MOUNTAIN CULTURE
At least 20,000 people a year trek on Kilimanjaro.
Heavy load: a typical porter load.
porter. He worked hard. After hundreds of ascents of Kilimanjaro and Meru, here he was 25 years later, still full of enthusiasm and now leading his own trekking team. He expected graft from his men, but he looked after them too. One day, while we stopped to take a drink, I picked up his pack. I guessed it was somewhere close to 40kg, nearly double its weight the previous day. He explained that one of his porters had been struggling, so he’d taken some of that man’s load himself. He chuckled, saying he could remember only too well what it was like to be a porter. The porters carry heavy, awkward loads with hand-me-down rucksacks. The loads are supposed to be no more than 20kg, but 30kg is far from unknown. Large items are balanced on backpacks or else carried on the head. I tried it for a mile or so – the choice between an aching neck or an aching head is not pleasant. Few porters have boots and many wear old trainers. Fewer still have any waterproofs or sleeping bags and at night the porters huddle in the mess tent. The staple diet of porters is ugali (a corn meal mush) and only getting one meal a day is far from unknown. Porters are lucky if they are paid $10 per day on the mountain, which is the minimum that the Kilimanjaro Porters Assistance Project recommends (
www.kiliporters. org). Some disreputable companies reportedly don’t even pay their porters the wages they promise, leaving them to survive on obligatory “tips” from trekkers. Trekking companies, usually based in first-world countries, typically instruct that each trekker gives a “tip” of $200-300 to the head guide at the end of the trek for distribution amongst the support team, but there is little to ensure that this division is done fairly. Desperate, uneducated people have to accept this hard work for subsistence wages – or even pay bribes to get work at all. It is a hand-to-mouth existence, that doesn’t allow workers to save enough capital to climb out of the poverty trap. Diseases like malaria are endemic, periodically preventing porters from working at altitude and earning their family income. Over a dozen porters die every year on Kilimanjaro, and many more receive injuries. I asked Nelson one night if he’d considered
Nelson
“I never get bored of taking trekkers on these mountains that I love, and seeing them proud and happy at the end. But I want to be a part of change. The money spent by trekkers enjoying the adventure of a lifetime on Kilimanjaro and Meru could do so much more to benefit the people that live and work around these fantastic places.”
running his own trekking company. He looked wistful and said he’d love to, but the two main problems were signing up clients and saving enough capital to get the company started. Quality treks are typically priced around £2,000-
70 | CLIMB. WALK. JOIN.
Sara
“I’m a mother of two, and it breaks my heart to see so many problems in my community that could be dramatically improved
with relatively small targeted investments of funds. Education is key. If you get that bit right, everything else follows.”
2,800. Totting up rough figures for running a trip showed that Nelson’s team was making someone, somewhere, some serious money. How would he feel if I helped him to set up a company, funding the company start-up costs, kit and a website? I asked him to just think of the good that could be done in the local community if all that profit was invested locally. Tanzania may be a relatively poor country, but his people didn’t need handouts – they were clearly very capable, and they just needed opportunity. After I returned to the UK, the idea of a trekking company run by Tanzanians for the benefit of Tanzanian communities grew in my mind. If the dream was to have legs, we needed to recruit a very reliable person to liaise with potential clients, as they would deal with sums of money that were a King’s ransom in their world. The Tanzanian High Commission in London and two Tanzanian expatriates introduced me to Sara, an engineering graduate from Moshi, one of the launch pads for Kilimanjaro treks. With the necessary IT and communication skills, and a well-established track record of running local
NGOs, Sara was perfect. We were in business and Trekking MAD was born: a company organising guided treks on Kilimanjaro and Meru for the benefit of the local communities. We committed to using all of our profits to support the local community through established NGOs. The first one we identified for our support was the Excel Education Foundation Tanzania, developing primary and secondary education for disadvantaged children in the Kilimanjaro area. In time, we want to extend our assistance to community medicine projects.
“FEW PORTERS HAVE BOOTS AND MANY WEAR OLD TRAINERS. FEWER STILL HAVE ANY WATERPROOFS OR SLEEPING BAGS AND AT NIGHT THEY HUDDLE IN THE MESS TENT.”
PHOTO: ALEX MESSENGER.
PHOTO: JON MILLS.
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