Oh, the Places We'll Go

This is the first of many WTFs from India.  Most days, at most moments, I can look around and find something in my line of vision that makes me say, WTF?!

Here, we start with the squatting position, a pose we westerners are none-too-comfortable with (try it!  Squat all the way down, but keep those feet flat on the ground.  Not as easy as it looks!).  But these Indians, they can do anything squatting.  Most popular squatting activities – using the toilet, having a chat with some friends, drinking chai, eating dinner, and…raking?  It’s not that they can’t make their rake/brush a stand-up length – Indians just prefer to squat.

Squat and rake

Slideshow #3 of our Best of albums.  This time, jumping back to the amazing few weeks we spent in Bolivia.  Check out some of the highlights:

On our Northern Circuit Safari, our guide opened our eyes to the harsh realities of the education system in Tanzania.   Check out the blog post I wrote for World Nomads’ on the subject.  Original can be found here, or copied below:

Investing in Education in Tanzania

Education is something we take for granted.  Sure, some of our public schools aren’t the best, but it is not only a given, it is a law that all children must go to school.  And, everyone has the opportunity to finish high school at little to no cost.  Many places around the world do not have this luxury.

Learning about the different education systems in our destination countries has been fascinating.  Every place does it slightly differently, from when kids start, to when they finish, to what is required of them to move on to a higher level of schooling.  While every country offers some form of free education, most of the time the free ride ends after about grade 7 or so.  To continue on to high school (or the equivalent), a student must score well on an entrance exam, and the family must pay for the schooling.  Though this price is quite small (by our standards), it is often cost-prohibitive for the family.  More of an issue, however, is that the child is often needed on the farm or the family business.  The idea of using very precious savings to send a kid to school when they could be producing for the family is one that most parents can’t justify.  Particularly for girls.

Working hard at a young age in Tanzania

Amani, our safari guide in Tanzania, is one of the lucky ones.  He comes from a poor farming village on the slopes of Kilimanjaro where most children finish their education after “Standard 7”.  Amani had to plead with his parents to send him to secondary school, but as subsistence farmers, they simply did not have the money.  Amani was very fortunate that others in the community saw his promise, and with the financial help of neighbors and extended family, he was able to convince his parents to invest what little they had in his education and his future.  Upon finishing secondary school, Amani scored high on the national exam, and wanted to go to university to become a safari guide.  His parents could certainly not afford this, but Amani’s uncle, a guide himself, put up the money to cover the university costs.

The community’s investment in Amani’s education paid off many times over.  As a successful safari guide, Amani makes a wage that is many times that of most of his peers.  He has fully repaid those who lent him money.  But more importantly, he has invested back in the community that supported him.  After building his parents a brick home (a luxury they could have never dreamed of), he has installed a number of wells to bring safe and clean drinking water to the whole village.  Others in the village have relied on him to make similar loans as those he received.

Tanzanian children

Amani’s story isn’t an anomaly, but it’s not the norm either.  Education is the key to a more prosperous future in every underdeveloped country, but with such limited resources, most families simply cannot unlock their kid’s potential.  Fortunately, more and more families are realizing that investing in their kid’s education is a way to secure their own future.  This is a paradigm shift from the traditional approach, where it is accepted that kids would be working in the field as soon as they are able.  But once the shift has occurred, the impacts will be felt for generations to come.  You can be assured of one thing – Amani will be sending his daughter to school, all the way through university.

Want to contribute to education on your next trip to Tanzania?  Consider volunteer programs like African Impact and Cross Cultural Solutions, or support local education NGOs like Rhotia Valley and IEFT.

