Kilimanjaro one of teen's many heights

[YankeyMCC]

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CONCORD - Ask Nico Calabria how he handles the challenges that are inevitable when you're a 13-year-old boy with one leg, and you get an answer of Zen-like simplicity.
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"I challenge the challenge," he says.

Translation: He refuses to acknowledge that it is a challenge at all.

Even by those lights, climbing on his crutches to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro - about 19,340 feet high - would seem an unlikely ambition. Yet, that's what he did last month, becoming the youngest disabled person to reach the mountain's summit, according to a spokesman for Kilimanjaro National Park in Tanzania. In the process, Nico raised more than $53,000 for a nonprofit organization that provides free wheelchairs to disabled people in developing countries.
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He fell once during the climb and struggled at high altitude, forced to stop for breath every 10 steps because of the reduced level of oxygen. "It's pitch-black, it's cold, you can't see 5 feet in front of you," he recalls. Yet, Nico consistently rejected offers to be carried by the Tanzanian equipment porters who accompanied him and his father, Carl. The only time he felt like turning back, he says, was when his father developed acute mountain sickness and had to halt his ascent a few hundred feet from the summit.

"I didn't want to continue," Nico admits. "Summiting without my dad felt like abandoning him. But he said: 'Summit for both of us.' "
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His Kili climb was part of a rite of passage that the Calabria family calls the "coming of age adventure," undertaken when one of their children turns 13. (Nico's older brother Kyle, now 15, chose to explore caves in Belize two years ago, and his 8-year-old sister, Maya, says she plans to ride horses in Ireland when she turns 13.)

As Nico pondered his own choice this year, he saw a "NOVA" program on PBS about Mount Kilimanjaro titled "Volcano Above the Clouds," and the notion of climbing the peak took hold. He thought back to "Emmanuel's Gift," a 2004 documentary about a one-legged man in Ghana who championed the rights and abilities of the disabled in a country where they have long been treated as outcasts. "He rode his bike across Ghana with one leg," says Nico. "He raised money and awareness, like I'm doing now."
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His cultural explorations went beyond food. After he and his father descended the mountain, they traveled to the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar. While passing through an impoverished village, they saw some boys playing soccer. "I'd like to go and play soccer with those guys," Nico told his father, as if he were home in Concord. He walked over to the field, where two dozen youths immediately clustered around him, gazing curiously at the American boy with one leg.

"I said 'futbol,' " recalls Nico. "They passed me the ball, and we started to play." News spread quickly in the village, and soon adults were streaming to the soccer field to watch the game.
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Much more at: http://www.boston.com/yourlife/articles/2007/10/08/kilimanjaro_one_of_teens_many_heights/