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It
was still before dawn as we made our way out of the hotel lobby
and onto the streets of Nyahururu, the highest town in Kenya. Clothed
in sweatsuits to combat the early morning chill (with the exception
of myself, my New England blood impervious to anything cold that
Africa could throw at me — or so I thought), we quietly settled
into a slow jog along the tarmac road heading south out of town.
Gliding past rows of honking mini-buses, occasional early-rising
street vendors, and other incipient stages of urban bustle, we soon
reached Nyahururu's periphery, the pace ever-intensifying as we
continued on.
Accustomed
to the 6,500 foot elevation of Sigor — but not the roughly
8,000 foot altitude of our present locale, I soon began to struggle,
falling off the back of our four man pack. Luckily, however, I spotted
a beacon up ahead; a rather inconspicuous sign at the side of the
road seemingly fit to mark a town line, river, or brook. Instead,
in all modesty, it sat atop, my eyes straining to read the letters
as we neared, the "Equator." Unable to resist, I picked
up the tempo and shot past my Kenyan colleagues, jumped up to slap
the sign, and turned around to bask in the glory my own small victory.
"Look, bwana," I pointed out to Philemon, who was one
of our group, "I just beat you back to the Southern Hemisphere!"
Yet
any revelry was futile. This, after all, was only a warm-up, and
with a pivotal race just a few hours away, Philemon and his hometown
pals Edward Mutai and Julius Cheruiyot were all about business.
Over the course of the last seven days, Philemon and I had journeyed
through much of the Rift Valley province, paying homage to the Kenyan
running "capital" of Eldoret, and spending two days flamingo
watching while riding rented bikes around the picturesque, alkaline
Lake Bogoria. We'd arrived the day before by matatu in the Central-Province
town of Nyahururu, the site of Athletics Kenya's weekend cross country
meeting.
The
third in a series of six all-comers races taking place throughout
the country during the fall season, the meet was to provide our
crew with top-notch competition. Though showcasing few Olympians,
it would feature a large number of Kenyan (and a few Qatari) "international
runners" - the phrase widely used to describe those fortunate
enough to have competed overseas. With a bit of luck, we hoped,
one of our team might impress a national or club coach — or
somehow gain notoriety that might lead to some form of sponsorship
down the road. If not, at least we'd get to see another new area
of Kenya.
Meeting
up on Friday afternoon with Edward and Cheruiyot at the bus stage,
we'd found ourselves a pair of five dollar rooms in the Baron hotel,
taken a pre-race dinner of chicken and chips on the town, and retired
to our beds after a short stint at the billiard table, which to
the amusement of the three Kenyans in our troupe, exhibited not
only my sub-par pool skills, but also my oblivious reaction to the
forwardness of the local lady of the night. As I found many times
in Kenya, my white skin seemed to signal green to the locals, my
blue eyes beheld not as pupils but as Kenyan shilling signs.
"Jon,"
Philemon had finally alerted me in a chiding tone, his round face
in full grin, "She is seeing, bwana, that you must have some
amount of money. I think she wants to sleep with you."
On
this night, however, there was no time for illicit behavior. The
following morning we had business to take care of. And competition,
as we would learn upon our arrival at the race site, from all across
Kenya. As we surveyed the course, set in a giant field on the outskirts
of town, the terrain soft, uneven, and interspersed with the occasional
steeplechase barrier, our challengers began to filter in, with appearances
running the gamut from those outfitted in full sets of bright red
Kenyan national team warm-ups to those donning tattered T-shirts
and wearing no shoes at all. Interestingly, as I would learn after
taking in the day of races (and observing one individual in the
national team kits slough in near the back of the men's 4K and a
barefooted youth win the men's junior 8K), priciness of gear seemed
to have very little to do with running ability.
Ability, my squad hoped, that would soon be tested, as they departed
for a second warm-up and left me to embark upon a futile attempt
to decipher the day's racing schedule. Supposed to kick off at 8:00
a.m. with the junior women's 6K, there was still little sign of
life among the officiating crew at 8:30, nor any semblance of a
schedule that indicated even remotely when the men's 4K — the
domain of Edward and Cheruiyot — or the Junior men's 8K —
Philemon's event of choice — would take place. After spending
three months in East Africa, where the motto pole pole ("take
it easy") reined free, I'd learned that the very concept of
time was essentially a non-entity, and hence I wasn't too surprised.