Here are some interesting figures from our 2nd continent:

• 3 – Months we spent in Africa
• 46 – Number of beds we slept in
• 8 – Countries Visited (South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique, Lesotho, Swaziland, Tanzania, Kenya)
• 39 – Days we spent in South Africa
• 3 – Hours we spent in Lesotho
• 7 – Cars we rented in South Africa
• 5900 – Kilometers we drove in South Africa (3600 miles)

• 30 – Number of deeply discounted or comp’d hotel nights through Ted’s tourism connections
• 26 – Days spent with family in Africa
• 35 – Percentage of nights we paid for accommodation (thanks Moms and Dads, and tourism connections!)
• 38 – Hours on a bus (nothing compared to the 182.5 in South America)
• 14 – Beaches visited
• 45 – Number of game drives
• 50 – Number of lions seen on game drives
• 2200 – Photos taken (and kept)
• 12 – Number of guides and porters assigned only to us for our Kili hike
• 13,393 – Vertical feet climbed on our summit hike of Kilimanjaro
• 19,341 – Highest altitude in feet we’ve ever climbed to
• 6 – Flights on big airplanes
• 6 – Flights on small airplanes
• 10 – Visits to the Johannesburg airport
• 1 – Number of police reports filed

Check out our Best of pics from Southern Africa, East Africa, and African Mega-Fauna for some visual highlights.  Now, on to the Indian Subcontinent…

Check out these stylin’ sandals, worn by many of the Masaai people (who are one of the last nomadic cultures on earth).  Made out of used car tires!  In Africa, everything gets reused (though nothing gets recycled).  Our cultures could stand to learn a bit from each other.

Cut straight from the tire

At least you know they won't lose their tread

During our Northern Circuit Safari, we had the opportunity to visit a cool tented camp lodge that is doing amazing work with the children of their local community.  Check out the story I wrote about it for World Nomads here, or copied below:

Tanzania – Two Hills, One Goal

Tented camps are my favorite.  They offer a uniquely intimate interaction with your surroundings, while also providing the necessary amenities of any standard (and sometimes luxury) hotel.  Only a piece of canvas and screen separate you and the great outdoors (which in Africa may mean wild and dangerous animals).  I’ve had the opportunity to visit nearly a dozen such camps during my travels on on this continent, and I’ve seen some pretty impressive eco-initiatives associated with these properties.  But nothing impressed me more than my final tented camp experience, the first to use a community development project as the basis for their tented lodge.

Rhotia Valley is a property perched atop two adjacent hills, overlooking the rural village of Rhotia, along Tanzania’s famed Northern Safari Circuit.  On one hill sits the Rhotia Valley Children’s Home, a safe home and school for local children in need.  Due to a very high rate of HIV/AIDS in the region, many children are orphans, and along with issues such as malnourishment and family breakdown, the Children’s Home has become a key piece of the village’s social support network.

Rhotia Valley Children's Home

Atop the second hill is the Rhotia Valley Tented Lodge, an eco-focused property with 15 spacious tents.  Environmental initiatives abound – from solar thermal and photo-voltaic installations to an organic garden providing most of the veggies for the on-site restaurant.  Most importantly though, the lodge exists primarily as a funding mechanism for the Children’s Home, with a minimum of 20% of lodge revenues going towards operating costs for the home.

Lodge organic garden

What impressed me the most about Rhotia Valley is that the owners set out to create a community development project, with a tourism component.  Most of the time, the opposite is true.  As a result, the focus on all aspects of Rhotia Valley’s operation are geared toward the Children’s Home and the local community.  It is the community’s support for the project that has made it a success.  Children chosen to stay at the Home – those most in need – are determined by the community council and village elders.  All staff for operations on both hills come from the surrounding communities, and all of the children boarded at the school are only from Rhotia.  Village elders participate on the board of the Children’s home, and the owners are actively engaged in community discussions and decisions.  In their words: Our aim is to give support to the people – and especially the children – of the Rhotia area – in such a way that the entire village is committed and the villagers feel part of the project and embrace it.  Two Hills, One Goal.

Heading to the Serengeti?

You can be part of the Rhotia project – guests to the lodge are encouraged to interact with the community on guided walks, as well as visit or volunteer in the Children’s Home.  Even a night’s stay at the lodge provides direct financial benefits to the children.  Learn more at www.rhotiavalley.com.

