I never said I had a map...

                                                               (plow-donkeys)

From some point in my herstory (last fall):

“Want to go for a quick morning hike with Charmayne and me?  It'll just be for a couple hours.  There’s a trail that leads right up the mountains and straight to the Menagouba Crater Lakes.” 

“Heck yeah,” I said excitedly to the volunteer veteran.  Julia had this calming confidence that came with being a two-year volunteer.  I trusted her.
                                                                      ...

The five hour mark was rapidly approaching and having yet reached the twin lakes, I started to get really nervous.  Julia was booking it determinately to our destination despite being un-admittedly but knowingly lost.  Charmayne was somewhere behind me.  I was trying to keep up with Julia's super speed while still keeping Charmayne in sight -- a tricky game.  There wasn’t a path to these lakes.  There were many, and I was pretty sure we hadn’t chosen the right one.   I was wearing my dorky outdoor sandals that only New Englanders, Peace Corps Volunteers, Whole Food shoppers, and whitewater rafting instructors wear (and probably incorrectly think are acceptably fashionable).  Not long-distance hiking gear.  The worsening blisters were starting to make things a lot less enjoyable.  I was rationing the tiny bit of water that I had left – maybe I should have brought more than a half of a bottle.  I only had my small multi-tool (a last minute grab), my Cameroonian ID, a phone with no reception, and a few thousand franc CFA on my person.  No pack.

“Didn’t Nuru say take a left between the houses and just follow that path?” Julia asked. 

I hadn’t done much listening.  Plus, we had found the path she was talking about.  That wasn’t the problem.  It was the billions of shoot-offs.  We should have stopped making bad decisions at the one hour mark and turned back; we should have stopped saying things like “that looks like a good way.”  Why didn’t we ask someone who had done the hike?

It was getting a little late in the day, and this was several hours after a so-called quick hike.  There were no markings, blazes, signs, or even a clear trail to show the way.  This wasn't like some U.S. national park with its helpful and jolly park rangers, shelters, and Smokey the Bear.  This was a huge mountain range in which villagers lived quite dispersedly throughout its seemingly never-ending vastness. What if we couldn’t find our way back?  We hadn’t found the lakes, hadn’t passed a Cameroonian in two hours, and hadn't dropped any crumbs!  Oh shit.  I was going to be in one of those stories, “…and in other small-potato news: three female Peace Corps Volunteers [none of whose names are worth remembering] who were out for morning exercise disappear into the untamed Cameroonian wild and are never seen or heard from again.”  I saw some goats.  If things got desperate…

I started to internally freak out.  We had screwed ourselves.  

Julia yelled “Bonjour!” 

Two young teenagers were herding cattle across a stream.   Oh, sweet baby Jesus! They didn’t speak much French, but they guided us to the “correct” path and pointed the direction they thought we should be heading.   Twenty minutes later we came by an old gentleman and asked him too for directions.  An hour and a half later, he delivered us personally to Woman Lake.  We sat there fairly quietly in a mesmerized state.  It was stunning.  In fact, as my feet were resting, I realized the whole hike had been gorgeous -- the mountain range itself, the lake, the Cameroonian saviors.  All of the actual and psychological ups and downs had been completely worth it.  The three of us sat on some rocks and listened to the old man speak a bit in his thick Pigeon.  I didn’t understand much -- he was telling us about the mountain village on the other side of Man Lake in which he lived and of the spirits who inhabited the volcano-made lakes.

By then, it was late afternoon.  He put us on a path down the mountain.  We passed more horses, cattle, and mountain villages – tiny little settlements without any kind of modern conveniences, separated greatly from the rest of the world (the type of community I originally envisioned myself living in when I pictured Peace Corps life).  We were finally down.  And alive!  I found a mama selling grilled corn and my favorite Cameroonian prunes in the valley town.  Rarely do things taste as good as they did in that moment.  Sweet victory.  The day had been a success -- a beautiful and unexpected little (long) gallivant.  

For Peace Corps Volunteers, seldom is there an easy or any already paved route.  Things in our work and daily personal lives often don’t go "right" or at all as planned, yet, somehow, things always seem to have a way of working themselves out.  Despite our "path" being sometimes amazingly frustrating, being able to venture down it is something for which I am truly grateful.  Sometimes, quite regrettably, I forget or don't know how to properly express how fortunate I feel for my Peace Corps adventure and getting to live in Cameroon, but I need to do better.  Not every day in Cameroon is quite so memorable or at all enjoyable as that one proved to be, but often enough, the days here do hold  some sort of fascinating newness or needed education for me – sought and unsought.  This is my life for now, and it's pretty a-ok.  

...

“For a minute there, I was thinking about how in the world we were going to catch and prepare that goat,” I mentioned later.

“I was trying to decide which one of you I was going to eat,” Charmayne replied, disturbingly emotionless.

"

"Let's eat and drink for tomorrow we die."