We are very happy to host a series of posts by Stephen Pampuro about a wonderful adventure he had in runner’s Africa.
In January 2020 Stephen felt the need to embark on a new adventure in Africa, in the cradle of running, training in the highlands of Kenya and Ethiopia alongside some of the world’s strongest athletes. An experience that made him touch closely on the dramas of a continent struggling to get back on its feet, in the setting of the most serious epidemic in a hundred years. From this experience a book was born: Beyond the border. Journey to the heart of the cbear. The book was released on April 29 and you can purchase it on Amazon.
Happy reading!
In the camp they are all in their rooms minding their own business. Only Titus and Ruben sit in the garden talking. I feel a little embarrassed walking past him in my running clothes. I always wonder what they are thinking about. Maybe to nothing, or maybe to whoever makes me do it if I’m going like a snail anyway. In both cases they are right.
I have been in Kenya for seven days and every outing so far has been a resounding slap in the face. I still haven’t gotten used to the altitude and the dirt roads, and every stride weighs like a boulder.
I leave, under the stunned gaze of two ladies in the queue at the emporium. For the first two kilometers I only have to worry about not getting run over by two motorcycle cabs and a truck full of coal, then I listen to my heart and feel it turn. Altitude fooled me the first time, the second time, and a third time as well. By the fourth, however, I too took my measurements.
This time, however, I start off more cautiously, worrying only about keeping my pulse rate under control. I arrive in Kapsabet in perfect condition, whereas the previous days felt like the Pillars of Hercules. At the height of Kipchoge Keino Stadium I turn down a road I had noticed the day before on one of my exploratory drives. This is how I discover cities by running. By trial and error. Sometimes I catch a dead end, other times that path I so enjoy and never leave again. Today I am lucky because that path shortly after becomes a dirt road and projects me exactly where I wanted to end up. Countryside. Kenya is a strange country, or maybe it is me who is not used to it.
One gets the impression that houses are concentrated only along that one paved thoroughfare or in the neighboring village, and that beyond that there can be nothing. Instead, this is not the case, and the further you go into the forest, the more houses, farms, schools, and offices pop up. Just imagine what it would be like to live here. You go out to get milk, pass three trees, a stream, two chickens, and here is the milkman. In fact, the farmer with freshly milked milk.
Just when I seem to have left behind even the last bastion of urbanization, there out of a dusty road come six tin-roofed cottages and mopeds, carts, sheep, women with giant bags balanced on their heads. I don’t know if I will be able to get used to it, but I admit that it is extremely beautiful. The more I run, the more convinced I become. And then there are the children, dozens and dozens of children playing without the shadow of adults nearby. They must see very few white people around here, because every time they pass one they go crazy. They see me walk by, and the show starts. “Muzungu” they shout repeatedly. And I raise a hand to show that I have noticed them. Those from the West cannot remain indifferent to this spectacle. It is impossible.
I pass two cows grazing in the middle of the road, the little motorcycle behind miraculously avoids us by splaying us. They don’t play to me but to the cow, because runners here are sacred and can kind of do whatever they want. At every fork in the road I just have to choose which direction to go, it looks like a video game. One gets the impression that one can go on forever without ever running into a gate or private property.
As I walk briskly past the farms, I attract the attention of children who snap to their feet like springs. They scream, come out into the street jostling to high-five me. I try to greet them, to smile, but there are really too many of them and some escape me. Meanwhile, the legs are spinning, spinning all right. They carry me forward without distress and in control and that is exactly what I want because this show must not have an end, not now. And the chrono goes, I let it take care of recording all that boring data like speed or distance, I have much more to do anyway. When I turn right at the height of a hut, three of them stick behind me making a hellish racket.
They shriek, they flail, they look like they have seen Santa Claus. “Muzungu muzungu,” they yell, and other things in Swahili that I can’t even understand. But they are happy, I think few times as a child I was as excited to see someone. So I turn around, smile at them, but I actually laugh because they are too comical. The smallest of them runs barefoot and would like to touch my hand. I’m not running hard, but I’m still running, and they’re too small to last much longer. In fact, after a hundred meters they reluctantly have to give up. I almost feel sorry, but it doesn’t last long, after five minutes two more kids, the same age, are glued behind me. I think they don’t even go to school but they can already run well. Then it’s the turn of a gigantic and very wide dirt road, two paired trucks pass by it quietly. There must be a huge college nearby, because the two sides of the road are two rivers of high school dropouts.
And there the second show begins. First they were the children, now they are teenagers. The girls laugh by bringing their hands to their faces in embarrassment, the boys, on the other hand, have to tell me all kinds of things because resounding roars of laughter are raised from time to time, and in those moments I am relieved that I do not understand their language.
If I ran naked in Milan’s Piazza del Duomo I would have the same effect.
With children it was actually fun, but when the people who want to high-five you are 15-year-old boys, the music changes. Fortunately, the GPS reports that I have just passed the ninth kilometer, so I can turn around and head back to camp. The sun is setting and I don’t want to get lost in the middle of the fields. I retrace every meter of dirt road step by step until I find the asphalt leading to Kapsabet, and from there to Rozif. I get there at 7:30 that the camp gate is already closed. For today I may as well be content with just having arrived. I still have many kilometers ahead of me.
(Main image credit YAYImages on DepositPhotos.com. The other images are from the author)