Where Do You Go?

              I have survived another year on earth, in no small part because of all of you people! The birthday was crazy. Woke up and ran 8K for my last warm-up before the Half Marathon on Saturday. Went into The Finger (also known as Mafinga), met with some district officials, picked up the most beautiful piece of clothing any of you will ever see (go to facebook for photos). Came back to the village, transferred about 40 fruit-tree seedlings (mango and avocado) with my Environmental Club, had them sing Happy Birthday to me, then got on a 3-hour coaster ride to Iringa, during which I thought about aging, Africa, and aardvarks (it was very alliterative). Got to Iringa, was greeted by Kenzie, Tala, Stephanie, and a birthday cake! My friends are rather amazing. Went back to a friend’s house, watched the Avengers (I give it a B, maybe B+), and another birthday drifted off into the past. Which is fine, because the real party was on Saturday, at the First Annual Ruaha Half Marathon.

            We were supposed to start the race (13.1 miles, or 21 kilometers) at 9am. It is winter right now in East Africa, and at night we are really struggling (gets down to about 25 Fahrenheit, with no insulation. Four blanket evenings are not uncommon). But we’re still at the equator, and by 11am the sun is about a foot and a half above our heads. Not good running conditions. Why wasn’t the race started at a more reasonable hour, say 7am? Sijui (I dunno). Maybe so the Mgeni Rasmi (Honored Guest) could get in his/her teatime. So the race was to start at 9am. At 9am the race had not started, and the shadows grew shorter. At a quarter after our Honored Guest had not arrived, but the natives were growing restless, so they found a substitute Honored Guest, who made a short speech, which was uniformly ignored, and then they fired off the gun.

            For the whole first quarter of the race, Tanzanians stood by the side of the road, looking at this strange group of people that appeared to be fleeing some as-yet-unseen disaster. They commented upon it, to themselves and to us. There comments were not, on the whole, as encouraging as they might have been. A sample, translated for your benefit, of the motivational sentiments directed at your boy:

            “Huyu ameshachoka” (This guy is already tired (this was at Kilometer 2))

            “Hawezi huyu” (He’s got no chance)

            “Hatarudi” (He ain’t coming back)

            “Bwana! Unajua unakwenda Kalenga? Ni mbali!” (Mister! You know you are going to Kalenga (the halfway mark)? It’s far!)

            “Utashindwa” (You’re going to lose)

            ‘Win one for the Gipper’ it was not. But as I have mentioned in this blog before, Tanzanians don’t tend to believe until they have seen. In their defense, I didn’t look so hot. From the first minute my legs felt like they’d already run a marathon. I don’t know if it was stress, I don’t know if I ran too much in the week leading up, but my legs were dead from the get-go. Tried to keep up with my friend Eric, but he was flyin, and so I threw in my headphones and just started grinding. The way out was just hell. The terrain was actually not bad: it was all downhill. The race started with a gradual 2K incline, then we passed the eventual finish line, and started a long and winding 4K descent. I was being passed, by friends and strangers, and it was hot, and I was tired, and there was a lot of race to go. The scenery was beautiful. Screw the scenery. My friends started passing me, going back the other way. I felt slow, and stupid, and tired.

            Finally reached the turn, knowing that I still had the hotter half of the race ahead of me, and that it was all uphill. I grabbed a bottle of water, and turned around, and saw that my good friend Natalie was only a hundred feet or so behind me. She caught up, and we started the second half together. Thank god for friends. Since the second day I arrived in Tanzania, until now, 700 days later, I have run with a rogue’s gallery of different Peace Corps Volunteers. But I have run more miles side-by-side with Natalie than any of them. She’s relentless, both in her pace and in her optimism, and that is a hell of a thing in a running buddy, not to mention a friend. We didn’t move any faster than I had been going before, but things go by much quicker when you have someone to share them with. We talked sports and Tanzania. We laughed at the toothless mzee (elder) who asked us for a pipi (candy), and swerved together to avoid the truck that almost ran us off the road. We saw our friend Eric running ahead of us, one minute flagging, the next pulled forward by a bunch of small children who were overjoyed to run with an mzungu (white guy). And we saw all of that together. In the wonderful, informative, and amazing book “Born to Run”, Christopher McDougall writes about how all of the great runners in history were legendarily empathetic; that they cared less if they crossed the finish line than that their comrades also made it. And with 5 kilometers of umoja (one-ness), my amazing friend Natalie had picked me up off the road, and given me back my wind. We were nearing the base of the same long hill that I’d stumbled down an hour ago, and were about a hundred yards behind Eric, and I felt like I’d just woken up. I looked over at Nat and asked her if she would mind if I pushed it a little. She smiled, and said not at all. 