Still, some of the nation's and world's top athletes had come to
race, and they surely deserved the small luxury of a schedule.
Vexed
with the incompetence of the powers that be, I was resigned to continue
my wanderings as my three harriers kept warm. By the time they were
finally summoned to race, they'd amassed a total of 75 minutes of
warm-up running. Currently slated, pending ratification, to host
the 2007 World Cross Country Championships, Athletics Kenya, unless
some significant administrative changes occur, could be in a world
of hurt.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, the meet got underway. For
our squad, Philemon was up first; though much to my chagrin, I already
more or less knew the result. A few days back, while on a training
run in Eldoret, Philemon had twisted his ankle on a rock, and though
he adamantly maintained that he was ready to race, he'd limped through
our early morning shakeout run, and was clearly unprepared for the
terrain that the Nyahururu course was to throw at him. Not wanting
to disappoint, he sprinted right to the front of the junior 8K race,
holding on to a top-five position after the first two-kilometer
lap, but clearly favoring his left leg the entire way. A minute
later, having surrendered to the pain, he sat dejected on the side
of the course, probably wondering if he'd ever get the chance to
race in front of me again.
After
trying to cheer him up, I turned my attention to Edward and Cheruiyot,
each decked out in Amherst singlets I'd given them, as they toed
the starting line of their two-lap, four-kilometer race.
Like so many athletes I would come across while in Kenya, Cheruiyot
was one of those who'd come painfully close to "international
runner" status, but for one reason or another, hadn't quite
reached that be-all, end-all goal. Twenty-five years old and a carpenter
by trade, he'd managed to etch out an existence floating between
his home in Olbutyo and a Fila-sponsored training program in nearby
Kericho town, along the way picking up at-altitude credentials of
13:57 for 5K and low 3:40s for 1,500m. Still, after a 2003 offer
to road race in Italy fell through, the polite and mild-mannered
Cheruiyot, receiving next to nothing from the Fila squad, was left
to rely on the charity of a local businessman to continue his competitive
racing career. Not getting any younger, his chances of finding his
way overseas in order to, as he put it, "cross over the river
from poverty," didn't, and don't today appear particularly
plausible. Nonetheless, a good showing in Nyahururu couldn't hurt.
Edward,
though infused with an unrelenting passion for the sport of running,
was a middle-of-the pack Kalenjin at best. A 20-year old eighth
grade dropout who lived in a mud hut plastered with pages on end
of running results and photos clipped from the Kenyan Daily Nation,
Edward had lofty dreams of international stardom. Lacking, however,
both the resources and the talent, he seemed unlikely to ever make
it beyond the confines of his family's Olbutyo market sweet potato
farm. Still, he more than deserved his chance on the competitive
stage, and as the gun went off I kept my fingers crossed for an
encouraging result.
The
race, like all the others on the day (there were three men's and
three women's in total) would prove to be an awesome display of
fleet-footed fortitude. Gliding through the oxygen-depleted atmosphere
came one incredibly fit looking athlete after the next, even as
the steady stream of runners gave way to the final stragglers. When
all was said and done, Cheruiyot, after going out with the leaders,
would fade toward the end of his second lap to finish in 18th place
out of 150-some odd runners. Edward, moving up throughout the course
of the race, followed suit somewhere in the middle of the pack,
as both only helped confirm what I had feared. In Cheruiyot's case,
a man who could probably run close to a 13:30 5K at sea level, with
good spikes on an all-weather track, had just been made to look
like a non-entity, as had Philemon — easily the faster of the
two — despite being hampered by his injury, earlier in the
day. Obviously, I'd come to Kenya with the expectation that many
of the athletes I would meet would be exceptionally talented. But
what would stand out in my mind, more than anything else, was not
the quality of these talented athletes, but the quantity.
Indeed,
for every Kenyan competing in the European Golden League athletics
series, or on the road racing circuit in Europe or the U.S., I reckoned
after watching the race and the subsequent men's 12K, that there
were probably 10 or more still in-country, constantly struggling
to find a way to use their talent as an outlet, to join the sacred
community of the international racing world.
