Run to Children’s Hospital Fundraiser (click me to DONATE)
Route:
Meet The Kalenjins
We woke up at 6:15 in Ewaso Ngiro. Now that we’re on the Great Rift Plateau, it’s not imperative to start running at the crack of dawn. At 2,000m, it stays much cooler here, and you can run throughout the day. Because we woke up later, the shops were already open for breakfast. I got mandazi (bread) and chai.
On paper, Kenya (poverty rate of 36%) looks wealthier than Tanzania (poverty rate of 47%), but so far the food seems significantly poorer. I’d say 90% of the restaurants we visited serve only bread and chai (tea). The chai is mostly sugar water, and they splash some milk for color. Of the few restaurants we’ve seen with hot food, I’d say 75% only serve ugali (polenta) with meat. We’ve also noticed that the food is not always fresh. They often reheat from the day before, which is strange. My current hypothesis is that I’m comparing poor parts of Kenya to rich parts of Tanzania. After all, there were poor villages in Tanzania that served food full of sand at the beginning of my adventure.
We started running on the dirt roads through farmland perpendicular to the paved road. Unlike the first part of the run from Tanga to Kilimanjaro, we would keep the rest of the run off the pavement if possible. We ran at a good speed, feeling the extra energy after a rest day. We stopped in a tiny village for chai around 11. I discovered that the chai in Kenya is all made with black tea, as opposed to Tanzania, where the most popular variety is brewed with Masala spices. Full of caffeine, we jetted off for the highlands. As we climbed hill after rolling hill, I thought this environment is about as good as it gets for training.
I started feeling really good. Ema and I raced, or perhaps more accurately, I raced Ema. Every time he caught me, I sprinted ahead. I was impressed with his determination to hold my pace during my runner’s high. By contrast, when Ema runs fast, I don’t even try to keep up with him, sticking to my natural pace.
I made a mental note to myself that this was the highest-quality run on any of my human-powered adventures. Hill after hill ensured we ran intervals all day. The smooth dirt road padded our knees and allowed us to drop into a flow. Kids walking home from school comprised the majority of the traffic we passed (and they would join us for a hill or two). The cool, clean air burned in our lungs like premium high-octane fuel.
After one exceptionally big hill, we stopped at the top. Rocky looked at me and then pointed to the sky. He said, “I think it’s about to rain.” We both looked at each other like, “Where are we?” The time was 2 p.m. Normally, we’d be scrambling to find shade at this point in the day, but here the air was cold. I said to Rocky, “I think it’s getting colder.” I checked my GPS. It reported us at 2,500 meters (8,333 ft). Whoa! We’d been climbing all day.
We went inside a shop for chai and asked about directions. They told us we were headed straight for the forest. We should change direction and start heading west. We discussed how to bypass the forest, writing the names of each village we should pass. Two men escorted us to a trail behind one of the shops. Suddenly, the view opened up onto miles of lush green rolling farmland as far as the eye could see. Rocky and I looked at each other again, “Seriously, where are we?!!!” The view blew me away. We’d been running through dust, then a couple of oases, then more dusty highlands and cattle country since leaving Kilimanjaro over 300 km before.
We had undoubtedly entered a new world. I asked the locals if there was any forest in this direction. They said no. I turned to Rocky and said, “Forget the roads. Let’s run straight through the farms!” He approved. We picked a hill at the opposite end of the valley to run towards and set off.
As we ran downhill, I started putting some of the pieces together in retrospect. The people in the last villages we ran through today didn’t wear Maasai clothing. The kids chasing us on the hills were fast! I mean, they really knew how to run. And now we were at the same altitude that runners from Boulder and Flagstaff in the US enjoy training at. I said to Rocky, “I think we’re in the land of the runners.”
Quick digression: Kenya’s dominance in running is as prolific as any country’s dominance in any sport. It is the subject of great mysticism by running fans and has been studied in countless books, including “Running with the Kenyans” and “The Sports Gene.” Even more fascinating, Kenya’s great runners tend to come from just a single tribe (Kalenjin) in a region of the country (West Rift Valley) with high altitude and a culture where everyone runs everywhere… truthfully, I’m not a scholar on Kenyan running, but I figured we’d arrived.
We crossed farms without worrying about angering landowners, unlike the days before. Farmers greeted us with smiling faces and shouted, “Karibu!” (Welcome). Rocky and I agreed that the people here seemed rich, not in money, but in happiness. Rocky stopped to use the restroom. While I waited, the first raindrops of the day started to fall, and a passerby started talking to me. He said, “This is a good place.”
Another note: Rocky had told me in previous days that Kenya doesn’t have small-scale farming like Tanzania. This region was clearly different, though. All the farms we saw were small plots growing food to eat (not sell): maize, beans, some bananas, etc.
We made it to the top of the hill we’d picked out in the distance. We targeted a new spot across the next valley and started again. Eventually, we found a road that seemed to head in the direction we wanted. We stayed on it. Around 5:30 p.m., we started talking about finding a place to stay for the evening. Rocky struck up a conversation with two genial middle-aged men. They were walking home to their village and agreed to escort us to the Village Administrator.
We arrived in the tiny village center with just a few shops and sat down to wait for the Village Administrator. Before I knew it, the entire town (or what felt like it) surrounded me. They just watched. Finally, the administrator arrived, and the people cleared a small path for him to approach. He greeted us, and we started walking through town. The swarm of people followed. We went into some shops to do some shopping. We asked the Village Administrator if we could spend the night with a local family. We were willing to pay the same rate as a guest lodge but wanted to get to know a local family. He offered his own home.
Rocky told me we could go ahead and buy dinner ingredients. I said, “Are you sure?” In Tanzania‘s culture of hospitality, it would be an insult to buy dinner for a family in their own home. Rocky confirmed. The man said he had a big family and would be glad to allow us to buy dinner. We purchased rice, vegetables, and Maziwa ya Lala (yogurt, or more closely translated as “milk after a night’s sleep”).
We walked home with the man and drank the yogurt as we asked him questions. He was Kalenjin, a different tribe than the Maasai. Famous Kalenjins include the current President of Kenya, Ruto, and the world’s greatest runners, including Eliud Kipchoge. As Rocky had explained to me before, Kenya experiences a high degree of tribalism, unlike Tanzania. For most people, even youth, their tribal language is their first language. Consequently, they might only speak rudimentary Swahili in these small villages.
The 24-year-old son of the Village Administrator explained to us that most young people in his village stay to farm rather than move to the cities. By contrast, in Tanzania (and New Jersey), most young people move to the city in search of other work besides farming. I deduced that tribalism accounts for at least part of the reason for this. Why would this 24-year-old move to Nairobi if his first language was Kalenjin? He’d be treated like a second-class citizen in any city outside his tribe. Tribalism has also been responsible for severe political unrest in the past in Kenya— one of the reasons why Tanzania considers itself to be a peaceful country in comparison to Kenya.
Finally, dinner came out. Mama had cooked for us. We ate under a solar-powered lightbulb—this town had no electricity. The family laid out empty maize sacks on the hard-packed dirt ground (no flooring) for Rocky and me to use as mattresses. He and I both felt some stomach turmoil after dinner. Rocky ran to the bathroom in the middle of the night. He said his stomach turned, and in an instant, the whole dinner flushed out. Not ideal for running another marathon tomorrow. But at this point, we can probably accept diarrhea as a constant.
What an amazing adventure you are on. Thank you for sharing it with us!