A Saturday Morning Hike at the Redemption Camp Mowe

Myself and the New Redemption Camp Auditorium in the background

In today's edition of exploring, I show you the vast Redemption Camp site at Mowe in Ogun State.

Like I mentioned in one of my previous posts, this location is known as perhaps the largest camp gathering site for Christian faithfuls.

The old auditorium

Every year, they gather up to 3 million people at a time at the camp site for worship. Imagine the land mass that would accommodate 3 million people 'that's crazy vast!

It's however beyond just the camp site. They've amassed so much land and developed the premises so well that its name was actually changed from Redemption Camp to Redemption City.

Well today, my exploration takes me to the new camp Auditorium which is on the other extreme end of the camp.

It took about 4 to 5km of walking and about 8000 steps by my watch to get there with my friend from our accomodation.

We thought it would be an easy feat walking together, but we were disappointed as we were taken by Google Maps through the longer route recognized by it.

We had periods of disagreement and agreements as to how far and how best the location was.

But ultimately we had to walk a very long distance. We kept walking and walking, only seeing the camp in the horizon, almost beyond our reach.

The routes were dusty and unpaved, making the 'hike' more tiring

First glimpses of the camp roofs in the far horizon. So you see how far we'd have to walk

To make matters worse, we were hiking in crocs😅

We kept on with our journey and found a few landmarks. We even saw Fulani herdsmen grazing their cattle in the area.

We took a pause at this unsuspecting supermarket located in such an odd place, and got some snacks for the journey.

I caught an airplane at about 20x to 30x zoom magnification on my Note 20 Ultra

What was meant to be a casual walk was already turning into a full hike.

We came across a bridge with an underpassing river. There was a canoe by its side and we wondered if we were gradually leaving the civilized part of this area.

We could still see the new site in the horizon and kept walking.

I was quite surprised to see another supermarket and pharmacy after walking this far. There was in fact a barbecue joint there too, though not open.

At this stage, it was a point of no return as we had walked far more than we thought we would.

We finally arrived at the road that lead to the gates of the camp. And saw the long stretch of road we would have to walk.

The long stretch of road could be seen in the distance before getting to the road leading to it

By the time we hit the start of the road, it dawned on us how far we would still have to walk

We began the journey and walked for a bit, let's say the half the way, when we realized the camp grounds were actually still a bit far from the visualized gates.

The gates' top border outlines are visible in the distance. But it was still quite a walking stretch.

Our legs and inappropriate footwears were not prepared for this. The increasingly hot sun did not help either.

We had to come to a stop and end the sojourn here, considering the fact that we might have to walk back of we didn't find any means of transport.

We took pictures savored the view and prepared for the walk back.

I tried to zoom in to take profile shots of the camp grounds but could not get very far.

Lucky us, we found a commercial motorbike who took us back to the main camp gate.

Now we wanted to visit the old auditorium and just have some time to sit and perhaps pray.

So we walked in from the camp gate to the old auditorium. The auditorium was actually bigger than we imagined from the inside.

My pretty friend really liked it here.

I could easily pick out a few things that stood out to me, being a musician:

• the ancient hanging array horn speakers (yellow outline)
• the Ahuja cone/horn speakers (red)
• and the new generation speakers. (blue)

This speakers looked really ancient to me

It felt like 3 generations in one picture.

We had some time talking here and just enjoying the breezy air. We prayed for a bit and then set out to return to our accomodation.

And you can imagine how tired we were when we returned. We resumed to our rooms ate some food and probably each slept off.

What a day!