Day 8.3, 9.1: Porter-palooza...

... and my thoughts on KPAP/IMEC as applied to Maasai Wanderings, which I went over in one of my previous posts.

Before I get to "Mawenzi in the Morning" below, a shout out to Ginger's blog, as I spent all-weekend with her, and 18 of our closest friends, on the ocean-side beach of Assateague Island camping among the horses.

Anyways, above is the peak of Mawenzi, in a rare moment in the early morning when it is without clouds. It's jagged peaks were great. But before we get into that, a word about our porters, which caused us so much consternation before the trip to get the ethics right.

Below is our crew, with Resha and William on the left. The names of the people on our crew are below. Briefly:

• (1) Ronald, our head guide, is in the middle wearing a green overshirt and a black knit hat;
• (2) Jonas, our second guide, is to the left of Ronald wearing the flourescent blue hat;
• (3) Goodluck, our cook, is squatting in between Ronald and Jonas and wearing the pink jacket;
• (4) Modi, our waiter, is the guy on the right giving the peace sign;
• (5) Goblisten, our tent captain, is the guy who is kind of tilted in the black jacket and standing to the right of Ronald - he really liked William after William taught him the grenade handshake;
• (6) Goblining, our dish washer, is the guy on the far right with the blue jacket and beige hat; and
• (7) Samuel is the guy wearing the blue-green shirt and green hat in the middle - he is "just a porter," but he was also the guy I practiced my rudimentary Swahili with, particularly counting. The number 30 gave me the most problems.

Now, of course the porters have a difficult job since they have to carry all of our crap, their own crap, and generally camping crap all the way up and down the mountain. And like in the movies, most of them liked carrying it on their heads for balance, as seen below. Despite these big loads on their head, however, they left us in the dust when it came to climbing.

You can see some of the porters in front of us in the below photo, but rest-assured, verticalness was no obstacle for most of these guys.

Below they are in a string dotting the landscape around us.

And below is a brief video of them as they passed us with stuff walking through the clouds. Impressive, aye?

Of course, however, these guys get tired, so we sometimes did pass them on the way up, particularly on the longer days. But never did we pass one of our crew... it was always another crew.

So what did they carry? Well, first there was our stuff. Every morning, we packed our own stuff and brought it out for re-packing by the porters into waterproof satchels. Below is the combination of the packs we were going to carry on our backs, and the stuff they would carry.

Here they are packing into the waterproof bags for easier grip and handling.

There was also general camp stuff they had to carry. Like I said in a previous post, the heaviest things to carry were the propane tanks, which were carried in wicker baskets. There was sort of a draft system on who would carry what, and, of course, the younger guys usually ended up getting stuck with these. The other cooking equipment usually ended up in another basket, and each of the tents ended up in their own bags.

The most interesting item carried, however, are the yellow jugs shown above and below. Those were for our water. Now, a little bit about the water. On most days, we would camp near a source of water, usually a stream, so getting water was pretty easy. We never got sick from the water, as the guys were very careful to boil everything, and then send it through a filter. While it did retain a little bit of Kilimanjaro's red dirt color, it tasted fine, and like I said, we didn't get sick.

Some of the sources of water were stagnant...

... others flowed mightily in wetter seasons...

... and some of it you had to dig for.

Actually, however, both Ronald and Jonas said that at Mawenzi, while you could dig into the pond to get water several feet down, it wasn't enough, and so at Mawenzi, some guys actually had to go down to the last stream we passed to get water with the yellow jugs shown above. Now THATS a tough journey, as sometimes it was a good mile or two back down the trail. We wished everyone godspeed who did that.

This wasn't a problem once we reached the huts, as they had running tap water there. Even then, however, you couldn't directly drink the water, which came into consideration on the last day, as I will detail in a future post.

So anyways, as far as KPAP/IMEC went, here were my evaluations of their "myths debunked" concerning porters of Maasai Wanderings:

• MYTH #1:THERE IS A MININUM WAGE THAT COMPANIES ARE REQUIRED TO PAY ALL PORTERS CLIMBING KILI.
• The Kilimanjaro National Park and the Tanzania Association of Tour Operators have established 6,000Tsh per day on the Marangu Route and 8,000Tsh per day on all of the other camping routes as the wage for porters. A typical wage for a porter is 4,500Tsh per day. Because some money is better than no money, porters will accept the work, but this pay does not add up to a living wage.

