Port Elizabeth’s Andisa Liba was doing well on her gruelling Mount Kilimanjaro climb, #Trek4Mandela Project Manager Nkateko Mabale said on Monday.
Liba is one of 30 South Africans who will summit the mountain on statesman Nelson Mandela’s birthday on Wednesday.
The group embarked on the expedition to raise funds for feminine hygiene products for impoverished pupils around the country.
Mabale, who arrived in South Africa on Monday, said she had left the team in high spirits.
“I left the group in Tanzania two days ago [Saturday] because my role is to ensure that they were well settled and they were ready for the climb.
“Everyone, according to our WhatsApp group, is fine. You won’t be able to speak to them as they have since lost network coverage.
“According to the itinerary, they are having a rest day today and will start climbing again tomorrow. They are set to summit on the 18th,” Mabale said.
Before leaving on the taxing climb, Liba told The Herald she had adopted two Bay schools and would be buying sanitary pads for the girls for a year.
She will be starting with Kama Primary School, New Brighton, and then move over to Molefe Senior Primary, also in New Brighton.
She said she had spent a short while at the schools and had been keen to help as she remembered vividly how awful it was for some of the girls, who had resorted to using socks as sanitary towels.
Mabale said the aim was to get 100 climbers on the mountain this year in celebration of what would have been Madiba’s 100th birthday.
Another group of climbers will take on the tallest mountain on the African continent later this year.
Among this group, who hope to summit on August 9 to commemorate Women’s Day, is Port Elizabeth-born journalist Gillian Pillay, who will complete the climb for a third time.
All money raised from her climb will be donated to girls from her former high school, St Thomas Secondary in the Bay’s northern areas.
The 2018 expedition aims to raise enough funds to ensure that 500,000 girls will not miss a day of school because they do not have access to sanitary pads. The aim is to buy six million packets of pads.