Gold certificates being ‘handed out’ to non-summiters!

Tuesday 16th January 2007

A reader has contacted me with some rather disappointing news. Louise Fussell, who reached the summit last month, wrote after becoming concerned that the prized golden certificates, handed out only to those who successfully reach the summit, were being offered by unscrupulous guides to trekkers even though they had not managed to get anywhere near the summit.

In what we hope was an isolated incident, Louise recounts that two members of her trekking party who had failed in their attempts to reach the summit were nevertheless offered certificates. One of them thankfully thought it was just a joke and laughed at the offer. Alas, the second person, a lady who had barely managed to reach even the Kibo Huts and had spent most of the last day in an ambulance near the foot of the mountain, had no such scruples and accepted the offer.

We have written to Exodus - the company who Louise originally booked with - who have replied promptly, saying that they will be contacting African Walking Company (whom she climbed with) to investigate the matter.

While we have no wish to see the guide lose his job - and we made that clear in our letter to the trekking companies - Exodus have been made aware of the identity of the guide.

For some people, this would seem a trivial matter. But we disagree. From all the emails, letters and photos we receive here at climbmountkilimanjaro.com, we know how much effort trekkers put into climbing to the top of Kilimanjaro, and how much it means to people to reach the highest point in Africa. The gold certificates, though they are just bits of paper, are nevertheless proof of their achievements.

Finding them devalued in this way is therefore simply not right, and so we feel - and have the backing of several trekking agencies in this matter - that this problem should be stamped out now before other guides start to copy and hand out certificates to other ‘non-summiters’ too. KINAPA, too, whose job it is to collect the statistics on Kili, will also be upset to learn that this is going on.

Hopefully, once the guide has been reprimanded, that will be the end of the problem. However,we would be very interested to hear from any other readers who have witnessed gold certificates being handed out in this way, or indeed have been offered a certificate themselves - if only to find out how widespread the problem is.

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