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Today's featured speaker was Patty Hall, member of the White Bear Lake Club and founder of H2O For Life. Recently, our club, led by Mike Spellman, has partnered with Patty to write and submit a Global Grant for a WASH program in Nigeria, which, as with all global grants, has been a monumental process. Patty's presentation today, however, covered a different topic. In February, she led a group of White Bear Lake Rotarians on a trip to Kenya to visit water projects followed by a 7 day climb to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Her comments today centered around that climb - how she trained, geared up, and survived this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Even though Kilimanjaro is not considered a "technical climb" (i.e. regular people like us can do it without a lot of technical equipment), it is clearly not for the faint of heart or ill-prepared! At 19,000 feet it is the highest peak in Africa, making climbers susceptible to the altitude sickness that goes along with that. Precautions were taken and luckily only one of Patty's group was hit with it and had to be carried a fair distance down the mountain by porters. The weather on the mountain can vary greatly and their group was not blessed in this regard. It rained nearly every day, making a difficult trip even more challenging, comfort-wise. The group's guide stressed the mantra "Pole-Pole", which means "Step-Step" in Swahili, referring to the wisdom of taking it slow and steady in order to avoid becoming overwhelmed by the challenge. The team posed jubilantly for a great picture at the summit on a rare day of sun, having accomplished something difficult and raising $35,000 for H2O for Life in the process!