Someone groans. I want to as well.
The porters clear our dishes and then serve dinner. A tray with an array of peppers is passed around. I take a bite of one and it’s so hot it makes inside my ears swell. I spoon a portion of rice, baked trout and two types of potato onto my plate.
The food is simple, delicious.
I eat mindfully, savour each morsel.
Eduardo notes this. ‘You eat slowly for a Westerner. You give thanks to the food. This rice, for example, contains the bones of your ancestors. It was grown in the earth where your ancestors turned to soil. We thank them for the sustenance.’
Kim spits her rice onto her plate and wipes her tongue.
I look at my forkful, try to see the rice as the bones of my grandfather, a man who cycled to Dublin and back for the weekend, a man who climbed Croagh Patrick barefoot, praying. Those times in Ireland, everyone guilty for existing. For their human urges. For being Irish.
The bones of Gran too, maybe her as a young woman before she lost her memory, my age, the age she was when she had my mother. Her terrific auburn hair, her sense of adventure even though she had so many kids young. I get a sudden flashback of when we were small, when she’d create treasure hunts for us. She sent us collecting leaves and flowers outside, tracing them into our copybooks and then pressing them. She told us of ringfort fairies and the changelings. My grandmother’s imagination was wild. Maybe I was more like her than I ever realized when she was alive.
‘Thanks, Gran,’ I say, and eat the mouthful of rice.
Halfway through dinner, Eduardo stands and begins his nightly speech, about the poverty that the porters live in. He’s totally cockblocking Federico, the Amazonian who Kim flirts with.
I notice when Eduardo makes his plea, his eyes glaze over and the words flow. It’s rehearsed, a performance.
He discusses the tips that we’re expected to give the porters considering we’re people who go back to lands of clean water, political stability, economic growth.
‘These men, as you have seen, work so hard. They carry twenty-five kilos of your things in order to make this experience easy for you. They carry all the food you are eating right now. The cooking utensils. Your tents. Your sleeping bags. This tent. The seats you sit on. This table. This cutlery. These men clap you into camp and have refreshments ready. They do not complain and yet they are paid twenty dollars per day for their ox-like work. You have seen what they wear, some of them carry loads in sandals, in ragged jeans and T-shirts. Twenty dollars per day. You probably spend twenty dollars on your lipstick, on your parking spot when you go to your malls to buy your new TVs and new watches. The men work hard. Remember that, when you decide what your tip will be. Compare your tip to what work you do to earn money. Remember this, there are less fortunate people in the world than you.’
He wipes his face of imaginary tears and goes to the flap of the tent, turns around dramatically and pleads, ‘Remember,’ before exiting.
I stop eating. My hands shake. Everyone is silent around the dinner table except for Konrad, who asks, with a full mouth, ‘Is anyone else for those potatoes?’
He grabs the serving dish and checks for a reply; when he hears none, he scrapes all the food onto his plate.
‘I’m not going to be guilted by that guy,’ he says and puts a potato to his mouth. ‘I refuse to be. He knows nothing of my circumstances and he is assuming things of me because of my skin colour. That is racism in my book and I am not a Western European.’
Nobody speaks. Kim grimaces.
‘They work hard,’ I say. ‘One of those guys is in his seventies.’
‘I am not saying they don’t work hard,’ Konrad replies and puts his knife and fork down. ‘Those men are incredible. But what would they be doing if they weren’t doing this? Carrying cattle up the mountains? Boulders? They get fed and sheltered. This might be a sweet ass number for them.’
‘I have kept a hundred bucks spare for my tip,’ I say. ‘I checked online before I left. That’s a slightly above average tip. But I do feel like it might be too little now.’
‘That’s because of Eduardo. He’s manipulated you. He’s been manipulating us since we got here. Each of us signed up for this tour because they have marketed themselves as ethical. As a company who treats their workers fairly. Am I right? Why the hell would we have paid an extra two hundred and fifty bucks for the tour otherwise?’
A few people nod.
‘The guide knows we’ve considered these workers, considered their circumstances. That’s why we paid extra. I’ve calculated it. If those twenty porters are being paid twenty dollars a day, multiply that by three, is twelve hundred bucks. Say the chef gets a bit more. Maybe one of the guys carries more than others. Loose things like that. Bring it up to fifteen hundred. We’ve two tour guides. They’re for sure on more money. These guys speak fluent English, know history, have people skills. They may be on a hundred bucks a day. Another six hundred. That’s two thousand one hundred. There’s probably insurance, our permits, bribes, could be a grand or so – three thousand one hundred. The food’s organic, locally sourced. The fish they’re catching up here. They may have brought the paltry chicken meat with them. It’s hardly been steak dinners each night. It’s mostly plant based. Gonna give them a gratuitous four hundred dollars for food though it may be free. To bring it up to a round number of three and a half thousand dollars. That is the maximum possible cost of this tour. Each of us paid eight hundred dollars to go on this “ethical” tour. Eight hundred by fifteen is twelve thousand. Minus the three and a half thousand. That is an eight and a half thousand dollar profit for this three-day tour. In a country where the GNP per capita is twelve thousand bucks. And they couldn’t pay these men more than twenty bucks a day? The workers are being screwed but so are we. I’m not being guilted into this. I’m not giving a tip. He knows we paid for an ethical company. He knows we already feel fucking bad. That’s why he’s finding it very easy to squeeze more from us. If you want to tip a porter, give the tip to that porter. I don’t trust that motherfucker Eduardo not to pocket the lot.’
The vibe in the tent changes. Kim’s head is bowed. I finish my dinner.
‘I’m giving a hundred. I have it saved for this. I might be a fool but that’s what I’m putting in. You don’t have to give anything, Konrad. You’ve made a good case. We understand.’
I put my money into the box Eduardo left on the table.
Konrad gives a slight nod. He reaches across the table and heaps the leftover veg onto his plate.
The rest of the group add their tips in secrecy to the box.
Federico enters with a tray of dessert bowls. Kim perks up. He wears a purple bandana on his head and his T-shirt is black. His loose cotton pants are black with thin red and white lines. They are newish looking and unripped. He’s the most fashionable of the men, the most handsome, and always offered Kim seconds of the hot blackcurrant tea or the lemon squash when we reached camp each day.
Kim flirts with him in her basic Spanish. She giggles and he smiles at her while he serves everyone else.
Eduardo re-enters, scoops up the money box, claps his hands and gives us the outline for the night again. ‘Sleep well.’
The water makes me and a lot of the other hikers ill. I know, drinking it, that my body is reacting to it. Gag reflex, throat warming up, stomach closing in. But I have no choice. The altitude is too intense to not stay hydrated.
Kim has her headtorch on when I wake with a stomach ache. She checks her face with a compact mirror and puts the Vaseline for her feet on her lips, smooths her eyebrows with it. She brushes her hair.