No mountain too high for Tumi Mphahlele

About this time last year, Tumi Mphahlele, a 47-year-old adventurer and entrepreneur, was planning on reaching her highest peak yet, Mount Everest.

Mountains are her spiritual home and inspiration when navigating life on level ground. Mphahlele has conquered three of the world’s seven highest peaks and most of the nine in South Africa.

Her latest conquest will be climbing the renewable energy sector as a trail-blazing entrepreneur.

Over the past few years, she has also battled a rare disease which has affected her career as an endurance athlete but with the true grit of a mountaineer, Mphahlele has no plans of allowing life to slow her down.

Born and raised in Mabopane, Pretoria, Mphahlele has lived an extraordinary life. She realised as a teenager her home life was worlds apart from that of her peers, whose parents occupied traditional family roles and assigned children according to gender.

ALSO READ: First all-women team tackles SA’s 9 Peaks Challenge

Her mother, a nurse, could sometimes be found tending the garden, while her father, an academic, was fond of cooking.

“I realised later on in life, that my sisters and I see things a little bit different compared to those around us. We didn’t have somebody that would be doing things men normally do,” she said.

Mphahlele learned to drive as a teenager, which was highly unusual, not just for a girl, but for a black girl in the apartheid era.

She attended Tsogo Convent, a private Roman Catholic school, in the late 1970s and early ’80s, when it was a famously disciplined and excellence-driven institute.

But as stringent and regimented as school life was, her parents allowed each of their three daughters the freedom to be their own person. Easy to do, because they all seemed primed for brilliance.

For Mphahlele, this manifested in a scientific curiosity and affinity for high-octane adventure. The triathlete says she could write many books of her adventures.

In 2019, she and team-mate Alda Waddell took part in the Nine-Peaks Challenge, which is a gruelling adventure in which mountaineers have to summit the highest peaks of all nine SA provinces.

“We finished all except two … and because of that, it doesn’t count. The challenge is quite hard. I did it because I was training for Mount Everest 2020.”

Far enough back that she can’t remember the year, Mphahlele climbed Mount Mulanje in Malawi.

“It is a little below the highest peak on the Drakensberg, but it is very hard and I wasn’t prepared. I reached the summit [Sapitwa Peak, 3 002m] under really difficult conditions and came back to find so many others had turned back,” she said.

Mphahlele was already an endurance athlete, having done the Comrades Marathon twice. She has since completed the marathon eight times.

About two years ago, she had an operation, which added to her story of endurance, though sadly dashed hopes of continuing certain athletic events.

Mphahlele had been diagnosed years earlier with a rare sports-associated disease affecting the arteries called external iliac artery endofibrosis.

She plans to write about her experiences and raise awareness about it because “I don’t want anyone to go through what I have been through with this disease.

“I’ve already done three of the seven summits [one on each continent] and in Africa that is Mount Kilimanjaro, which I have climbed.

“In Europe, the highest is Mount Erebus in Russia – which I have also done – and in South America, it’s Aconcagua in Argentina – which I have climbed.”

Mphahlele could not climb Everest in April last year because the Covid-19 pandemic halted her team’s travel plans to Nepal. Those who wish to borrow a little wisdom from her: take the human spirit to its ultimate form by challenging it.

“I tend to appreciate the human spirit because when you climb mountains, you get to a point where you are vulnerable. You do so much preparation and anticipation but you get to a point where you are vulnerable and you accept that its no longer about you and your own strength,” she says.

“There are hard decisions you must make in order to preserve your life. If it happens that the weather goes badly and you have to come back. To be put in that situation makes you appreciate life so much more.”

She’s always been fascinated by the things people complain about in everyday life.

“I wonder if that person knows what its like to sit on your knees and hold on to your tent because the wind is so strong. Some people get addicted to that feeling. It’s a thing that says keep trying and pushing the envelope,” she says.

“Once you get back, it gives you a whole other perspective on your everyday life. You have a different perspective of what difficulty is.”

She says the beauty experienced in those moments, looking at nature at its purest, is incomparable and impossible to capture in photographs.

Her corporate career has seen her grace the hallways of the South African Bureau of Standards and heading up corporate strategy at the Development Bank of South Africa, until two years ago.

She has worked in the renewable energy space for the better part of two decades but the entrepreneur has found her niche in her co-owned company IG3N, which makes solar batteries marketed as a solution to load shedding.

simnikiweh@citizen.co.za