I actually snuck a peak at the pay sheet for everyone at the end of the last day, and Maasai Wanderings paid their porters a minimum of 10,000Tsh per day. So that's good.

• MYTH #2: PORTERS EAT THE SAME QUALITY MEALS AS CLIMBERS DO.
• Porters often eat just one meal at the end of each day, primarily a local corn-porridge called "Ugali".

It is true that the porters did not eat with us, and that they did seem to eat a good bit of Ugali. As detailed in one of my previous posts, however, since most of them preferred not to eat what we ate (and not literally our leftovers off our plates, which would be gross, but just extra food we were not served), I think they ate okay. I don't know exactly how many meals they ate, but I got the impression most of them didn't eat lunch, as on our trek when we had box lunches, our guides always ran off somewhere else, and left us to eat in peace. This was not true during the safari. David always ate with us there.

• MYTH #3: PORTERS HAVE A CONTRACT WITH THE COMPANY THEY ARE WORKING FOR.
• Seldom is there an official contract for working as a porter. A company employs the guide who then is responsible for hiring the porters. Porters can even be taken into service the morning of the climb itself. And many companies hold no responsibility for the porter if he should become ill while climbing.

I am sure this is true for the porters. Ronald and Goodluck were clearly the managers on the trek and put together their own teams, so they may have had contracts. Ronald did get a bit ill on the trek (head coldish), so Jonas took over a lot of the lead guide duties, particularly closer to the summit. I insisted he get himself looked at, but I am assuming the prospect of losing a pay day deterred him. So, I did the next best thing giving him pretty much every drug that I had, and he did end up getting quite a bit a rest. By the last day, it seemed to work pretty well.

On one of the days, Ronald came up and asked us if we had any extra Diamox, as a porter in another group was suffering from altitude. Luckily, I did have one extra, which I gladly parted with. Don't know what happened to the guy otherwise.

• MYTH #4: IT IS EASY FOR A PORTER TO CLIMB MOUNT KILIMANJARO.
• Climbing Kili is just as hard work for porters as it is for climbers and they are carrying at least 25 kg (55 lbs) of luggage including their own gear. The Kilimanjaro National Park recommends that a porter carry 20 kg for the company but the average reported weight is 23 kg and can be as high as 30 kg.

This really depended on the individual. For the most part, the guys carried everything to their destinations with little problems in what I considered record-time. Some of them even ran. The most amazing thing I saw in this regard was when I was at the crater rim, and I watched these guys with packs jump over the top of the rim into view, and then skip from rock to rock on the way down. Amazing.

And as I also detailed in previous posts, it seems the people around Kilimanjaro do have some economic choice in becoming a porter, as both David and one of the drivers for Maasai Wanderings did stints as porters, but hated it, and so moved on to other things. Of course, their English is also more developed, so I guess they had better options.

I will say, however, that our bags were probably not weight compliant. Or at least William's was not. He may have well have stuffed a dead body in there. Still, everyone did carry their own equipment backpacks, and looked to be reasonably clothed in warm and wicking wear, as shown in the group photo above.

• MYTH #5: YOUR TIP WILL BE DISTRIBUTED FAIRLY TO THE PORTERS IF YOU GIVE IT TO THE GUIDE.
• KPAP receives many reports that when tips are not handed directly to the porters they may receive only a portion of the amount that was intended for them.

The reviews for Maasai Wanderings were true to its word, in that we were never, ever asked for tips by the porters. The only time we were asked for tips was by Ronald on our last night, when he gave us a list of names for the entire crew (shown above), and insisted that we pay each porter's tip directly to him. I will cover that in a future post as well.

• MYTH #6: PORTERS ARE PROVIDED WITH PROPER SLEEPING ACCOMMODATIONS.
• Porters are often overcrowded in the huts and tents. On the camping routes they may have to sleep in the mess tent which means they must wait, sometimes in inclement weather, until all climbers are finished with their meals.

As I detailed in last week's post, the porters seemed to have adequate, albeit lightly cramped accommodations. And while many did sleep in the mess tent, because the sleeping quarters were in the ends of the mess tent, they didn't have to wait for us to finish outside in the elements. And they definitely were not as, especially on the more difficult days, we could see and hear them sleeping as we ate, even during lunch. So I guess it is hard being a porter.

The above panorama is my favorite shot on the entire trek, where you get a sense of perspective of just how small we are in the face of the mountain.

These sequence of shots is in the span of literally minutes. Yes, the clouds moved that fast.

And as on our trek the previous day, the clouds would run into barriers and be redirected up, creating very different climate/moisture zones.

