West lost both his legs at the age of four due to a genetic disorder. For years, he had to walk using his hands. In June this year, relying on his strong hands, he spent eight days climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, which stands at 5,895 meters above sea level, and redefined what is possible.
Spencer West has lived in Toronto, Canada for the past four years as a motivational speaker and ambassador for a charity called Free The Children. Recently, he was interviewed by Xinhua News Agency in Toronto, where he shared his story.
West said that when he was a child, doctors told him he would never be able to walk on his own and that he likely wouldn’t amount to much in society. For years, he worked an unremarkable job. “I was very disappointed with the direction my life was taking. I wasn’t satisfied with my job. I wasn’t interested in living an ordinary life.”
So, West went to Kenya in Africa, where he helped build a school. During that time, one small incident changed his life forever. Once, while telling a group of children his story, a little girl raised her hand and said she didn’t know something like losing both legs could happen to a white person. “That comment actually completely changed the course of my life. It made me realize that I could use my story not only to inspire people to overcome challenges but also to engage with causes they care about,” West said.
West decided to challenge himself to do something big: climb a mountain with his hands to raise 750,000 Canadian dollars (approximately 4.7 million RMB) for drought-stricken areas in East Africa. West’s hand-climbing journey was filled with obstacles that even able-bodied people would find hard to endure.
He said that by the end of each day, his shoulders and lower back were extremely sore. At night, the cold was bone-chilling. He and his partners slept in a tent, and even wearing five T-shirts, a wool sweater, a double-layered winter hat, and tucked inside a sleeping bag, he often couldn’t sleep because of the cold.
West originally planned to spend half the time using his hands and the other half in a wheelchair. But the narrow mountain paths made using the wheelchair impossible. In the end, he had to “walk” longer than expected on his own, with the rest of the journey carried by his companions.
“I put my entire life in the hands of others, trusting them to get me safely to where I needed to go,” West said. “Emotionally, it taught me how important it is to accept help from others, and equally important to give help to others.”
West cheered on his companions who carried him up the mountain. They all suffered from altitude sickness, vomiting as they walked and walking as they vomited. West said, “For the first time in my life, I thought, I wish I had legs. If I had legs, I could be the one carrying others to the top.”
On the eighth day, their hardship paid off and they finally reached the summit. The journey tested not only their physical limits but also brought huge emotional highs and lows. West said that when they reached the top of Mount Kilimanjaro on June 19, they felt all the effort was worth it.
“I was thinking about all the kids who are bullied and feel like they don’t belong, about everyone who’s ever been told they can’t do something — whether because of a disability or something else — and about everyone who ever told me I’d never be able to walk or be useful to society,” he said.