Base Camp
Arusha, Tanzania
2,788 feet
Everyone arrived safely to Base Camp at the Mount Meru Hotel in Arusha, Tanzania. All are in good spirits after long journeys. Tanzania is beautiful and we have all been welcomed with open arms.
Today, students and teachers got to know each other with team building activities such as finding commonalities across cultural backgrounds. We then met with our guides for a full mountain briefing and reviewed the science protocols that we will be conducting while on the mountain. We are looking forward to starting our journey early tomorrow and the upcoming challenge of Kilimanjaro. We have found ourselves wondering similar questions about the expedition to come.
What will the mountain be like? How difficult will the climb be?
Student’s Experience
Hi. My name is Anas I am from Muscat, the capital of Oman. Today is Wednesday, or I can call it the day before the big day. It was a pretty normal day for me and the Omani group participated in the GLOBE Program’s science protocols and had a nice conversation to get to know each other well enough to have a bond that can help us achieve our goal of reaching the roof of Africa.
Teacher’s Experience
Today our expedition team gathered at our hotel in Arusha to prepare for our climb of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest freestanding mountain in the world. We are looking from our hotel at another large mountain, Mount Meru, which is clouded in haze from a forest fire burning on its other side.
Our expedition team introduced ourselves to each other as we have flown in from the Colorado, Rhode Island, Oman, South Africa, and Tanzania. Despite our different nationalities and cultures we quickly found many commonalities, particularly our passion for nature and science. We all are excited to experience Mount Kilimanjaro.
To ready ourselves, we reviewed gear, our climbing itinerary, and our Globe Program protocols for collecting data. Each day we will measure air temperature, surface temperature, soil temperature & moisture, and water quality. To be successful we know we will need to take good care of ourselves by staying hydrated, protecting our skin from the intense sun, eating & resting, and tending to anything that does not feel right, such as headaches or blisters or anything else. We will need to be a good team, which requires honesty with each other.
Virtual Field Trip
October 8 | 1:00 PM ET
Students can also get involved by participating in a virtual field trip once the Expedition has returned from Tanzania. Don’t forget to submit your classes questions by tweeting @DiscoveryEd with the hashtag #DiscoverKili – your class may get their questions answered live on air!
Learning Objectives
Discover lesson starters and content collections about the biomes of Mount Kilimanjaro online at www.DiscoveryEducation.com/Kilimanjaro.