            I caught up with Eric, who is twice as athletic as I am on his worst day. As I pulled up alongside, he told me that he was dying. I told him, “not yet, you’re not”. And he wasn’t. We came upon a bus stop, which had a number of stores and customers and children scattered about, taking a sidelong interest we exhausted trotters. Tanzanians might not be too supportive of random unresponsive runners, but I know my people. As we passed by the crowd, I shouted out: “Pigeni Makofi Jamani! Tusaidie!” (Clap your hands! Help us out! (This is less ridiculous to shout out than it sounds...though given how white I am, and how much in Africa we were...still pretty ridiculous)). And they did. First they laughed, then they clapped, and then they cheered. Eric and I each got handed a half liter of water (our last water point), and I looked over at my man, and he didn’t look like he was gonna die any time soon. Drained my last half liter of water, and started up the hill. Because what goes down must come back up, if it wants to get back where it belongs.

            On Saturday morning, I had found a faded black marker, and written on my hand the letters: WDYG. It’s a reference to one of my favorite book series as a child, The Guardians of the Flame. It stands for: Where Do You Go. As in: where do you go to give up? As I started up that hill, I looked at my hand, at the shadowy remnants of the letters that sweat and sun and 9 long miles had mostly burned away. I didn’t come this far to stop now. I didn’t live two years without my mother, my father, my sister, a lifetime’s worth of amazing friends, and the love of my life, just to give in and give up on the side of some piddly African hill that wishes it was a mountain. A grin spread across my face and I took a look around me, at the beautiful place I’ve been blessed to live in, at the amazing life I've led that brought me to this place, and I started up that hill like I’d been shot out of a cannon.

Up and up and up I went, getting closer, going faster. Now I was passing other runners. Now I was setting the pace. At one of the switchbacks I turned the corner and saw a mob of children, looking at me. I shouted “Twende!” (Let’s Go!), and they started sprinting with me, pushing me, crowding me, each one wanting an acknowledgement, a fist bump. They all got them. When they fell behind me, I was already atop the hill. At kilometer 19 I was fresher than I was when I woke up that morning. At kilometer 20 I was sprinting. One Tanzanian runner and I spent the last kilometer pushing each other, first him surging forward, then me. Down the stretch we came, and I saw my friend TJ standing by the side of the road, hand extended, cheering for me. I slapped his hand and kicked it to the tape, my newfound Tanzanian friend turned on his jets, and the crowd saw the two of us fighting for it and began to scream. We both crossed the finish line at 1:47, about forty minutes behind the victors, yet both of us were grinning like we’d just won gold. 

Sports are funny things. It’s hard to think of something less significant than me running up a hill. Doesn’t change anything, doesn’t help anything. And on any other day, that would be it. But sports can be transcendent, if we are willing to invest ourselves in them. They can reduce us to tears or intoxicate us with joy; they can stand for things larger than themselves: pride, faith, the aspirations of cities, states, and nations. Sports become as powerful and meaningful as they are made to become. So if I choose to make my 21K run a referendum on my worth as a human, that’s what it becomes. Thank God I finished.

Peace Corps had itself a good day on Saturday. We had the first non-African to cross the finish line, seven people make it in under two hours, and the 2^nd and 3^rd place women runners (my friend Natalie took 3^rd!). So how do such speedy people relax? With ice-cold Kilimanjaro Lagers at the finish line. Don’t judge. We then got some lunch, took naps, and proceeded to dress up, make merry, and dance the night away. 

I don’t know where I’m going in my life. I know the next few months are going to tear me away from and reunite me with people that I love. Somedays I can barely sleep, and when I do I wake up exhausted, my mind buzzing with uncertainty and indecision. But for an hour and forty-seven minutes, none of that mattered. I didn’t win. I didn’t even come close. But I finished a long, hot race with a full-out sprint and a smile on my face. Was it meaningless? Absolutely. But was it also incredibly important? Absolutely.

Where do you go to give up?

Not Africa.