Though
it was fun to get a firsthand glimpse at such staggering depth,
it was also quite disheartening. While it is easy, on the outside,
to rhapsodize the athletic prowess of the Kenyans, the reality is
that the nation of Kenya, and in particular, the Kalenjin tribe,
is blessed with the highest concentration of star endurance athletes
of any place on earth, a concentration the country doesn't even
begin to properly provide for. This, of course, is a complicated
issue, largely the result of poverty and other economic factors,
but compounded, it is clear, by a seemingly callous and disjointed
athletic bureaucracy. Any organizational body, after all, that cannot
put on a simple meet without substantial flaw, probably doesn't
have what it takes to help its athletes get the most out of their
talent.
But
it gets worse. Whether it be the pilfering of wages from those returning
from competition overseas, failing to effectively create opportunity
for young talent, or resorting to blatant cronyism in the selection
of national teams, Athletics Kenya has often hindered, rather than
helped, the dreams of the immensely deep crop of athletes it has
at its disposal.
Macharia Gaitho, of the Daily Nation, writing in the wake
of Kenya's sub-par performance at the World Championships in Helsinki
this past August, puts it best. Noting the recent stream of Kenyan
defectors washing ashore in places like Bahrain and Qatar —
where their needs are properly taken care of — Gaitho rightfully
admonishes the Kenya's athletic governing body. "Children barely
out of primary school," he writes, referring to those jumping
ship to the two Gulf states, "are changing citizenship and
adopting names they cannot pronounce. In a few years, they will
be shining for their adopted countries."
"There
must be a good reason why our athletes are defecting. Money, of
course, is one. But the defections are also a reflection of the
rot in Kenyan athletics. Athletes are taken for granted, get absolutely
nothing in terms of financial support, training facilities and medical
cover, yet they are expected to bring glory to the country whenever
they are called upon."
"Some
will say this is the fault of the Government. No, the institution
directly charged with nurturing, developing and running the sport
in this country is Athletics Kenya. It is those at the helm who
are in gross dereliction of duty. They must quit now before they
do more damage."1
Despite
the damage already done, many talented athletes still have hope;
and, in the case of my pre-eminent Kenyan protégé,
a little more than that. Nearly a year after his injury-laden run
in Nyahururu, Philemon Terer, fortunate to have an international
connection, seems slated to reach the shores of the United States.
In collaboration with a friend of mine, Wendy Abma of the New Jersey-based
Imani Athletics Management, I am well into the process of securing
Philemon a visa that would allow him to hop across the Atlantic
next summer and test the fruit of his labor on the East Coast road
racing circuit. If all goes according to plan, he'll be able to
earn enough in prize money (provided that it does not end up in
the hands of the Kenyan establishment, of course a dubious assumption)
to help put his younger brother through high school and keep the
children of Olbutyo clothed and fed. Having moved to the northern
rift town of Iten since my departure, to train upwards of 180K per
week with a group that includes recent World Championship gold medalists
Said Saaeef Shaheen and Benjamin Limo (and, as of mid-October, the
Moroccan 1,500m legend Hicham El Guerrouj) Philemon, to put it mildly,
is presently in good company.
None
of this, of course, was known as we made our final rounds through
Nyahururu, stopping, before piling into an over-capacity matatu,
at an agri-store, where, as a parting gift, I presented Philemon
with a bag of seeds that would allow him to sow a field of maize.
Soon, I'd be off to Tanzania, where I'd continue my East African
tour, with Philemon, along with Edward and Cheruiyot, returning
to Olbutyo for the planting season.
"Terer,
you better send me some of that maize when I'm back in the USA,"
I jested with Philemon as we said our good-byes.
"I
am seeing, bwana" he replied in his usual ingenuous tone, "that
those seeds are very powerful. That harvest will be the best. I
will send you some by the mail."
A
year later, as I expected, the maize has yet to arrive on my doorstep.
But it is looking more and more like Philemon, himself, soon will.
1.
Gaitho, Macharaia. "It was a Very Dismal Effort." (Opinion)
The Nation. Nairobi, Kenya. August 15, 2005
(Posted
November 17, 2005)
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