Rye Woman Climbs Kilimanjaro for Clean Water Charity

Esther Babb conquered her fears when she embarked on a seven day hiking and biking adventure in Africa last month. She not only successfully raised nearly $40,000 for World Serve International, a clean water charity, but she became the second woman to ever mountain bike down Mount Kilimanjaro’s 19,341 feet after hiking to the top.

“I was scared of biking, heights and fund-raising,” Babb said, admitting she had only been on a mountain bike twice in her life before this excursion. “Anything you are scared of, just do it,” she said after returning from her trip inMarch.

Babb, 34, is a senior business analyst at Citadel LLC, who splits her time between Rye, where she cares for a younger brother, and Manhattan. She heard about the opportunity through a group called Trek Travel and contacted World Serve International's president about a year ago. She felt so strongly about the group's mission that she signed up and set a $44,000 fundraising goal for herself. To date, she has raised $38,395.

World Serve specializes in drilling deep, community-capacity water wells that are up to 200 meters deep. Through their collective efforts, and with the help of fundraisers like Babb, they help provide clean water to thousands of members of the Maasai tribe that lives on Africa’s central east coast in Kenya and Tanzania. Without the pumps, many Maasai people have to travel up to eight hours each day to find fresh water, which is often from unsanitary sources.

“I believe that water is the most precious commodity available, and everybody should have it. There can’t be any jobs or schools or food without clean water. I also like the tangibility of a fundraiser with such a stimulating physical component,” Babb said.

A total of eighteen people from different walks of life – ages of the participants ranged from 16 to the mid-60s – embarked on the adventure, called KiliClimb, together in early March. Six were donors like Babb, people with a $44K fundraiser target and participated in the hike and bike, four were donors who had a $25K target and only hiked and the other eight were World Serve staff or others associated with the non-profit like experts and doctors.

“The first day we arrived, we went to the village and had hundreds and hundreds of Massai village people come thank us and greet us,” Babb said. “They walked six to eight hours to come thank us.”

The group hired 117 porters to help them on their seven-day hiking journey, which supplied many people from different villages with jobs.

“It was a thoughtful way of managing,” Babb said of the charity organizers who purposely hired people from different villages so that the money would be spread out amongst the population.  

The large group started up Mt. Kilimanjaro’s 20,000 feet, which presented ever-changing weather conditions and snow-covered and rocky sections together, on Feb. 26. They reached the summitt on March 3 at 6:30 a.m., on their sixth day of the trek. They biked down from the summit on March 3 and completed the journey on the fourth. No one was hurt and Babb proudly became the second woman to ever bike down the challenging path.

"There were certain sections where we had to carry our bikes because the terrain was always changing- there were rocks, ice, sand, gravel, jungle conditions and more. We could have biked down in one day, but decided to conserve energy in order to stay sharp on the difficult terrain. There was no room for error on the mountain," Babb said. 

In order to prepare for the excursion, Babb trained at the Rye YMCA but said she was careful not to over do it. She did a lot of stair master, some weight training and swimming and focused on non-aerobic workouts. Physical strength was more important for the trek than aerobic endurance, she said. She worked out for about 30-60 minutes two to three times a week for about three months.

The nearly $40,000 that Babb has raised will go straight to installing a solar powered water pump and 10,000 liter container for water in a Maasai village. KiliClimb missionaries teach the village people how to use the pump and deal with any problems that might arise. They also make sure to install pumps at strategic locations so two neighboring villages don’t each have their own pump while others hours away have none.  

Babb has been involved in charity work before, but never of this scale, she said.

“I didn’t even think I could reach that fundraising target but it all trickled in at very end and could not be more thankful. I was overwhelmed with gratitude.”

The entire project will culminate with a private photography exhibit in coming weeks. To donate to Babb's efforts, or read more about her journey, click here.