WU 20 Apr

In the opening credits of the Greatest Movie of All Time just before Butch tries to talk Sundance out of shooting it up with the guy in the saloon up on the screen flashes, "Most of what follows is true". I would suspect that phrase would apply well here.

This is the unofficial collective journal of the 4 brave souls who took it upon themselves to climb the highest peak in Central and Western Africa. In your atlas you will find this monstrosity in the west of Cameroon not far from the Nigerian border. For reasons not clearly known, this group braved the elements and completed the quest. This quartet of hearty trekkers consisted of:

The Kid - Chuck. An energetic young man of 17 currently in grade 11 at RFIS. A student of The Coach and on his 3^rd trip up the mountain. Divides his time between shooting baskets and shooting lizards with his trusty slingshot. Originally from Buffalo, NY.

The Jock - Marc. A very kind and respectful 19-year-old Cameroonian who divides his time between running 10k a day and jumping rope. Next-door neighbor and assistant to The Coach on both the boy's and girl's basketball teams.

The Coach - Coach. Experienced in outdoor survival and at age 35 is promoted to unofficial leader of the expedition. Submitted the only reason for the climb. However, "because it's there" was poorly received.

The Guide - Francis. A local man in his early 20's from the village of Bova not far from our jumping off point. Wise and amiable and in his 4^th year of guiding and his village's current wrestling champion.

Day 1.

Yaoundé to Buea (Boy-a) via bus to Douala, (Doo-ah-la) 2 taxis to bushtaxi place, bushtaxi to Tiko, (Tee-ko) and again to Buea. Taxi to Ecotourism Office. ~300km.

Chuck. Dude, this is gonna be awesome. Coach asked me to go and climb the mountain and I am so pumped. My dad said it was ok and I think it will be fun. The bushtaxi drivers totally ripped us off, though. Whoever heard of buying a ticket and then getting charged again for luggage?

Marc. I am so happy that Coach was kind enough to ask me to join him on this journey. I have never been to Buea. We arrived in Buea in time to get taxi to Limbe (Lim-bay) to go to the beach but the taximan would not go until we were full. Finally we paid for the 7^th person's seat in the Toyota Corolla just so we could get there before daylight is gone. We ended up skipping the beach and playing basketball in a park with some guys.

Coach. The bus ride was good except for the in-flight movie playing at maximum volume in French. The bushtaxi in Douala, however, finally got going after an hour of waiting for it to fill up. 19 people in a 15-passenger van where 12 would be crowded. We meet the guide at 7am at the office and go from there. Weather looks good and I can't wait. We have hired a porter to carry our water and heavy food to the camps. I thought about skipping that but we decided to help out the local economy.

Day 2.

Buea to Hut 2 – 6 km. Starting elevation = 915m (2,975 ft) Ending 2,800m (9,100 ft)

Chuck. Today we did the first leg of the climb and it was awesome. Coach had somehow transfigured into a 19 year old. It was cool to see him with hair. I got a little sunburn but other wise finished ok. Walking through the rainforest was so cool. There were little farms with cocoyams and beans on both sides of the trail. It has grown up a bit since I was here in February. Marc was singing the whole time and Francis knows so much cool stuff about the mountain. Dude, this is awesome!

Marc. I find myself wanting to run up the trail but I decided to keep with the group. I can not wait to see the top. I have never been so high up. The first time I looked back down once we got through the forest and into the savannah and saw the whole of Buea I was frightened! Our camp is a tin shack with 3 big rooms and a long, raised platform of wood planks for beds. We were the last ones up here but I am sure that once the Coach gets all the kinks worked out we will be going much faster.

Coach. It was very hot and sticky today. We are joined by 2 other groups each with a guide and a porter going up. One Dutch couple and 2 American college girls from the university in Yaoundé doing a semester abroad. The Dutch couple are very tall and thin and beautiful. They look like they just stepped out of an L.L. Bean catalog. Their packs appear to be made of some nearly weightless space-age material engineered by NASA or something. They have dehydrated apricots, bananas and a pack of instant powder that somehow reconstituted into a 3-course meal. They are tenting it behind the shack out of the wind and the girls are in the middle room next to us. The 3 guides and 3 porters are on the other end. Chuck is holding his own but if Marc doesn't ease up a bit he will wear himself out. I suppose with more experience he will learn to pace himself. The girls turned in early because they are heading out at 4am to summit early and get back down tomorrow. The rest of us gathered around a nice fire for a while and had some laughs but all are turning in shortly. It is starting to get chilly but we should be ok.

