Doug Scott - Putting Something Back

OUTDOORSmagic member and photographic mastermind Simon Kirwan speaks to Doug Scott about his work with Community Action Nepal and finds a man who's 8,000-meter stare is now firmly fixed on giving something back to the mountain communities that have played such a huge part in his life. You can see some of Simon's travel and mountain photography at www.the-lightbox.com.

Doug Scott – Putting Something Back

Doug Scott needs no introduction as a mountaineer – in 1975, with Dougal Haston, he became the first Briton to summit Mount Everest and he has made 45 expeditions to the high mountains of Asia, during which he has reached the summit of 40 peaks, remarkably half of them first ascents.

His legendary bivouac with Haston just below the South Summit of Everest at 28,700 feet was a landmark, an unprecedented feat of endurance and survival at altitude, without oxygen or even sleeping bags. With the exception of the 1975 Everest expedition, led by Chris Bonington, all his ascents were done in lightweight alpine style, and without artificial oxygen.

Almost as famous as his Everest ascent was his epic retreat from the Ogre with two broken legs. Less well known though is the work of Community Action Nepal, the charity that Doug co-founded, and in which he is actively involved today as Operations Director. CAN manages over 40 projects in the middle hill regions of rural Nepal. So far, projects have included primary and secondary schools, schools for deaf children, health posts and clean water supplies.

At the biennial Midsummer Celebration of Community Action Nepal, held at Shap on the fringe of the Lake District, Doug explained what motivated him to found CAN, and what the charity has achieved so far.

SK: What made you decide to start the community projects?

DS: I saw the need for one in Pakistan in 1990, climbing in the Choktoi valley in the Karakoram. We lost a porter, who fell into the river, with my clothing in fact, and he disappeared. When we went down into the village to sort out the death certificate, to speed up the insurance claim for his wife, we saw that there was a 50% child mortality rate due to gastro-enteritis. They were getting domestic water from the stream that ran down the main lane of the village, after it ran over the irrigated fields fertilised with animal and human excrement, and yet there was a clear water stream about three quarters of a mile away.

Himalayan trekking areas may be beautiful, but they're also poor often with low standards of hygiene

It ran all year without freezing up, so we put a pipe in down a trench and standpipes in the village. I felt I owed those people from about eight other expeditions up there, and from being carried off the bottom of the Ogre when I had broken my legs, and now having lost this lad we felt quite emotional about it. So about three years later it was all up and running, and sure enough a lot more kids were reaching five years of age than ever before.

I organised that, facilitated it if you like, without even getting my hands dirty. It was very easy to do, just a matter of getting a few estimates, getting the right contractors which was done by the Aga Khan Rural Development Fund people, and raising £10,000 which I found quite easy.

So in the mid-nineties, when Tej our cook told us that the roof had blown off his local village school, we went to see the area, and found a little adobe-style two-room school, with twenty-five children having lessons on an earth floor, sitting on planks, with part of the roof missing. We decided to buy the whole of the hill, and built a brand new school, but used the material from the old one to build a health post. The work was largely done by Plymouth College students, sixteen to eighteen years old, and we spent about £9000 on a nine-room slate-covered new school

Clean water supplies are crucial to health

I was there last spring, and found there was now 225 children on the roll, so again it was very easy to facilitate, and see how quickly you could make a difference to people's lives without a lot of effort, so whenever we were approached by other people in the area, we thought why not, did the same at Lapcha, built a brand new school up there, actually that cost £14,000, and all the families got involved, doing everything they could, on a rota system. Even little kids were going up to the slate quarry four hours away, bringing slate back to the contractors. It was important to us that they did get so involved, in that they put in a third of a cost, the labouring being included in the estimates, so they were humping sand up from the river, carrying bags of cement from the roadhead, pulling wood from the forest, digging up rocks for the stonemasons, so they feel that it is very much their project.

SK: When did you set up Community Action Nepal, and how is it funded?

DS: We got so many projects on the go, we decided to set up Community Action Nepal as a registered charity, with its own Project Manger, in 1998. CAN is funded by the trekking operation, which two years ago put in £35,000. With tourism down, we rely increasingly on individual donations from trekkers who have gone through the areas, seen the projects, and got interested in raising money themselves. The trekking operation, now called Community Action Treks, organises trips and expeditions to Nepal on a "people not profit" principle. We try to ensure that at least one of our projects in the middle hill area is visited by trekkers, and this creates a real connection with the rural people of Nepal, which gives them a better understanding of the spiritual and cultural diversity of ordinary village life.

