Ah, but then there’s that mountain over there.
Every foreign tourist who climbs Kilimanjaro creates temporary employment for 3-5 Tanzanians, depending on the route selected and the size of the climbing party. This includes at least one accredited guide, a cook, and porter or two. Multiply that by the thirty to forty thousand trekkers who swarm the mountain every year and it becomes clear that K-man accounts for a significant piece of the national economy.
In the name of protecting the mountain – and also, presumably, to create a reliable pool of non-farming jobs – the government of Tanzania has made it illegal to climb K-man without the assistance of a certified professional guide service. The Sierra Club has hired one for us called Zara.
Like so much else in the globalized economy, the situation is rife with paradox. On the one hand, it’s undeniable that First World businessmen (and tourists) regularly take advantage of Third World laborers by paying them far less than American or European workers would earn for doing the same tasks, and also by creating (or at least condoning) working conditions that no First World laborer – no unionized laborer, at any rate – would abide. On the other hand, those very same low-paying and often dangerous jobs, created by foreigners, are still very attractive compared to most of the jobs offered by the local economy.
Kilimanjaro porters are a perfect example of this. Their job is brutally difficult, fraught with danger, and pays next to nothing. Yet Tanzanians compete desperately at the start of each climbing season for the chance to take up the white man’s burden. Truly, fistfights sometimes break out among the applicants.
Despite an oddly persistent myth, K-man porters are not any more acclimatized to extreme altitude than the tourists who hire them. Unlike Sherpas of the Himalaya, Tanzanians don’t live at nose-bleed elevations. The false belief that they do probably lingers because of the rationalizing, self-serving comfort it brings to foreigners who must watch their ill-clothed, ill-fed temp workers accomplish the same death-defying feats they themselves are attempting, and all for a day’s wages instead of for bragging rights back home. It shouldn't be surprising, I suppose, that not everyone is emotionally secure enough to admit that Gunga Din may very well be the better man. (Second Kipling reference, for those keeping track.)
By hiring porters, Monica and I are taking advantage of their poverty while at the same time paying them more in a week than they might otherwise earn in a month. That makes us exploitative capitalist pigs. And it also makes us job creators. I would not have believed just a few short months ago that I would soon find myself in exactly the same position as your average multinational corporation.
Thankfully, there’s a non-profit organization in Tanzania that advocates for porters. The Kilimanjaro Porters Assistance Project lobbies for higher minimum wages and also works to prevent porter exploitation by skeevy outfitters and cheapskate trekkers. It also offers porters free classes in English, money management, and disease prevention. Perhaps most important, though, KPAP publishes a list of professional guide services that meet the organization's standards regarding the treatment of porters. This list allows individual trekkers and groups like the Sierra Club to choose outfitters with a good reputation for porter training and care.
KPAP also collects and maintains a supply of mountaineering gear – such as warm clothing, good sleeping bags, and hiking boots – which it lends out to poorly-equipped porters. This is welcome news. Mo’ and I now know exactly what we’re going to do with all that one-time-only equipment we had to purchase for this trip. Before leaving Africa we plan to unload a good portion of our burden onto KPAP.
Some of it will even be gear.