Francis. We Africans coll eet "Fako". De fahst Portuguese saylahs too see eet colled eet de "Chariot of God". De map maykahs jost coll eet Mount Cameroon. De groop seem to bee do-eeng goot. De Coach ahsk menny queshon. Eef I deed not know betta I wood say ee wass jost aving long rest.

Day 3.

Hut 2 to summit and down the backside to the West Camp – 14 km. Starting elevation = 2,800m (9,100 ft), Summit 4,095m (13,435 ft), Ending 2,500m (8,125 ft)

Chuck. Dude, it got really cold last night. Good thing I have this big coat. The first part of the climb today was tough but we had the wind at our backs. Me and Marc threw a bunch of extra stuff in the porters bag to make up for the food and water we had for dinner. It got colder the farther we went up but not bad. The walk down the backside was fun because we could just slide on the loose volcanic gravel with each step. At one point Coach and I were walking together through a big valley and it was like we were Frodo and Sam from Lord of the Rings except without the creepy big-eyed dude following us. I thought I caught a glimpse of him once but it was just Coach. Coach has so many stories about stuff but I don't want to insult him by telling him we have to keep hiking and catch up. Sometime on the way to the summit he transformed back into his old self. I hope he gets all the dirt off his tongue from it scraping the ground. I won't say anything. I still have one more quarter of P.E. and I need an A. The fried spam sandwiches, fried corn and fried something (I didn't want to ask) that Coach made were great. I would like to have tried some of the beef stew and apple fritters the Dutch couple made but Coach said that he would not disgrace the mountain by eating such froo-froo stuff so I better not either. Off to bed. This is so awesome!

Marc. I do not know how people survive in this cold. I can not feel my hands or my feet. I did not sleep one minute last night. Between the freezing temperatures and Coach's stomach groaning it was a long night. The climb was fun and getting to the top was very good. I have never been so cold. It was 0 degrees centigrade with a 50kmh wind at the summit. We did not stay there long. It was very good hiking through the old lava flows. I really liked seeing the layers of ash that fell and now are being washed away. It was a long hike but I am having much fun.

Coach. My pack seems much lighter today. It's almost like someone took stuff out. One thing I wish would have been put in is some Tums. It was very hazy at the summit so we couldn't see very far. Coming down was tougher than I thought because the soil was very loose. The unrelenting, endless fields of volcano flow are beginning to annoy. We walked over 6 km through softball sized sharp volcanic rocks. I wore the tread clean off the bottoms of my shoes. I am afraid for Marc because if he doesn't relax a bit he will be hurting. He is a big boy but he didn't have to keep coming back down the trail to see if Chuck and me were ok. Someday he will get the idea of hiking. The Guide and The Porter must have overheard me telling Chuck about going to pistol matches with my brother Chris. I saw them a few times looking at me, using their fingers for pistols and chuckling. Must be a cultural thing. Soon after lights out last night we were overcome with rats. Apparently they make a home out of our end of the shack and came at us in full force as soon as the flashlights went off. After an exhausting 2 hours of eradication attempts we appealed to our next room neighbors. After a brief explanation they acquiesced to allow us to share their rat-free quarters. I thought of asking one of the ladies if I could use her coat for a pillow but, discretion being the better part of valor, I chose not sensing that she was oddly out of sorts at the time.

Francis. De Coach seems too bee not well. I told de portah dat inn my veelige eef wee had a goat een ees cone-dee-shun wee wood jost shoot eet. Wee had a good laff about dat.

Day 4.

West Camp to Buea - 7km. Starting elevation = 2,500m (8,125 ft) Ending = 915m (2,975 ft)

Chuck. The volcanic craters from the 1999 eruption were cool. One still had tons of heat and sulfur coming out. Our hut last night was made entirely out of straw. It was awesome. I slept like a rock. We had to leave early this morning because there was a big storm coming in. We wanted to get off the ridge before we got wet. We hiked across some really old lava flows and then through the rainforest. It was so thick you couldn't see 20 ft in front of you! I am beginning to worry about The Coach. I looked back once and it appeared that he had turned into a gray-haired gnome. He was moving so slow and hunched over. I figured it was just the altitude messing with my head. We got out to the village about 11am and caught a taxi to the office. I was glad to see that The Coach was just fine when we got to the village. I think I have been watching too many movies. We are just back from Francis' village and are heading out to the bus stop. I am so glad I came. This was SO awesome!

