tiredness.... oh! and the fact that you've already been walking for hours when somebody cheerfully tells you that there is still more to go!
There were moments when my body was effectively saying, "Beverley, we have done enough now". I heard it loud and clear but unfortunately, we weren't at the top yet, so I had to dig deeper.
Sometimes my determination to succeed meant thinking about why we were doing this. Sometimes it meant concentrating only on the next few steps rather than looking at how far we still had to go. I would pick a point ahead and think "Just. Get. There." Then, once I reached that point, I would choose another, and another. I kept thinking that eventually, there wouldn't be another point to choose, because we'd have reached the summit.
Trust me when I say, when you don't have much oxygen or energy to spare, determination becomes a very useful additional fuel source. But there was something else that became equally important. We needed each other.
Three Women, One Team
One thing I will always remember about the climb is how much we encouraged and checked on each other.
"Are you okay?"
"Do you need some water?"
"How are you feeling?"
"Do you need to stop?"
Occasionally, I'm sure, there was an unspoken "Why exactly are we doing this again?"
We were three women with a combined age of 183 doing the same climb, but our bodies responded differently at different points.
There were moments when one of us needed encouragement and the other two provided it. Then, a little later, the roles might reverse. Sometimes encouragement was a big"Come on, you've got this!" Other times, it was simply someone walking beside you. That mattered.
Mount Kenya taught me that strength isn't always about powering ahead. Sometimes strength is admitting that you're struggling and accepting a helping hand, and sometimes, when you're tired yourself, it's finding enough energy to tell the person beside you Keep going. We're going to do this".
That sense of teamwork extended beyond the three of us and I LOVED it!
The People Who Helped Us Reach the Summit
I cannot fully tell this story without talking about our amazing porters and mountain team who helped us.
While we were congratulating ourselves for carrying our daypacks up the mountain, these incredible people were helping carry our tents, sleeping bags, food, water and equipment. They made sure everything was where it needed to be and that we were fed and looked after along the way.
And here's the slightly annoying part.
They made climbing Mount Kenya look like a walk in the park! There we were, concentrating on breathing and putting one foot in front of the other, while a porter would seemingly glide past carrying equipment.
I wanted to ask "Could you at least look slightly tired for our benefit?" Of course, this is what they do regularly. They know the mountain incredibly well, and their fitness, strength and knowledge of the terrain are simply extraordinary.
Actually experiencing the climb made me appreciate them even more. We could not have done what we did without them, but one person deserves a particularly special mention. Bonny, our Mountain Hero
Bonny was our lead porter, and he was brilliant! What impressed me most was how completely in tune he was with the three of us.
He didn't simply have a timetable and march us up the mountain. He watched how we were responding, listened to us and adjusted our pace and the walk according to what we needed.
He understood that we were one team but three different people. If somebody needed to slow down, we slowed down. If somebody needed a moment, we had a moment.
There was never any sense that we had to compete with each other. His job was to help get us there safely, and, once again, pole pole.
Bonny understood the mountain and, more importantly, he understood the people he was taking up it.
So to Bonny, and to every member of the team who carried our equipment, prepared our food, provided our water, put up our tents and looked after us along the way, on behalf of us all "thank you".
We climbed Mount Kenya, but believe me, we did not climb it alone.
Three Women. 57, 60 and 66.
I am particularly proud that all three of us completed the challenge. There doesn't appear to be a reliable official figure recording exactly how many women, or specifically women in their 50s and 60s, successfully complete Mount Kenya each year. So I'm not going to invent a statistic to make our achievement sound more impressive. I don't think we need one. We were 57, 60 and 66 and we did it.
There is something rather wonderful about being able to say that. Our ages didn't suddenly become irrelevant on the mountain. Trust me, there were mornings when our knees were very happy to remind us of them, but age didn't determine whether we could finish, our determination did.
I am incredibly proud to join all the other amazing women who have stood on Mount Kenya after discovering just how much they had left in them.
And Then... We Made It
Reaching the top of Mount Kenya was something else.
After the tiredness, the cold, 3:30am start so we could make it before sunset, the aching legs, the breathing, the pole pole, and the moments of wondering how much further we had to go...we'd made it!
