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Bangladeshi climber meets hero

National seven summits climbing hero from Bangladesh connects with Canadian author and climber
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Climbing legends Bangladeshi Seven Summits climber Wasfia Nazreen poses with Pat Morrow in Morrow's home at Wilmer. Photo BY pat morrow

For Wasfia Nazreen, visiting the Canadian Rockies and meeting Pat Morrow meant connecting with one of her biggest heroes.

A Bangladeshi native who's lived in Dharamsala, India (the Dalai Lama's home in exile) Nazreen was introduced through the Canada Tibet Committee's Calgary branch president.

"I've been reading Pat's stuff since I was in university and picked up a book in the library," Nazreen said. "He's like a legend in my world."

Beyond a social call however, Nazreen's recent visit helped her prepare to climb Antarctica's Mount Vinson this month, part of her project to climb the Seven Summits. Morrow, a former Canmore resident now living in Wilmer, B.C., was the first person to complete the seven summits in 1986. Nazreen's Rockies experience included snowshoeing in deep powder and dragging heavy tires across a frozen lake.

The idea for her project, Bangladesh on Seven Summits: Women Reaching New Heights, came to her while snowbound in a remote Nepali village for seven weeks in 2010.

"I decided I wanted to do something for my country," she said. "Whenever I would say I was from Bangladesh, people would say, 'oh, you guys get a lot of floods,' or they'd mention the poverty. While that is true, we've also come a long way."

Raised in an affluent Muslim family (from whom she receives no money) her father refused to finance her university education, preferring to support her brother's ambitions. Undeterred, Nazreen borrowed money from an uncle in London. At 17, she left home, enrolled in a university on a scholarship in Atlanta then transferred to Scotland's University of Edinburgh, before heading back to Atlanta to graduate. She then returned to Asia to work for aid organizations, including CARE Bangladesh, helping sex workers, trafficked women and efforts to stop violence against women.

Motivated to mark her country's 40th anniversary — March 26, 2011 — she launched her Seven Summits project on Europe's highest, Mount Elbrus, but bad weather prevented her from summitting. She climbed Africa's highest, Kilimanjaro, via its least travelled route with a female guide/friend from Alaska, experiencing a thunderstorm and snow on the summit — something the locals hadn't seen in 10 years. A month later she became the first Bengali to climb South America's Aconcagua, summitting on Dec. 16, 2011, the 40th anniversary of Bangladesh's Victory Day.

Having climbed to nearly 7,000 metres, she decided she was ready for Everest. An experienced high-altitude trekker who'd hiked to Base Camp 13 times, she hired a British trainer to improve her cardio. Sharing logistics with another company, her climbing team consisted of two Sherpas, whose language she speaks.

On the mountain for two months, the sound of night-time avalanches became "like a lullaby to fall asleep by." With a sunburned tongue and coughing blood, she descended to Dingboche village to rest for a couple of days, doubting her summit chances.

"I asked Mother Goddess, I've given everything — relationships, material possessions — what have I not given you? I realized it was my hair; I'd been growing it for seven years. I promised if I reached the summit..."

At Camp IV she stayed warm sharing a tent with six Sherpa "brothers." Climbing with just one Sherpa on summit day, twice he used the rope he carried to set a route circumventing the long queue of climbers.

"I crossed seven dead bodies, five from this season," Nazreen recalled. "I actually kicked (Canadian Shriya Shah-Klorfine's body) on the way up, I didn't see her in the dark. My emotions were haywire; she was someone I'd talked with at Base Camp. I'd had tea with her. I sat down and said a prayer for her."

Still, Nazreen never felt scared as she summitted May,26, 2012.

"I had in my head Nima reminding me, 'sister, you have to conserve your energy,'" she recalled. "You always have to push your mind, find clarity.

"But the experience I had from the Death Zone up — I felt there was a spirit. I felt protected somehow. The mountain — you feel it. It is alive."

Starting out at 9:20 p.m., they summitted at 6:41 a.m., at sunrise. Straddling the ridge between Nepal and Tibet (where she is unwelcome because a Chinese officer once found her carrying a book with the Dalai Lama's photo), she felt grateful.

"It makes you feel so tiny as a human being," she said.

One compelling memory for Nazreen was navigating the crowded mountain.

"The worst thing was seeing so many helpless (climbers) up there, reaching out, pulling on you. After all my relief work — people in floods, earthquakes — these were helpless people, they looked like zombies. It was mentally draining. I feel so bad for the Sherpa community; they have to deal with this. The other thing that bothered me, there's so much trash up there."

Grateful, at base camp the Sherpas cut her hair and placed it inside a stupa, her way of "staying connected to the mountain."

Since then her connection to Everest has been inescapable, personally and in her home country.

When she returned to Bangaldesh she was hailed as a hero.

"I couldn't get off the plane," she explained. "It was a whole national thing — thousands (came). Twenty buses from my village," she recalled. "Now I can't even walk in the street (without being stopped). Fathers call, 'I want my daughter to learn from you.' But it's a positive thing. You just say a few lines and change their lives."

Thirty and single — an anomaly in her country — she's sold her property and her gold "wedding jewellery," slept on couches and borrowed money to finance her project. Rejected by 16 companies, for her ascent of Vinson she's partnered with BRAC, a Bangladeshi bank. In exchange she'll be their goodwill ambassador for a year.

"I'm very grateful. BRAC has been there since the birth of my country," she said, adding that her experience with microfinance and development makes the partnership, "a perfect fit" toward her intentions of motivating women.

Her ambitions include establishing an institution for girls to lead non-traditional lifestyles, with its students including victims of violence.

"It's not just about climbing the mountains; it's about getting the Bangladeshi community together and celebrating where women have come," she said.

"I'll really think I've climbed a mountain when I see 10 other girls from my country benefit."