“Are we there yet?”

We woke up at 4am after a night out and hopped in the van that would take us to Mount Cameroon. “It’ll just be a quick two-hour hike there and back,” said Arianne, trying to encourage us. I have very little experience hiking, so I mentally prepared myself for shortness of breath and throbbing thighs. We watched the beautiful sunrise as we were on our way up a small hill, thinking that the 2-hour journey began when we got out of the van. About thirty minutes into the walk, we read a sign that indicated that the trail was only then officially beginning. Already out of breath, we looked at each other wondering what we had gotten ourselves into.

At some unknown point, we lost half of the group. Arianne, Kizzy, and I were in the front, seemingly conquering the trek while also stopping every five minutes to catch our breath. Every one of our steps was imprinted in the muddy trail, and all I could see were trees and leaves blocking the sky, the top of the mountain nowhere in sight. It was fun at first. The fresh smell of nature, the adrenaline of doing something I’ve never done before in a foreign country, my increasing heartbeat from exercising… And then we reached the two-hour mark. We read a sign that said we were entering the steepest part of the mountain. Arianne, surprised at how long it took us to reach this point that she’s reached previously in half of the time, looked at us and laughed. From that point, she told us we had about 30 more minutes left.

I began to believe that Cameroonians either have a very poor sense of time or that the universe suddenly extended the length of seconds and minutes. During our pre-departure orientation, we were warned that Cameroon is a very laid back country and that sticking to schedules isn’t something we should expect. I didn’t have a problem with this because I couldn’t imagine any circumstances where this would be troublesome; at least not until I was 3 hours deep into Africa’s second tallest mountain with no way to back out.

My legs started cramping, shaking, and giving out on me. My sweatshirt was sticking to my arms from the sweat dripping all over my body. Right before I felt myself giving up, we began to see sun rays peeking through the trees. “We must be close.” I thought. Arianne, who was hardly fazed by this trajectory, adopted a new time estimate: “Five more minutes!” The stops to catch my breath were closer to 30 second intervals at this point and I knew all I had to do was push myself for ‘five more minutes’ to reach the top. Every time I stopped I began to ask, “Are we there yet?” or “Is this it?!”, hoping that I could speak the top of the mountain into existence. From the first time that Arianne told us we had 5 minutes left until we actually got to the mountain top, another hour had passed.

It took us a total of not 2, not 3, but 4 hours to reach the summit. My group got there half an hour before everyone else, giving me enough time to reflect on what exactly had happened. How did I just hike for 4 hours? How many times did Arianne significantly underestimate how much longer we had left? How were we supposed to get down? We couldn’t even see anything because we were so high up that the clouds were blocking the view! I didn’t know if I should feel angry, accomplished, or simply tired. And if this wasn’t  bad enough, the impending hike down was almost worse. This time, though, I had no expectation of how long it would take to reach the van that was waiting to take us home. On the way down, amidst trying to see through the obnoxious mist and not slip on the muddy rocks, I began to reflect on what I had done to get myself into this situation. Instead of continuing to feel sorry for all of us who had suffered through this arduous trek, I  started to think about how lucky I was to simply be able to say I hiked (partially) up Mount Cameroon. It doesn’t matter that it took us twice as long as we thought or that it was way harder than expected. In the end, we didn’t quit and experienced firsthand the importance of patience and perseverance–the hard way.

Jennifer Aguirre ’18 is studying Psychology and completing a 5-College Certificate in Culture, Health and Science. Although she is not currently on the pre-med track, she hopes to go to medical school in the future and work with underserved communities. She loves traveling and was fortunate to spend 3 weeks in Cameroon with members from the Bold Women’s Leadership Network, where she had the amusing and memorable experience described above.

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