By the end of our time in Southern Africa, we thought we were safari gurus. I mean, what first-time Africa travelers go on over 40 game drives in one visit? From Chobe National Park and the Okavango Delta, to Kruger Park proper and the surrounding game reserves, we thought we knew the drill. Then, we went to Tanzania, and our whole concept of how a safari works went straight out the window. There are some big differences, and advantages and disadvantages to both. Here is a little comparison:

• Lodge-centered vs. Operator-centered – This is the biggest single difference. Down South, your entire safari experience is organized by, and executed through the lodge or camp where you are staying. Your game drives happen early in the morning and late in the afternoon, with the hot hours of mid-day spent lounging around the lodge. Most of the time, you do loops around the vicinity of the lodge, so location is paramount. Generally, it is the lodge’s vehicles that are used for the game drives, and the lodge employs the guides and trackers. Up North, however, you’re constantly on the move, and the lodges and camps are simply a place to spend a night or two. The safari experience is organized and executed through a tour operator, who arranges your guide and decides what camps and lodges to stay in. Game drives may last all day, with a significant commute between parks being your down time.
• Vehicle Style – Down South, most game drives cruise loops within a 20 mile radius of the lodge. Because you’re always on roads within the reserve or park, and because you want to have the most intimate animal encounters possible, safaris here use open-sided Land Cruisers. The only thing between you and Simba is a few feet of open air. Up North, you spend a lot more time in your safari vehicle. To hit all the parks along the Northern Safari Circuit (Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, Lake Manyara, Tarangire), you’ve got to be on the move every couple days, and travel between parks can take a number of hours through urban and rural environments. For this reason, you can’t cruise around in the open-sided jeeps of the South, you need a Land Cruiser that is fully enclosed. But to get good photos of the animals, you also need a window-less environment. The solution – pop-top Land Cruisers.

Pop-tops up north

Open sided down south

• Fences – There is a lot of controversy about enclosing protected areas throughout Africa. Some argue it’s beneficial, and allows for better protection of the animals. Others think that animals should be free to roam as they always have, even if that means sometimes roaming into a village. Down South, just about ever protected area is fenced. Now, these fences might enclose parks the size of small US states, but if you walk far enough in any direction, you’ll hit an electrified fence. Up North, they don’t seem to believe in fences, and animals up there are constantly on the move. It’s actually the migratory patterns of the animals up North that prevent many lodge-centered operations from being sustainable – only certain times of year are animals abundant in their vicinity. To deal with this migratory challenge, they’ve developed my favorite safari accommodation – mobile camps: Temporary tented camps that pick up and move every couple months with the flow of the animals.

Mobile tented camps up north

• Vehicle Concentration – Down South, all of the game reserves and parks have strict rules on the number of safari jeeps that can be viewing a particular animal or group of animals at once – generally no more than 3. This is easy to enforce, as all jeeps belong to lodges within the reserve, and all lodges must follow reserve rules (for their own benefit). Unfortunately, up North there is no limit to the number of jeeps at any particular sighting, so it’s not uncommon to see well over a dozen jeeps looking on a pride of lions.

Line of vehicles to see a leopard in Serengeti

• Animals – Diversity and Quantity – How could I leave this for last? You can find the Big 5 both North and South, but each region also has its own set of unique fauna. The big difference, however, is that there seem to be a much higher density of animals up North. We went 10 days in Botswana before we saw a lion, and after 40 game drives down South, we were up to 12 or so. In Tanzania, we saw 44 lions over 5 days. Then there are the thousands upon thousands of wildebeest and zebras that make up the Great Migration. You can see all the cool animals in both places, you’ll just see more of them up North.

How many do you count in this photo?

So, after all that, which is better? Hard to say. The lodge-centered safaris, open vehicles, and low vehicle concentration all favor the South. But, the lack of fences and shear volume of animals make the North pretty special. Either way, you can’t go wrong.

There seems to be a rule in Africa that says, “If you go on safari, you must purchase and flaunt the largest camera and lens that you can possibly find.”  Apparently, we missed that memo.  Instead, we’re trying to rig our little point-and-shoot camera through a set of binoculars which, I’m happy to report, works quite well with a steady hand.  Amateurs…

Pros? I think not...