The below is a panorama in the morning looking north toward Kenya, and the path we trekked up the mountain.

A panorama of the clearest view of Mawenzi we got.

Our tents we dew as the sun rises over Mawenzi.

Had to break out Obama in the African sun.

And Barack-O in the shadow of a clear Mawenzi.

Me psyched to bring the Barry's essence back to his "motherland."

And with that, we take off from Mawenzi, crossing the Saddle, which looks like what I imagine the surface of Mars would look like, on the way to Kibo Hut: our last way station before our summit attempt.

Until next week...

Day 8.2: Na Mawenzi Na Mawenzi...

... Na Mawenzi, mlima mrefu sana.

That's how the Kilimanjaro song goes, as we entered the Mawenzi peak basin. In hindsight, this was my favorite day of the trek. But first, the weekly roundup.

Resha has made clear that she hates clouds. William loves clouds. But we'll get to that later.

My cousin/roommate Eugene just got back from playing ship doctor on an Arctic cruise. Technically, it was the Svalbards, but whose counting? Pictures here.

And Sergey has finished the super-overland portion of his now almost year long South and East Africa journey, ending in Namibia. Pictures here.

Which brings us back to this part of Africa.

Today's information session will focus on our accommodations, and specifically, our tents.

The above picture shows our awesome campsite below Mawenzi peak. As you can see, there is quite a variation in the styles of tents used by various outfitters.

We'll being with our tents, which are shown above at Kikelewa Camp. William and I shared the blue "boy" tent, while Resha was alone in the black "girl" tent. They were very spacious, measuring about 6 feet by 6 feet in the inner chamber, with a similar size "porch" area being located between us and the great outdoors.

Here they are at Horombo Hut. They measured just under 5 feet in height, so you couldn't quite stand in them, but there was more than enough space in ours for myself, William, and our stuff. And let me tell you, William had a lot of stuff. But we will cover equipment in another post.

The inside of the tents was spacious enough, in fact, that after dinner on most evenings, the three of us would hang out (usually) in Resha's tent (since she had less clutter), and chat or play Uno. And we played a LOT of Uno. We played so much Uno, that we made up a bunch of complicated rules when the game got too mundane. I wish I could remember them.

This is me in my mummy sleeping bag, snug as a bug in a rug. The tents were great in that we never got even the slightest bit wet, albeit we were there in the dry season. The temperatures were great too, as I had no problem sleeping in my underwear, although William and Resha wore a bit more clothing at higher elevations.

When I felt lonely, however, Barack kept me company. Ahhhhhhh.

The tents above are those used by our crew of 14. As mentioned in my previous post, the one on the left also served as our meal tent when it was dark or during inclement weather. But that was all done in the center section, which was roughly where you see the screen in the above picture.

The sides of that tent, however, had the sleeping quarters for the porters. As shown above, each end was divided lengthwise in half by a wall, and each half had it's own door, creating four sleeping compartments in the big tent. Each sleeping compartment held two people, meaning that eight people slept in that tent. The other six slept in the tent to the right of the picture above, i.e., two rows of three across. Like I said, snug as a bug in a rug.

The above domes were the coolest tents we saw. They were massive, about twenty feet in diameter and ten feet high in the middle. We went into one at Kibo Hut inhabited by some French climbers we met, and it was used as the communal area, with chairs and a table in the middle. I was told that after all the activities were done for the day, the porters slept in that tent.

A more typical dome tent. Still pretty big though, as you could clearly stand in the middle.

These were mess tents used by our British friends.

The little tents you see here have more of a story. So, because our journey had been modified by Ronald (we stopped at Kikelewa, instead of going straight from second cave camp to Mawenzi), some people who had made the more conventional journey caught up with us at Mawenzi. It was a group of about 40 Desis from London, and let me tell you, they epitomized exactly the type of people who should NOT have been on the mountain.

It started off auspicious enough, as we first saw the group of about 100 porters rolling in with equipment and setting tents as far as the eye could see. Then, they slowly started to trickle in. The first guy we met was clearly the leader of the group, and he was exhausted. After all, we had done a 4 mile climb that day, but his group had done a 6 miler. And like most parties, they had started the climb immediately after landing, instead of doing a safari first like we did. I cannot stress enough that we chose... wisely in our itinerary.

Well, we chatted for awhile, and he seemed nice enough, and so when the rest of the group started coming in, he excused himself to organize everything. Now, you can imagine the importance of getting as much sleep as possible on this climb. And since everything begins pretty much when the sun comes up, in order to get a full night, you had to sleep right when the sun went down.

