Hiking Boots Vs. Flip Flops

I came to visit a family in Mararaba, Nigeria who are missionaries in Sierra Leone working with the CRC Church.  They quickly became family to me while we were in Sierra Leone.  When I arrived in their hometown, I asked them if they had ever climbed the hill behind their house.  After telling me they had never climbed it, we decided this must be accomplished before I left.  While hiking, I was thinking about how different my own experiences hiking in the U.S have been to hiking in Nigeria and Sierra Leone so I thought I would share them with you.   

Getting Ready to Hike:

When we go hiking in the U.S, we like to have our name brand hiking clothes: Patagonia, Keen, Camelback, etc.  We like to wear special lightweight clothes that dry quickly and wear hiking boots that weigh too much you can barely lift your foot.  Your feet produce a horrible smell after a long hike and your hiking boots have to be kept outside because of the stench.  Here, you go hiking with flip-flops.  This provides a stench free hiking experience for your feet and your flip-flops can continue to be worn for any occasion (as long as it didn't break on the way).  However, if you are a girl, you might prefer to hike in flats.  You wear long clothes to cover your body, despite the heat, because you never know how thick the forest will be. 

When hiking in the U.S, you always make sure you eat a big breakfast before you go.  You will probably pack snacks for the hike like cliff bars, trail mix, etc.  You will pack water bottles into backpacks and if you are really lucky you will have a camelback to drink water at your leisure.  Here, we woke up, put on our clothes and were ready to go.  We didn’t eat anything before leaving at 6:00am.  I suggested we bring water and biscuits to eat along the way.  If I had not said anything, we would have gone with just ourselves, our phones and cameras.  

Hiking to the Top:

When you go hiking in the U.S, there is usually a trail that is well marked.  You will also have a map of the trails in case you get lost. The map will show you how long you have hiked.  When you go up a hill, the trail will generally be a gradual incline so the hike is not too steep.  Here, there is no path.  Occasionally you might see remnants of a path the Fulani use to graze their cattle, but aside from that, you are on your own.  As long as you keep your destination ahead of you, eventually you will make it.  But you never know how long it will take you. Unfortunately for us, the journey looked shorter than it actually was.  There is no gradual incline to reach the top, you just hike straight up.  Then you hike straight down, which proved to be more difficult than hiking up.  

Along the way you might see some animals.  In the U.S, you admire them from afar.  Maybe take a few pictures if you don’t scare them off.  But here, we spent 20 minutes trying to catch the animal we saw to take back home, kill and eat.  Unfortunately, we were not quick enough to catch it. 

The group minus John Calvin the photographer

Reaching the Top:

When we reached the top of the hill, there was a pile of over 100 clay jars that looked like they had been there for hundreds of years.  If you saw these in the U.S, you would take pictures, and maybe pick one up to admire.  But here, I was warned not to touch them.  Later when we reached the house, Reverand Bahago told me that once a man brought one of the clay pots down from the hill.  When the community found out, they charged him several cows and he had to pay a fine.  They needed to appease the ancestral spirits that were living on top of the hill.  I learned you do not mess with ancestral artifacts.

Once you reach the top in the U.S, you relax.  You eat your snacks, take a few pictures, find some shade, and maybe take a nap.  Here, we got to the top, took a few pictures, drank some water, and then someone said “let’s go!”  I wished they were joking.  We had just got up the hill.  Nevertheless, we went back down. 

After the Hike:

In Sierra Leone, I only had a scrub brush to clean my feet.  Unfortunately a scrub brush does not do the trick after a long hike.  In Nigeria they have pumas stones which I highly appreciated while recovering from our hike.  After we cleaned up, we enjoyed a big meal and looked at ALL  the pictures we took while hiking.  Not only did we look at the pictures, but everyone who came to the house to greet also looked at all the pictures.  

Something as small as hiking can be a lesson in cultural differences.  We do things differently.  Sometimes we get so set in our ways we don’t like to be open to a different way of doing things.  I was always told to hike wearing tennis shoes and ride my bike wearing tennis shoes.  I was always told to stay on the trail otherwise you might get lost. But maybe hiking in flip-flops is not so bad after all.  Maybe you wont always get lost while hiking without a path.  

The view of Mararaba from the top of the hill