Journeys from the Nairobi slums to the summit of Kilimanjaro.

Peter Kariuki and Kelly Kioko were respectively nine and ten years old when I first met them. I noticed Peter because he was trying to pickpocket me and Kelly was acting as decoy, a little African boy with the biggest smile in the world standing in front of me with his hand out begging for money. We were in a large urban slum in Nairobi and the vast, clattering market was heaving with people. I was on their turf; they knew it, I knew it and they held all the cards.

But it's Peter and Kelly who talk now of that moment with great passion. I managed to persuade them that pick-pocketing me wasn’t such a good idea and instead they might give me a guided tour of their ‘home’. It wasn’t much. Peter lived in a five-foot square tin shack with his grandmother and sister, and Kelly curled up on pavements or in doorways to sleep. It turned out that Peter was a gang leader, a sort of Artful Dodger, with all the savvy and survival instincts of a street urchin and Kelly was his lieutenant. Together they made a formidable team, begging and stealing.

I was travelling around Africa, on a pilgrimage of my own to discover the wonders and beauties of that dark continent, and in the course of four years I kept on coming back to Kenya. I had been helping out with overland truck companies on the Cape Town – Nairobi run, and fell in love with the country. Peter and Kelly quickly became my closest allies in the turbulent world of shantytowns and it was through them that I ‘became’ a street kid. Ducking around the city at night, watching the muggings, the fights, the horrors and the heart-wrenching sights. Learning the street lingo called Sheng, squatting on the rubbish tips where the kids hung out drinking petrol, sniffing glue and eating wood chips. Any intelligent person with a conscience could hardly not be moved. So I rented a ‘house’ in Kibera, the so-called slum of Africa.

My house became a home for about eight years and in that time I began running trips up Mt Kenya and Mt Kilimanjaro. I also started my own safari company in Kenya, and it became a feature of my little expeditions to always take the clients into Kibera for a dinner of roast goat (nyama choma) and a few bottles of Tusker with the locals. I was well known in the area so everybody was safe.

Most assume that a slum is a desperate, chaotic mass of humanity beset with crime and squalor, but that is far from the truth. Imagine a society where people live so close, where the only way to survive is to work and live together in harmony. Just like the old villages, slums have elders too, with committees and the like. Crime is low. Anyone who steals would be quickly found out and caught, and anyway, there’s not a great deal to steal. No, it’s the tourists who get to experience the fun of being robbed in broad daylight! Mind you, the way you see them walk around with handbags swinging, you’d imagine they were asking for it. Desperate measures call for desperate means and a lot of people in Africa are desperate. Families to support, rents to pay, food to buy. It’s not easy.

When my clients came back from a successful climb of Kilimanjaro or a lovely safari in the Masai Mara, I would take them to my house for tea and we would go out for dinner. It was always the most fascinating time of the trip and people would come away with deeply altered perspectives.
 
I started sponsoring kids a long time ago, Peter and Kelly being the first two, and worked in slum schools to get an idea of how tough the teachers had it. And it was tough. Over time I got to know the families, the communities and about the lifestyle. I discovered that it is inordinately complicated, a world of continually spiralling debt and credit. You borrow to survive one day, yet you share what you have. Giving back borrowed money takes months and any single person will maybe have fifty or sixty debts to contend with. Life becomes one stressful juggling game of payback and survival. If you get a job then the responsibility to support everyone in your family is obligatory; if you don’t help then you will be ostracised. Getting a job can be more stressful than doing nothing.

I decided to use my company to fund the school fees. Then, when I started building small clinics and training centres, it all became a bit expensive so I had to think of other ways to get the money. So I climbed Everest. Twice, actually. Both times I got to within 100 metres of the top but it raised a lot of money, and sitting on that big hill I really valued the extra motivation that those kids gave me.

Anyway Peter and Kelly grew up. They went to primary school and shone. Given the chance, that mental sharpness and savvy that kept them alive on the streets is exactly what pushed them straight to the top of the class. Peter has a gift though; he’s no ordinary kid. There is a presence about him that is almost unsettling, a wisdom beyond his years, a knowledge in his eyes that burns with passion and fire. If that sounds daft then hold your laugh. Someone once put it into words. “He seems to reach into your soul”. Now, years later, things have moved on apace.

Peter and Kelly have recently finished secondary school and Kelly is in college studying computers and tourism. This summer I gave him his first job working on a number of safaris. How he wowed the clients! That big smile is still there, and now he moves about them with ease and assurance. “Watch your watch madam”, he’ll say, “I wouldn’t keep your wallet in your back pocket like that sir”. They all love him. When he tells them his story they gape.

Peter is going to work with the United Nations as a trainee. His ambition is to ‘help my people’ and he knows the only way to do that is by getting close to the source of power, where the decisions are made. I am his mentor in this process, but it will be a case of the student outstripping the teacher.

Over the years about 1800 children have passed through this programme I set up with the help of my Kenyan friends. It’s heartening, and never-ending. Nowadays I still go through the slums but now it is the ex-street kids who approach the glue sniffers and give them the chance. The clinics are ever busy, the schools bustling. My little house is never empty and I still take my clients for nyama choma and a bottle of Tusker. Everyone knows I use my expeditions to raise cash, and it's an endless source of fascination to children who have never seen snow.

This year Kelly trekked to Point Lenana on Mount Kenya with me and when he stood there gazing out over the horizon, the dawn, the splash of light on the clouds thousands of feet below, his eyes shone with tears. It was a far cry from lying in a gutter. He hadn’t found it easy though and there was understanding about this game of climbing that some of us do. “This is nothing”, I said, “there’s lots of bigger hills out there.” So Peter and Kelly came to me, moving together still as a team. Was it possible, they asked, for us to try and climb Kilimanjaro ? It would, they said, be a great celebration of their lives.

A sort of analogy of the high achievements they had already reached. Well, they didn’t exactly use that word but I got the point. And I was hooked on the idea. So many people who stand on top of Kilimanjaro with me talk of benchmarks in their life, turning points and life-changing moments. But we live in a world of choice and freedom and opportunity. To Peter and Kelly the roof of Africa may as well represent the moon.

Kilimanjaro is not hard, not technically hard anyway. But a lot of people fail. And it’s easy to understand why when you go back again and again and see the number of people racing up in four or five days. Take your time and have the luxury of at least two complete acclimatisation days and the success rate rockets. I’ve had 100% in the past three years because I take seven days to climb it. It’s a bit more expensive but then surely it’s worth it after coming all that way? And why munch on gorp when a nice fresh chicken stew can be had? I think having my own staff and company helps; I’m sure of the porters I use and being a charter member of Tourism Concern means that I’m committed to their happiness and rights, as much as the safety of my clients.
Trekking through five distinct ecosystems, from the wet and atmospheric forests resembling a scene out of Lord of the Rings, to the astonishing glaciated crater rim and of course the famous summit sign. The roof of Africa. For people who hike regularly, who have the kit and a good sense of humour and teamwork, it’s there for the taking. Not that the summit is all there is to focus on. A good meal of roast goat in Kibera has its moments too. 

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