TANZANIA – Porter Training

Arguably the centre of tourism in Northern Tanzania is the town of Moshi. For it is from here that, every year, groups of trekkers set out to climb Mount Kilimanjiro. Each group is led by an expert guide, professionally trained to a high standard and more than capable of handling both the logistics of the trek and the wants and needs of the trekkers.

On returning home, most trekkers look back with fond memories of their tour guide. But another memory stays with them as well; the relays of porters who carry all the equipment and provisions up the mountain, often overtaking the trekking group at a run and setting up camp for the night in advance of the groups’ arrival. There is always a great deal of admiration for the tireless work of the porters without whom climbing Kilimanjiro would be a very different experience.

But the work of a porter is essentially a dead-end job, with little permanent future and no opportunity for advancement. Many of them dream of moving up from being a porter to becoming a licenced Guide, but the cost of the necessary training makes the idea an impossible dream for a porter.

Our Project in Moshi is to help two porters, Joachim and Neema, to qualify as Guides, by providing them with the funds for their training, their college materials and their sustenance. Joachim is 38 years old, is married with 4 children, he has been a Porter on Kili for 15 years and has managed to work his way up to Camp Manager but has always dreamed of becoming a qualified guide. Neema is 26 years old and is one of a very small group of female porters looking to make a career from guiding.

Our donation will send them both to the College of African Wildlife Management, Mweka, Moshi for an intensive one-month course The College is a not-for-profit educational institution, recognised as an educational and vocational training institution, and was founded in Moshi in 2008 by Edgardo Kabulwa Welelo, himself a professional naturalist and guide. Since 2008 the college has trained more than 200 students in different professional studies.
At the end of their course they will receive a Certificate of Mountain Tour guiding and thus, once qualified, they can move up in their career to a more permanent position and a better income which can quite literally change their lives.

Our thanks go to Discover Adventure, who introduced us to this Project.

Interim Report:
This Project has been considerably delayed due to the covid-19 Pandemic. The team in Tanzania have had a tough time, tougher probably there here in the UK without any government support. All training courses were cancelled, and our two trainee porters were sent home for some months.

They did manage to take their exams in the end, and both failed some small elements of them at their first attempt. However, Mgunda has retaken the ones he failed in and passed. He now waits for tourists to return so he can start working as an assistant guide.

As a result of the pandemic and lack of tourists there, Neema returned to her remote village before it was possible to re-sit the one exam she failed. The team are confident that once work starts again, she will return to Moshi and complete the training.