 

SK: Does CAN have specific aims, or are projects set up an an ad hoc basis as you see a particular need?

DS: So far, as we have travelled through an area, villagers have come up to us with a deputation and a business plan, say for a health post or a school, and we have sent Jiban Kharki our Project Manager out to do a demographic profile of the area to make sure that it is going to benefit the people there. So we have found ourselves operating basically by natural growth in several valleys, and the more we got into it we realized that OK, we can help with health and education, but what are these better educated children going to with their lives afterwards. The tendency would be to drift off to Kathmandu, attracted by the bright lights they had heard about, perhaps get further education, but then stay there looking for work.

So it seemed very important to set up income-generating schemes in these areas, and that's where our big thrust is now, to encourage all kinds of activities like improving the amount and variety of crops they get from the land, making use of products from the forest which they might sell for medicinal purposes, also bee-keeping, self-help in the training of carpenters to do their own carpentry rather than bringing it in from afar.

SK: Which areas of Nepal is CAN active in?

DS: It's all in the middle hills, which derives less benefit from tourism. Most of these villages, lying between 2000 and 4000 metres, are just not in tourist areas, and its people are amongst the poorest in Nepal.

SK: How many people are involved with CAN?

There's a very active band of eight trustees in the UK, all volunteers of course, with just one paid administration officer, and in Nepal we have set up an office staffed by local people, with a Project manager, two overseers, and an accounts handler, as well as various Nepali nurses and teachers.

All the donations made in the UK go out to Nepal, our UK wages are paid from sales of merchandise. That's really helped us actually, people these days sometimes worry that any donations they make to the major charities ends up in administration, paying wages, but so far, hopefully for ever, any donation made here will go out to Nepal.

SK: Tell me about IPPG...

DS: IPPG, the International Porter Protection Group, was actually started by Jimmy Duff, our expedition doctor in 1975 when we climbed Everest. Jimmy had been going out there a lot himself trekking, actually giving first aid to porters and conducting some seminars in Kathmandu on first aid to sirdars from trekking companies.

He was so put out to find that porters who were suffering from AMS were just left to their own devices; some had actually been dismissed and later died. He decided to set up the IPPG to protect porters. Of course in Nepal, and a lot of other Himalayan countries, there's no rules and regulations protecting the working man from the excesses of the market economy.

When we set up the trekking operation, we paid porters double the going rate, and made sure that they were properly kitted out, and weren't carrying excessive loads. We had the sirdars brief the porters before they left about the dangers of AMS, and to tell them that if they got it they must report it, and not think that they would lose wages.

Generally, we had a whole uniform made for them in Kathmandu to make certain they were protected against the cold. It was very adequate, much like the old Ventile top and bottom anorak and overtrousers, which was lined as well. Then we got Brasher's seconds boots, we'd take those out there, so they were well shod; Berghaus gave us their seconds, fleeces and anoraks, and Buffalo were very generous as well. This was all done on the trekking side, but Community Action Nepal is involved in building a porter protection centre up in Khumbu.

SK: What future plans do you have for CAN?

DS: The important thing now is to take an integrated approach to the three or four areas we are operating in, to help them with job opportunities basically, and encouraging them to develop things like women's groups.

SK: Do you still have any unfulfilled climbing ambitions?

'I think I've still got two or three 6,000s in me – there's still more unclimbed Himalayan peaks between 6000 and 7000 metres than those that have been climbed.'

In 1998 I climbed the central pillar of Drohmo South Face (22,890 feet) with Roger Mear, and also Tang Kongma at 20,420 feet, and I think I've still got two or three 6,000s in me – there's still more unclimbed Himalayan peaks between 6000 and 7000 metres than those that have been climbed.

SK: Thank you.

Anyone who wishes to support the work of Community Action Nepal, or join a trek organised by Community Action Treks, which operates on the basis of directing all profits to CAN, can find out more by visiting www.canepal.org.uk, the official web site of Community Action Nepal, which has full details of all the current projects, and numerous ways in which people can help. The International Porter Protection Group's web site is at www.ippg.net.

More than anything else, Doug Scott wishes to put something back into Nepal, a country he has been visiting for thirty years, and whose people have profoundly touched him with their kindness and generosity of spirit, things which all visitors to Nepal soon discover for themselves. The work of Community Action Nepal is transforming the lives of hundreds of rural Nepalis, and giving hope for the future; in Doug's words: "Putting something back."

© words and images by Simon Kirwan 2002 www.the-lightbox.com