Marc. I was greeted this morning to the sound of thunder. I stepped out of the hut and saw lightning flashing. Living in the rainforest all my life, this would not normally be cause for alarm. Except this time I was looking DOWN on it! I have seen so many fascinating things on this trip. Hiking down through the rainforest we saw many kinds of trees including Mango, Avocado, Fichus and the usual Banana and Plantain. We heard some monkeys but did not see them. Many birds were out. When we were close to the village we saw some small farms with cocoyams and beans. I am so glad to be warm again. I hope they have a different movie on the bus home.

Coach. I was chatting with a Navy Veteran last summer before coming to Cameroon and he asked me, "When did the Jungle turn into a Rainforest?" I told him I thought it was in '92 when Billary Clinton became President. The hike down through the forest was interesting. Apparently it is not environmentally possible to be hiking through the RAINforest without being rained on. The muddy downhill trail and my slick-soled shoes went together like the Vikings and the Super Bowl. I did however have a moment of enlightenment when we came around a corner in the forest not far from the village. There sitting on a stump in the distance was a local farmer from the village taking a break from tending his crops out of the rain. I was immediately overcome with a sense of real connectedness to the simpleness and peace to life here. I suddenly had a 2^nd wind and was feeling good. It wasn't until we got closer that I saw him eating a Snickers bar and talking on his cell phone. How depressing. We went over to Francis' village to see the sight(s) and meet his family. His grandparents were home and we had the pleasure of meeting them. Grandpa was a very colorful character. Red shirt, green pants, yellow hair (I can't explain that even if I tried) and spoke English well. I couldn't understand a word of it but he spoke well. He is the local "traditional medicine" man. Francis said that nobody from the village has gone to the hospital in a very long time. I'm not sure if that means he is good at his job or just too slow to get on the scene. We visited the grassy fields where they hold wrestling matches and the sacred bush where they do the Elephant Dance. We saw Francis' father's beehives. Apparently there are 2 ways to raise honey. The modern big wooden boxes like we know and the traditional way of stuffing the whole thing in a hollowed out tree. He is leaning more towards the modern now because they don't use suits or protective gear and the traditional way seems to take longer to extract from the tree than the bees will allow. I hope Gramps has a recipe for bee stings. The most interesting thing I saw was the "Ahl-beeno" graveyard. It seems that this village has a higher than usual rate of albino people and they do stand out. Albinos are viewed as special in the village and are often taken care of very well but still socially unaccepted by the older crowd. They are all buried in the same place under this enormous tree just outside the village. Well, I would say that the trip was successful and I do look forward to my next adventure.

Francis. I can not bee-leeve de "veelige veesit" treek work again. Eet ees soo eesy too get free taxi ride home aftah a climb! I ope De Coach ree-covahs soon. Ee seems like goot man. Bad tipper but goot man.

In all seriousness, I did thoroughly enjoy my time on this trip. My companions were a lot of fun and we all had a good time and saw some really fantastic sites. I thought it would be fun to tell this story this way. It is interesting how one's mind will wander after 10 hours hiking through freezing cold fields of rock. I hope you like it and if you want to know more about Mt. Cameroon go to:

http://web.ukonline.co.uk/mountains/cam.htm.

I will say that it was exhilarating and exhausting and probably the toughest thing I have ever done. I do thank the Good Lord for 2 things: we all made it back safe and injury-free and despite the ceaseless wind at all times, it seemed that no matter what direction we were going it was always at our backs. I know that He was looking out for us and used the wind to keep us pressing on. Despite walking like Frankenstein for 2 days, we had a lovely Easter Day celebration. We, and some other missionaries, were invited to an early dinner by another couple from TX. Betsy made a nice bunny cake and we had a lot of fun. That night, we invited a group of our Cameroonian friends over for dinner. Ham prices being what they are, we decided to give them an American meal. Hawaiian Pizza and Coke. Just in case, one guest brought a dish of fufu corn and some jama jama. Both traditional Cameroonian favorites. I tried the jama jama and a little fufu corn but I sighted in on the pizza. It was a great time. I took the men out on the patio and showed them the windmill we built in Geo 9 class. They were impressed that young kids would make something like that. We are truly blessed with some good friends we have met here and hope we can raise the funds to be able to come back and build more relationships through His work.

Take Care and God Bless.

Brian & Betsy