Did these people do this? Heck no. In our decidedly worst night of sleep on our journey, much worse than even the zebra stampede and hyena convention at Ngorongoro, these idiots were freaking up all night in the big golf ball looking orange tent above, laughing and joking, playing music. It's like they were at summer camp. From then on, we hated them, and wished a pox on all of their houses.

Luckily, they were spending their acclimatization day at Mawenzi, so after we left camp the next day, we never saw them again. Anecdotally, however, we heard they were a complete disaster on summit day. Apparently, they had greatly underestimated the mountain (and not to be overly sexist, but a large majority of the women in the group were clearly NOT in any sort of physical condition to climb the mountain). Justice, I suppose. Resha and her friend have a name for these type of people, but that's an inside joke that I'll keep close to the vest for now.

This is our tent layout at Kibo Hut. It was definitely the loudest of all the sites, what with groups from both the Marangu and Rongai routes merging at this junction. Still, at least this site was a low level drone which served as a white noise that didn't significantly interfere with our sleep. I will never forget the annoying London Desis of Mawenzi, for as long as I will live.

Which brings us to Mawenzi! So, I left us last week walking into the crater through the clouds. And our ascent to the crater rim and hike in was spectacular.

As we rounded the crest, we looked down to the clouds breaking slightly (or more likely, the crater rim keeping the clouds out) to see the crater bottom. To the right is a water pool bottom, currently dried up and green from the long dry season. If you dig down about two feet, however, as some people did, you could find fresh water.

Apparently the pool bottom itself is very fragile, so Jonas yelled at me was we took this picture. I had been careful not to step on anything green, but apparently that was a no-no also. So, maybe I will have been like Homer Simpson and squished some primitive life that formed the basis of the future. Or maybe I just moved around some mud.

The centerpiece of the Mawenzi camp in the Mawenzi crater is the Mawenzi Tarn Hut. It is the building on the right made, in this incarnation, out of corrugated aluminum, and currently doubles as a ranger station. We went inside to see a ranger desk, various equipment, and lofted sleeping quarters.

Occasionally, animals do make it this far up, as seen by these water buffalo remnants.

Couldn't resist doing a possessed Lucifer impression. Again.

This was the best shot I got of Mawenzi peak itself, and it was spectacular. Going up literally a thousand feet from Mawenzi camp, it is unscalable as the rocks are way too jagged and loose to even be doing roped climbing. The main peak is to the right, and tops out at 5,149 meters or 16,893 feet, well above anything in the lower 48.

After eating lunch, we went on an acclimatization hike part of the way up Mawenzi itself. So, we ascended up the crater rim again, and this is the view of camp in the distance.

The climb here was pretty steep with a lot of switchbacks. As you can see, it is now very desolate and rocky.

Like in my previous post, we encountered a lot of fire damage, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it is a part of the circle of life for vegetation.

We eventually reach the high point on the crater rim, and just look out to Kibo Hut, and the journey we will make the next day.

That is Kibo peak in the distance, shrouded by clouds, although you can just make out the south side of the peak in the middle. Kibo Hut is just about where the peak meets the Saddle and clouds in the photo.

Awesome volcanic rocks.

The cool thing about this part of the mountain, actually, was that the walls of the crater were at such a high elevation, that there were actually different weather patterns mere meters apart. Here, you can see that the crater rim stops the wet clouds to the left, and that it is almost bone dry to the right. We just sat there and watched the cloud hit the rim and go vertical. Amazing.

This is the photo that got William in the Virginia Tech alumni magazine. Hope that doesn't end up being his 15 minutes of fame.

Long distance pose.

I'm falling down the edge of the cliff pose.

I'm tackling William off the mountain pose. Yes, I admit it is slightly gay. We're at 15,000 feet. My brain isn't firing on all cylinders.

In fact, I am so cuckoo that I threaten to launch myself several hundred feet down. To give you and idea of our height, that faint line on the left side is the path we will take the next day.

Having had enough fun for one day...

... we head on back down to camp.

As we reenter the crater, Mawenzi again spectacularly appears.

Apparently, we took a different route on the descent, however, as tons of rock messages have been left in the volcanic dirt. Which makes sense, since the lack of wind in the crater means these rocks aren't moving, pretty much for eternity.

More messages in a... rock.

And as we come around the bend, we come back to where we started.

Until next week...