Do you wanna climb a mountain?

 Have you ever climbed a mountain? It looks so easy in the documentaries. The people in the pictures look tired, but they look so happy.

It, however, is not as straightforward as it seems. You would think that it was just a matter of going up to the top with a few minutes of rest in between.

Well, it is quite the opposite. From my trips to Koforidua and Aburi, I realized that we were going around the mountain while climbing. I can imagine that climbing Mount Everest will be the same.

The breaks are sometimes longer than you expect because you don’t realize how tired you are till you stop to catch a breath, and soon one minute becomes 3 hours.

Getting up and continuing the journey takes more effort after each stop, more motivation, and sometimes more force. You don’t want to start the painful walk, you don’t want to start sweating, and you just want to comfortably snuggle under your cover cloth and dream of unicorns and castles.

Sometimes, the summit goes out of view for a while. You know that you are making progress, but you just can't seem to see the top. To the inexperienced climber, you are probably losing your way, and you should always have the summit in view.

Other times you will have to make a detour through forests and bushes because either a road has been blocked or it’s shorter to go through there. You end up ducking branches and jumping over pits, and, if you are unlucky, you may fall into a pit or two. 

When you finally make it to a flat, you forget all the pain that you have been through and burst into a smile. You get a burst of energy, and then you march on your journey.

You can decide to go mountain climbing alone. However, that will be very unwise. You will need someone to wake you up when you oversleep; someone to say "On y va!” when you rest for too long; someone to sleep by in the dark; someone to help you out of the pit, and someone for many other things.

After days or weeks of walking, you finally reach the peak and put your flag there.

“Renette was here some,”  it says, and you take a lot of pictures to show the world. Then everything that you went through makes sense, and it doesn’t matter anymore.