Trouble on the mountain

This past Wednesday two German volunteers came to hike the mountain and see the caves. I didn't know tourists had come until the financial secretary kept flashing (repeatedly calling my phone, but hanging up before I could answer) my phone. I called him back and in a breathless voice he told me that a tourist had collapsed on the mountain. That was a really scary thing to hear. I was picturing a tourist completely passed out on the top of the mountain, unconscious. After that phone call, I call the chairman to tell him what happened and we agree to meet in town and wait for the tourists and the financial secretary to come down. Well, we end up waiting about an hour and half. The tourists come down and I begin talking to them. Apparently, after they went through all of the caves, one of the tourists became very tired and weak. His legs collapsed from underneath him, but he never went unconscious. Thank God. There was just a small boy who had taken them up the mountain (because none of the tour guides could be found) so when the tourist collapsed, the small boy ran down the mountain where he found someone to call the financial secretary. The financial secretary then found a tour guide and they proceeded to run up the mountain (literally. The physical strength of these people are amazing). They brought the tourist a coke and some salt. They waited for him to regain his strength, then they made their way down the mountain slowly. I think the tourist was embarrassed, visibly tired and was anxious to get back to their hotel and rest, so they left pretty quickly after they got down to town.

Of course, this raised many questions in my village and in my TMT. What do we do next time there is an emergency on the mountain? We need to buy a cell phone strictly only for the use of the tour guides when they bring tourists up the mountain. If there is an emergency, we can't wait for the tour guide to come up the mountain. Help needs to be called immediately. Also, the tour guides need to have scheduled days when they are to stay in the community, in the vacinity of the tourism office.

It is interesting that this should happen around this time. Monday, we just went up to the caves and made a plan for making the trails and the cave more accessible and safe. I am very concerned, as they chairman is, of a tourists getting hurt on the trails or in and around the caves. It iss just bound to happen. We were very fortunate this time that it wasn't too serious.