As the Kenyan sun rose in the sky and the temperatures increased, we'd made it. We were there standing 4985 metres above sea level at the Lenana Peak of Mount Kenya feeling like we were on top of the world.
Were we exhausted? Absolutely. Emotional? Definitely. Pleased with ourselves? You'd better believe it!
It was exhilarating.
But as proud as I was of what we'd achieved personally, standing there also brought me back to the reason we'd started this slightly crazy adventure in the first place. WENDO.
We hadn't climbed Mount Kenya simply to prove that three women of a certain age could do something difficult. That wasn't in question. We climbed to raise awareness and funds for the work WENDO do to help girls in Kenya remain in education.
During our time in this incredible country, we met people and heard stories that reminded us why this work matters. For some girls, things that many of us take for granted can become barriers to simply staying in school. That puts an aching pair of legs into perspective.
The Mountain Is Behind Us. The Mission Isn't.
Coming down the mountain was an incredible feeling. It was still treacherous thanks to the loose rocks underfoot, but, as the ground come up to meet us, I kept remembering that it doesn't mean the challenge is over. In fact, in many ways, it marks the beginning of the next part of the journey.
We have finished climbing Mount Kenya, but the reason we climbed hasn't gone away.
The girls WENDO supports still need opportunities. They still need practical support. They still need the dignity, confidence and encouragement that can help them remain in education and believe in what their futures might hold.
That is why this campaign matters.
The mountain gave us a challenge to overcome and I'm incredibly proud that we did. Without question it gave us a story to tell our family and friends for years to come. It gave us a way of drawing attention to a cause that deserves to be heard, but the ultimate measure of this journey won't be the views on this blog, the photographs from the summit, the packs of blister plasters I bought or the satisfaction of knowing that three women in their 50s and 60s successfully climbed Mount Kenya. It will be what happens afterwards.
It will be the girls who stay in school. The opportunities that become possible. The confidence that grows. The lives that begin to look different because somebody like you chose to help. That is the hope I want to take away from Mount Kenya.
What Comes Next for WENDO?
As this four-part journey comes to an end, I don't want this to feel like the end of the story for any of us. It is the end of one part of the journey for sure, but I hope it becomes the beginning of something much bigger for WENDO.
I hope the awareness we've created reaches people who had never heard of the charity before. I hope the funds raised help provide practical support to girls who need it. I hope more people discover the incredible potential that exists when communities are given opportunity rather than simply being told what they lack.
Most of all, I hope that the story of three women walking pole pole up a mountain reminds us all of something important which is that change doesn't have to happen all at once. It can happen one step at a time. One donation at a time. One school uniform at a time. One dignity kit at a time. One girl remaining in education at a time, and eventually, those individual steps become a journey.
You Don't Have to Climb the Mountain
If you've followed this series of blogs or this journey across social media, let me say "thank you". You've walked with us from the first discussions about taking on Mount Kenya, through the preparation, the training, the doubts and anticipation, and finally to the summit.
But now we'd love you to help us take the next steps.
You certainly don't have to climb Mount Kenya to make a difference. We've done that bit for you, but what you can do is help make every step count.
Donate to my JustGiving page and support the WENDO campaign and help give hope to girls in Kenya to remain in education.
Share this blog (and the others) with your friends, family, colleagues and social networks. You never know who might see it and decide to get involved.
Follow WENDO across their social media channels (linked via www.wendo.org.uk) and check out their new website and discover more about the charity and its work supporting women and girls.
And beyond this, and most importantly, believe in the possibility of change.
Mount Kenya has taught me something I won't forget which is that sometimes progress is simply one more step. Pole pole. Slowly, slowly. The climb is finished, but the mission continues, and if every step we took on Mount Kenya helps another schoolgirl take a step towards education, confidence and a brighter future, then every aching muscle, every breathless climb and every moment of doubt will have been worth it.
We climbed the mountain, now it's up to you to help WENDO build what comes next 'haraka haraka'.
Thank you for reading, thank you to everyone who's donated already and a massive thank you to my walking support team, from the Porters to my fellow climbers. I literally couldn't have done it without any of you. #BelieveInSuccess, as it turns out, is more than a hashtag, it's very, VERY real.
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