Steve Kelley / Times staff columnist
From Malawi to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro

BOB SEIDENSTICKER

The trek up the 19,340-foot monolith begins in a tropical rain forest and ends in glaciers, above.






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NWsource: TravelA soft, gray fog hung over the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. The magnificent 40-foot, blue-white glacier walls on the backside of the summit were barely visible.

The white snow was packed hard and, standing on the roof of Africa, in his yellow parka, practically surrounded in a white gauze, Jeff Ament looked as if he were standing inside a snow globe.

Four years earlier, at a Sonics' basketball game, I first mentioned the idea of climbing Kilimanjaro to Jeff. I knew he was as rabid a fan of the outdoors as he was of the NBA, and I knew that his band, Pearl Jam, had a sincere, generous and global commitment to people in need.

I told him the climb would be much more than an athletic event. It would offer him a chance to see a part of the world the rest of the globe often ignores. In addition to climbing the mountain, we would have opportunities to visit villages in several African countries that needed our help.

I climbed the Tanzanian mountain we call "Kili" for the first time in 2001, without Jeff, and seeing him at another Sonics game after my return, I told him, more than ever, he had to go.

"Kilimanjaro: To the Roof of Africa"


The film runs tomorrow-Nov. 18 at the Pacific Science Center's Boeing IMAX Theater. Tickets, $8 adults, $7.50 seniors and $7 children 3-12, are available at the door or online at www.pacsci.org

For information about Save the Children's International Venture Philanthropy Delegations, contact Save the Children's Western Regional Office, 731 Sansome St., Second Floor, San Francisco, CA 94111, 415-677-9050; e-mail lgonzalez@savechildren.org

This year he was able to balance the band's schedule with Tanzania's climbing season. In March we climbed to the top of Africa. But it was only part of a remarkable and life-changing trip.

Two mountains loom over Sub-Saharan Africa. One spectacular and one horrific.

One is the magical 19,340-foot monolith, Mount Kilimanjaro, the world's highest free-standing mountain peak; the subject of Ernest Hemingway's story and a magnet that has drawn climbers, both experts and novices, to its difficult, but accessible, summit for more than a century.

The other is HIV/AIDS, the pandemic that has ravaged East Africa for more than two decades.

I returned here, with a group of 14 friends and like-minded people, on a tour sponsored by Save the Children, to learn more about the charity's Adopt-A-Village program and to tackle Kilimanjaro.

Included in our group were six people from Seattle. Ament, bass player for Pearl Jam, and his partner, graduate student Pandora Andre-Beatty; software entrepreneurs Tom Miller, David Robinson and Bob Seidensticker; and graduate student Laura Mason.

DAVID ROBINSON

Children from Dedza.

This type of travel, called venture philanthropy, links donor groups with some of Save the Children's flagship programs. Each person in the traveling party raised $10,000 for the Adopt-A-Village Program in Malawi and also had to pay about $1,800 in airfare and in-country expenses of another $1,000, which included outfitter costs associated with the Kili climb, organized by Geographic Expeditions in San Francisco. After the trip, Save hosts fund-raisers where various members of the climb talk about their experiences. This one trip has raised approximately $145,000 and counting.

The hook for us was the challenge of Kilimanjaro. How would we handle the altitude? Would we succeed, scrambling up the difficult Western Breach, taking the brunt of the stinging sleet in our faces, looking for foot- and handholds, not daring to peek over our shoulders to see how far we'd fall if we slipped?

But before the climb we went to Malawi, a skinny sliver of land the size of Cuba, with 10.4 million people. Once known as Nyasaland Protectorate, it is a country still emerging from colonialism's politics. Asa, the driver who greeted us as the airport in the capital city of Lilongwe, welcomed us to, "The warm heart of Africa."

For each person, this trip was a personal fact-finding mission. Each wanted to see how Save was using the money raised for its African Adopt-A-Village projects. Each wanted to viscerally experience the strengths and the weaknesses of this part of Africa.

For me, Malawi was a reality check. Every sportswriter, from time to time, wonders what he or she will do when they grow up. There are times, no matter how passionate our love for sports, when the desire to write about larger, more global questions invades our wonderland.

And, as simple as this might sound, I wanted to help. I wanted people to know the enormity of the AIDS problem. I believe people need to care.

Tom Miller meets Foster Martin

His left hand holding tightly to his teacher's right hand, 11-year-old Foster Martin, wearing a teal-colored polo shirt and navy blue shorts, slowly raised his head and, for the first time, made eye contact with his American sponsor.

STEVE KELLEY / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Seattle's Tom Miller meets Foster Martin, 11, who has benefited from Miller's charity.

