The Mount Cameroon Race: Going to See the Queen

Chris has posted quite a bit about our recent trip to the South West Province, but I asked him to save one particular piece of reporting for his slow-blogging wife. Now that it’s March (March!), it’s time I told you why we really went to Buea. Sure it was a work-related trip, and we spent most of our time hearing stories from micro-loan recipients and potential applicants. But the real reason we went exactly when we did was because I wanted to see the queen.

Toward the beginning of each year, Buea is the site of a little-known but remarkable running event, the Mount Cameroon Race of Hope. Mount Cameroon, a 13,500 – foot tall volcano that looms over the town, sets the stage. Then on the designated weekend in late January or early February, hundreds of runners gather to tackle the mountain’s punishing slopes. Most are Cameroonian men, but some come from other places, and some are women. It was these women I wanted to see, particularly one. Watching a (rather annoying) travel DVD about Cameroon before we left, we learned of a woman named Sarah Etonge, mother of seven or eight children, who lives in Buea and competes in the mountain race each year, usually wearing jelly shoes. (You know, those clear plastic things that were popular in the 80s.) She’s been the first woman to finish numerous times, earning local celebrity status and the honorary title ‘Queen of the Mountain.’ I really wanted to see Sarah run.

Sunday the 17^th of February, the morning of the race dawned cool and hazy. Perhaps I should say races, for there are four or five competitions, with different distances and categories. All runners started from Buea’s main stadium at about 7:00am, and by the time we walked out to the main road shortly after 7:30, a stream of red- and green-shirted harriers was passing by, running to a point just out of sight from our vantage point near the Presbyterian guest house, then turning to run back down again. This was clearly one of the shorter races, and included a large number of women. Some time later, after we stopped back at our room and prepared to make our way down into town for the day, we saw occasional gray-shirted young men striding down the mountain on well-muscled legs, yet another competition. The marathoners were already on their way up the mountain, not to return for some hours yet, because their course would take them all the way to Mount Cameroon’s summit and back down.

We passed the time at our friend Meg’s house, eating breakfast and trying to catch some race coverage on TV or radio. Having missed the marathoners on their ascent, I was determined not to miss a moment of their descent, so Chris walked with me up to the main road just above the stadium where the runners would finish. It was still hazy, but no longer cool, the noonday sun glaring through the dust. We sat in the shade of a church, watched a small goat drag its cement block tether around, waved at a busload of American college students, witnessed the dramatic and dusty take-off of a helicopter. Bit by bit, the streets lined with other spectators, gendarmes swatting people back with belts if they encroached too far onto the road.

At last, the first male racer, a scrap of dark cloth pinned to his dirtied white jersey, came into view, escorted by a truck with a TV camera, gendarmes, and a small entourage of supporters.
Then another, then another, then a yellow-shirted relay racer, a cloth sash marking him as the official runner of the last leg, flanked by his two teammates.
Some of the men had others running alongside them, carrying water or offering support, and others were alone with little fanfare.
While most wore conventional running shoes, a few wore jellies.
Some looked strong, others as if they might fall down soon, but all looked dusty, sweaty, and somewhat the worse for wear. Each of them had a small dark scrap of cloth pinned to his shirt.
One man, on precariously skinny legs, had his forehead all bandaged up and was more dirt-spattered than the rest, the casualty of a headlong fall on the way down the mountain.

Finally the first woman ran by, her approach heralded by a siren, also with her entourage of supporters, gendarmes, and a few vehicles. She was young and muscular, in her twenties I believe, wearing a red jersey. Surely Sarah must be coming soon.

Unfortunately, this is when we ran out of space on our camera, because Sarah did come soon. A few minutes after the first woman passed, there was a commotion from up the road. Numerous cars processed along the race course, people leaning out windows and waving flags, running in the streets, holding cameras…and there she was. In the midst of all the joyful commotion, a slight woman in red strode determinedly on, twists of hair flying around her face, unruffled by the party going on around her. She just kept running. I could feel it from the general happiness in the air, but I tapped a person next to me and asked “Was that Sarah?” “Yes,” he replied, “that was the queen of the mountain.”

Wow. I had seen her. It really was that good, and I was still kicking myself for missing her on the way up. We went back to Meg’s house for a delicious lunch, and watched the medal ceremony on television. The sound was awful and the picture not much better, but we could make out Sarah’s small figure, cloaked in a navy blue ‘skylotto’ windbreaker, as she was given special honors for not only today’s strong finish, but for her lifetime achievements and the honor she brought to running in Cameroon. She was even given a job as part of her award, quite a big deal in a country where women seldom work outside the home and men are often unemployed too.

On our way back up to the guest house where we were staying, Chris and I stopped to look for a special statue of Sarah, freshly unveiled and dedicated that very afternoon. To our surprise, the statue had already been toppled from its base, and was lying on the ground. Quite frankly, it was a crappy statue, and looked more like someone’s giant paper mache project. We learned later that Sarah’s fans had toppled the statue, demanding a better representation of the queen of the mountain.

This post is long, I know, but the best part is here at the end. The following morning as Chris as I were leaving our room in the guest house, we heard some voices, then saw two people in the hallway. They were looking for a woman (named Ann, interestingly enough) staying in the room next to ours, and asked if we knew where she was. We didn’t know where Ann had gone, but I tried to stretch the conversation as I took in the two people before us. The large man with a shaved head didn’t get my attention, but I couldn’t stop looking at the small woman in running shoes and a navy windbreaker, her face framed by twists of hair…could it be? I asked to see the back of her jacket, and when she turned to reveal the same ‘skylotto’ I’d seen on television the previous afternoon, I knew. It was Sarah Etonge, right in our guest house!!!! We congratulated her on her race the day before a talked a bit more, absolutely amazed at our chance meeting with the woman of the hour.

When we spoke of our hopes to return to Buea to climb Mount Cameroon (at a nice reasonable pace over two or three days), she told us to give her a call, as she knew some good guides, and occasionally guided some hikers herself. So yes, we totally got Sarah Etonge’s number. We may or may not get to hike up the mountain with her (I’d probably go into orbit with joy), but that day I felt like about the luckiest girl-runner in the world, because I got to see the queen.