This guy needs a pillow to hold his up

Back on safari!  This time in and around the famed Serengeti National Park.  And who doesn’t love pictures of baby lions?!

Lion cubs

Cubs playing

This is about how close we got

There are thousands of porters that work on Mt. Kilimanjaro, and many of them work in less-than-ideal conditions.  While in the region, we had the opportunity to meet with Karen Valenti, a woman doing amazing work to help improve porter conditions on Kili.  I wrote a World Nomads blog post on the subject, which can be found here, or copied below.

Kilimanjaro Porters – Helping Them Help You Up The Mountain

I’ve never had anybody carry my stuff for me before.

At least, not on a trekking trip.  And to be honest, I was a little bit uncomfortable about it.  See, I consider myself a fairly avid backcountry hiker, spending many weekends each summer in the Colorado wilderness.  The thought of hiring someone to carry my food, tent, clothes, sleeping bag, etc, just seems like cheating.  So, when my wife and I arrived at the Machame trailhead of Mt Kilimanjaro, I was appalled to find 12 people there to assist us up the mountain!  As it turns out, there is no way we would have made it up Kili without them (at least, not in 5 days), and I have come to highly respect Kilimanjaro porters and the often dire working conditions they face every time they set foot on the mountain.

Kili porters working too hard

“My team, they are not just porters, they are mountaineers,” boasts my guide, Goodluck (yes, that is his real name).  And he’s right – these guys are heaving heavy, awkward-shaped, poorly packaged gear up some of the most challenging non-technical trekking routes on the planet.  And, they are doing it in almost any weather condition, often with very poor equipment (I saw more remnants of old shoes and boots on the trail than I care to remember).  These guys have to be tough, but too often on Kili, they are working harder than they should be.

Why are things so rough for porters?

They are the low link on the Kilimanjaro food chain, there is lots of competition for work (over 15,000 porters work on the mountain!), and their low level of education and training has kept them from having a voice.  Here are a few of their most common challenges:

• Climbing companies sometimes fail to pay their porters on time, sufficiently, or at all

• Some porters are not provided with appropriate mountain gear, from clothing to footwear to tents

• Some porters are given insufficient food – as little as 1 meal per day

• Some porters are made to carry well over the maximum weight of 25kg (a regulation set by the park, but often ignored by the climbing companies)

• Some guides (often former porters themselves) require a bribe to be chosen to work

• Some guides fail to distribute guest tips fairly, keeping more than their own share

Fortunately, the situation is improving significantly, thanks largely to the work of Karen Valenti and the Kilimanjaro Porters Assistance Program (KPAP), a Tanzanian NGO.  Created by the International Mountain Explorers Connection in 2003, KPAP has been fighting for porters rights and welfare through grassroots activism, education, research, and monitoring.  The organization works directly with porters to provide complimentary gear rental, while also working with the climbing companies to ensure they are following ethical guidelines for porter treatment established by KPAP.   Karen, KPAP’s director, is a passionate individual who spends most of her time at Kili trailheads interviewing and surveying porters and climbers to ensure standards are being met.  Climbing companies who have demonstrated their adherence to KPAP standards are granted “partner” status – a label that has become a must-have for any responsible travel providers running trips to Kili.

Kili porters

Interested in climbing Kilimanjaro?

Your travel choices have the power to make a positive impact.  Here’s what you can do to ensure your porters are treated fairly:

• Visit the Kilimanjaro Porters Assistance Program’s website to learn more about their work

• Climb with one of KPAP’s “partner in responsible travel” companies – both Tanzanian ground operators, as well as international tour companies are listed by country

• If you’ve already selected an operator who is not on the list, KPAP has a list of suggested questions/requirements you can utilize to ensure fair treatment on your trip

• If your favorite tour operator is not on the list (and they run trips to Kilimanjaro), call them up and ask them why they have not joined, and when they plan to

• Be sure to tip well (plan it into your trip budget), and be sure to tip directly to the porters