Gently nudging Foster, the teacher nodded toward Seattle's Tom Miller and firmly whispered to Foster, "Tell him your name." Foster, much smaller than most 11-year-old boys in the United States, extended his tiny right arm and proudly said to Miller, "My name is Foster Martin."

Miller invited three friends to share his journey to Mtosa village in the African bush. He and his wife, Terri, have sponsored children in Malawi, through Save the Children, for almost 18 years. They have given thousands of dollars to this country. But Foster is the first Malawian child Miller had met, and Miller was every bit as nervous as the boy.

The village is so remote it took us almost three hours to travel 70 miles. The ride was grueling. Most of the roads in Malawi are rutted and made of hard, red clay. Potholes, practically the size of dry lake beds, knocked us violently against the doors of our four-wheel drive.

In the afternoon, when menacing clouds fall so low in the sky they almost touch the ground and the inevitable torrential rains arrive, the roads become as slippery as luge runs and vehicles slip-slide drunkenly off the skinny roads and into ditches.

We left the city of Mangoche on Lake Malawi and passed villages that were somnolent in the early morning sun. Slowly the countryside crawled past our windshield. Tobacco cured on wooden racks along the side of the road. We passed giant baobab trees and jacaranda trees with their sunburst yellow flowers.

We witnessed scenes that to us seemed centuries old. Women carried supplies on the tops of their heads and broke into wide smiles when we waved to them. We were forced to stop as goats were herded across the road by stick-whipping children. Convoys of boys, pushing rickety bicycles stacked 5 feet high with firewood, looked up as we crept past.

None of us had an idea of the kind of celebration that awaited us in Mtosa. The children had been dismissed early from school. Eventually almost everyone in the village, more than 1,000 people, would fill the grass schoolyard in front of the concrete classrooms that had been built with money from Save and with labor provided by local villagers. They came to welcome us and to thank Miller. We were treated like visiting dignitaries.

What $28 a month buys

Here in Sub-Saharan Africa, where al-Qaida cells flourish, where the U.S. embassies in both Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, have been bombed, we found nothing but gratitude.

BOB SEIDENSTICKER

Led by Seattleite Laura Mason, climbers scramble over rocks in the Western Breach of Mount Kilimanjaro as they approach Crater Camp at 18,600 feet.

The average donation for a village sponsor is about $28 a month. The money doesn't go to the individual family — Foster Martin's family isn't the sole beneficiary of Miller's generosity — but is shared throughout the village. Five core programs — child development for ages 3 through 6; primary education; school health and nutrition; adolescent development; and HIV/AIDS care — are funded through sponsorship dollars.

The development of every child is tracked. Teachers are trained. Schools are built. Because of the eroding effects of AIDS, girls as young as 12 are the heads of some households. Flexible schedules are developed so those girls can go to class.

"Maybe I'm sort of naïve," Miller said, "but I think in the U.S. there is plenty of money to solve our problems. It's just there. But I want to see my money go to countries that don't have the money to solve their problems. Here there aren't enough resources. Coming from a country of affluence and as gifted as ours, I would like to help countries like Malawi which don't have that affluence but are willing to work to help themselves."

After their introduction, Miller visited Foster's home, where he was greeted by Foster's mother and the rest of the family, including eight children, three of whom were orphaned when their parents died from AIDS.

The setting at Foster's home was bucolic and beautiful. The three homes clustered at the end of the dirt road are quintessentially African — mud huts and thatched roofs. From the porch we looked across green hills. Cornfields served as back yards. Goats that supply the family's milk, and doves that supply the eggs, roamed freely in the hard-packed clay "yard."

Foster's mother, Aida Solomoni, supports the children growing corn, sweet potatoes, cassava and peas.

The family gathered on the front porch and listened as Miller read letters written to Foster by his two sons, 11-year-old Andrew and 8-year-old Charlie. The letters tell of their experiences in the United States. "I am writing to you because I want to learn more about you and your culture," Andrew wrote. "I want you and your family to be friends with me." Andrew and Charlie sent pictures with their letters.

DAVID ROBINSON

Coffin-making shops line the side of the road along Kamazu Procession Road, in Lilongwe, Malawi, one of the many African countries haunted by HIV/AIDS.

"I think I'm getting more out of this than you are," Miller said after he had read the letters that were translated by one of the teachers.

Back at the schoolyard, we sat like heads of state under a canopy and were treated to a village variety show. The buzz in the schoolyard was remarkable, as if this were the most important day in the villagers' lives.

It was the same at every village we visited. We were entertained at each stop, and included in the entertainment were dramatic skits about the prevention of AIDS. After refusing for years to admit there was a problem, the people of Malawi now talk openly about the disease.