Berg

Hear Wally's Call from Africa

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We walked into the Karanga River down there to a familiar sight. We do, in fact, have tables and chairs for the trekking portion of this trip around the mountain—there's no use trying to deny that. I know you've seen the photographs in the brochures and probably up on the Mountain Zone site as well. We do pretty well down there, but the Karanga River's a big juncture for us, so to speak. At that point, we do cut some of the more unnecessary stuff, bring the Chagga guides, and the staff, and the porters who are strongest and most willing to carry high, and we bring up just what we need to get one short night's rest, and carry on to the summit tomorrow.

	Porters

So, I mentioned water earlier—that is really, and it will be through all these climbs this year, that's the big factor when you go above 12 or 13,000ft on this mountain. It's hard for a lot of people who haven't been here to understand how arid, and I mean that in an aesthetic sense, it's really beautiful up here, but above 12,000ft on Kilimanjaro it's the moorland zone, as it's referred to sometimes, and it goes up into the alpine desert. Really unique plant life and vegetation and the animals that live up here are really in a unique situation in all of Africa. Beautiful up here, but as I mentioned earlier, we carried 60 liters, "we", the porters, the Chagga porters, carried 60 liters of water up here to support our party's summit attempt.

I ought to mention before I go any further, we will be doing dispatches all year. I want to describe through the season a lot about the many diverse people who live in Tanzania: a lot of the different cultures, languages, and people who live here. The key group that you'll be hearing about, though, are these Chagga men. Tobias, and I mentioned, James and John and Michael and other Chagga guys will be our guides this year from time to time. And the porters who work here are Chagga people as well.

Here before we begin our first summit attempt of the season, I did want to talk a bit about these Chagga guys that are such an integral part of our efforts here. The last thing I have to say about them is you'll have, no doubt, a lot of admiration for their strength and their dedication to the climbers who come up here. But one thing you should know—and Tobias has admitted this to me and other of these guys in candid conversations—the reason these men, these Chagga men, are up here and able to do this and earn some of the only currency, or cash, that they get is the women are home doing the hard work. "Ma-Ma" as the will always call them, their wives are home doing the farming. All these guys have very small farms in the area, mostly over in the Marangu area. It's a hard life; their earning a little bit of cash by portering up here. But it wouldn't be possible if...and you drive through these areas sometimes and you'll see these women out in the fields doing back–breaking work: carrying goods to market, carrying goods back home from the market. It's a hard life: subsistence farming. We're up here in the mountain; we've got our own challenges, but back home Ma-Ma's doing the hard work and Tobias and the boys are up here enjoying an adventure with us.

So, that's a little picture of Chagga life and I will tell you a more about our life, as we—that is the climbers life—as we begin our climb in not many hours from now just past midnight.

—Alpine Ascents Guide Wally Berg, MountainZone.com Correspondent