When Julie Sprague
goes to the highest point in Africa this summer, she won’t be going alone.A Gulf Coast High School health teacher plans to hike to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for HIV and AIDS awareness
Sunday, June 11, 2006
When Julie Sprague
goes to the highest point in Africa this summer, she won’t be going alone.
She’ll be taking Travis, a 17-year-old boy with HIV, his mother and sister with her.
She’ll take the uncle of a student in one of her health classes at Gulf Coast High School who is suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease.
She’ll take the ashes of her friend, Steve, who was killed in a car accident just months after he completed the ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Sprague refers to all of them as her inspiration to finish the climb of the mountain. Something she could not do two years ago, but vows to do this year if the altitude sickness does not get to her.
She is doing it for the people on her back. Mostly, she is doing it to help raise awareness for Friends Together, an organization that works with children and families infected and affected by HIV and AIDS.
“The cause is important. Sometimes you have to do unusual things for attention, but this is worth it,” Sprague said. “This changed my world.”
Sprague first met Friends Together founder Cathy Robinson Pickett in 1992 while teaching at Immokalee High School in 1992. Since meeting Robinson Pickett, who is HIV positive, Sprague has made Friends Together her passion, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for the cause, working at Friends Together’s camps for HIV-positive and AIDS-infected children, creating a documentary called “Touching Lives - The Cathy Robinson Story” with her students, and serving on the Collier County World AIDS Day Celebration committee since 1999.
“Julie’s awesome. Her class was the first public school I went to after I went public. She has seen me through my divorce, my marriage, my recovery from cancer. She is so special to me,” said Robinson Pickett.
Robinson Pickett said she hopes that Julie’s climb will remind people that, even though more is known about AIDS and its transmission, people can grow complacent about it.
“There are 50,000 new infections in this country a year and 60 percent of those are people under the age of 25,” she said. “We want people to know that.”
Kilimanjaro, which means “shining mountain” in Swahili, sits just below the equator on the border of Tanzania and Kenya in eastern Africa. It is the highest peak in Africa, rising out of the ground at 19,340 feet.
“It’s an enigma,” Sprague said. “It is beautiful and scary in places. It has this magical quality. You go through five ecosystems to get to the top. It is cool to watch the progression.”
Sprague’s diary from her first trip talks of her journey up the mountain where “snow is not flakes due to lack of oxygen. It looks like chocolate chips.” She also wrote about the differences between the Americans on the trip and their African guides.
“The boys that are taking us up the mountain do this to make money to go to school,” she said. “We take for granted all of this stuff. That’s what this trip teaches you. It teaches you not to take anything for granted.”
To train for the grueling climb, Sprague has been carrying a backpack eight hours a day for the last four weeks. She has been adding five pounds each week to help get her body ready for the 10 to 15 pounds of clothes, water and food she will carry up the mountain.
Sprague did not make the summit when she went to Kilimanjaro two years ago because of oxygen deprivation. Because Florida is at sea level and offers no real elevation to speak of, Sprague has been swimming to build up her lung capacity and walking up and down the parking garage at Naples Community Hospital.
“I know what my limits are. I am not going to put myself in jeopardy,” she said. “But I really want to make it to the top this time.”
Sprague’s progress through the climb will be posted this weekend on the Friends Together Web site, www.FriendsTogether.org.
Following the climb, Sprague and the others going with her will go to clinics in Tanzania with a group called Envirocare.
“We are going to a place where one in four in the community are infected with HIV or AIDS. This is a place where they have never really seen a white person before. They have no knowledge of what they have,” she said.
“We are going to a place where they have condoms, but they don’t know how to use them because the directions are written in English.”
The group will take supplies like aspirin, vitamins, eye drops and ointment to the clinics for the patients.
“We have 10 suitcases full of supplies. We are taking things that they need, that will last them a long time. A tube of vaginal cream costs them $11.61 a year. When you make about $250 a year, you don’t have that money to spend,” said Robinson Pickett.
Robinson Pickett said she hopes the message of this trip inspires people.
“Find your passion in life and make a difference,” she said.