I asked Mohamed to find us a good place to rest. He set up camp on a nearby dune. I walked away from the others, laid out my small foam mat, and sat down. All around me was an immense sand sea, with waves pushed by the wind into nearly perfect parallel lines. In my hand, I held a small white seashell I had found earlier that day. I turned it over in my palm, studying its ancient whorls.
It was November 28 and we had been in the desert for nearly one month. We had run roughly one thousand miles and had three thousand more to go. Tomorrow was my son Kevin’s twelfth birthday. I thought about him opening presents and blowing out the candles on his cake. I wondered if my mother had sent a card, then I pictured her alone and at her small kitchen table, holding a pen over a blank paper, unable to write. I felt sick with guilt. What was I doing on top of a sand dune in Mali?
I had no choice but to believe that what I was doing was making me a better person, a better father, a better son. And I hoped H2O Africa would improve the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands, of people. I wanted my boys to see me following my dreams. I wanted them to see that life was about finding your own passion. I knew my family was proud of me, but I also knew deep down that they probably just wanted me to be around more.
- - - -
In midafternoon, we crested a dune and there it was at our feet: Timbuktu—sprawling all the way to the horizon. Once a vital intellectual, religious, and trade center, the legendary thousand-year-old city had lured Western explorers for centuries with the promise of streets of gold. But what they found—and what we saw up ahead—was no El Dorado. It was a dust-colored maze of windowless houses and shops. As we ran along the edge of town, we were joined by a dozen young men holding trinkets and blankets and bags, shouting, “Buy, buy!” At first it was pleasing to hear English—we had been away from the tourist zone for so long. But then more of them arrived and they pressed in on us, shouting and waving their goods in our faces, and quickly we’d had enough.
I was happy to get to the sanctuary of the small hotel. After a brief shower under a trickle of cold water, local officials drove us out to a walled compound for a dinner show—a kind of Mali luau put on for tourists. The food was bland and the drinks were warm, but the band, playing a sort of bluesy reggae, was fantastic. We laughed and lounged on pillows at low tables, happy to forget about our schedule and our aches and pains. When I’d first envisioned the expedition, I imagined us doing this kind of thing everywhere we went—soaking in culture, getting to know the locals. But we just didn’t have time.
The next morning as the haunting call to prayer went out from the ancient mosques, we got up, had coffee and breakfast, and ran away from the city. It struck me as funny that we had made it all the way from Senegal to Timbuktu—a place used as a metaphor for the ends of the earth—and now we were going beyond it.
Just as the sun came up, we reached the northern banks of the Niger River. Along its edges, rice fields and gardens glowed a jarring electric green against the golden desert sand. Fishermen tossed nets from low pirogues. We followed the river until the town of Bourem, where it dove south. We would continue east overland, through the open desert of the Gao region.
We had been warned about the dangers in this area. Two rival tribes were fighting; visitors had been robbed, their vehicles hijacked. But, Mohamed, as usual, had a plan. He knew the leaders of both factions, having fought side by side with them in Tuareg uprisings, and he invited them both to join us for the week. He guaranteed them each a “contribution” once we had safely passed through Gao. I had my doubts, but Mohamed was a calm and confident diplomat. Not only did these men show up to shadow the expedition, they also seemed to take pride in what we were doing. Most remarkably, they got along like old pals. At night, they shared camp chores and sat side by side laughing and telling stories. When we were through Gao, the two leaders, who Mohamed told me later were cousins, and who hadn’t spoken to each other in years, hugged and walked into the desert in opposite directions. A short time later they resumed their fighting.
We were closing in on the Mali border. That was the good news. The bad news was that most of the team had been battling nasty intestinal ailments for several days. Somehow, though, I had escaped. I jokingly told everyone that all the drugs I’d loaded into my system in my twenties had made it inhospitable to viruses. After one particularly rough night, I let the team have some extra rest, but I couldn’t give us the day off.
We started our run, but by midmorning Ray was lying in the open doorway of his tent, groaning and pale and holding his head.
“Poor Ray,” Don said. “It’s okay, Ray.”
I stood over him and watched him writhe. “Hey, does anybody want any of Ray’s stuff . . . if he doesn’t make it?”
“Bastard!” Ray moaned.
After a few hours of rest, Ray got up and said he could go. I knew he was afraid—not of being sick, but of letting the team down. I felt awful for him, watching him puke and run and puke and run again.
“You are one tough dude, Ray,” I said.
“Tough motherfucker,” Kevin said.
- - - -
A few days later, Don and Mohamed went ahead in the truck to break trail for us. When we caught up with them at dusk, Don quietly pointed out a young boy who was sitting alone in the sand, a short distance from the truck. He looked tiny in his tattered T-shirt and worn pants.
“We talked to him,” Don said. “He told us his parents have gone to get water. He’s been out here alone for two days. He only has camel’s milk to drink and a few bits of dried meat.”
Don had given him a box of cookies, some bottled water, and a plastic bag filled with fresh dates. I peered around the back of the truck to look. Abadu, Mohamed’s son, was talking to the little boy. When Abadu came back, I handed him a small flashlight with a push button. Abadu understood that I meant for him to give it to the boy.
“Can I say hello to him?” I asked.
“Wait.”
Abadu walked back over to the boy and handed him the light. I could hear Abadu’s voice, low and comforting, as he talked to him. In a few moments, Abadu turned and waved me over. I walked toward them. As I got closer, the boy whimpered and shied away from me. I squatted down to his level when I got near him, but he would not meet my gaze. Abadu touched the boy’s head and then mine, as if to say, See, he is just like you, only with light skin and funny hair. The boy seemed to relax. He glanced up at me.
“It’s okay,” I said quietly. “It’s okay.”
I wanted to tell him we were nice people and that we would help his family. But what could I say or do to change his situation? He had been left like this before and he would be left again. That was the way of the desert. We stayed with him for a few minutes, then said good-bye and walked back to the truck. When I looked back one last time, I could see the little light going on and off, illuminating the boy’s face. I felt so helpless; I would never know if he was okay, if his parents had returned with water.
I felt that same despair a few days later when we came upon a man who had been looking for us. He had heard a doctor was in our group. His wife and their newborn baby were both ill and needed help right away. We climbed into Mohamed’s truck and followed the man to a large rectangular tent that was open in the front and on one side.
Doc examined the mother and baby. He said they were both severely dehydrated. With no simple way to treat the baby, he focused on the mother. He gave her electrolyte pills and salt tablets along with several bottles of clean water from our stock. He mixed Gatorade and handed the bottles to the husband and, with Mohamed translating, told him how to administer the pills and how much she should drink. I wondered what they must have thought about the bright green Gatorade.
“Will they survive?” I asked Doc when we had left the tent.
“Maybe. The mom needs to get stronger or the baby won’t make it.”
If we had been traveling a mile farth
er south or north, we would never have known of their existence. The mother and baby would probably have died. How many other people were we passing by that were in dire need? Like so many people who had come before me, I wanted to help. But what did that mean? The Tuaregs had lived in this desert for thousands of years. Who was I to say, “Let me help you”?
- - - -
At last, we crossed from Mali into Niger. Now we were focused on Agadez—the halfway point of the expedition—and the place where, if all went well, sometime close to Christmas Day we would rendezvous with Lisa; Ray’s wife, Kathy; and Kevin’s girlfriend, Nicole.
I was excited to see Lisa and I felt strongly that she deserved this trip. She’d lived through the difficult planning stages and been a big help to me at home while I was away. But I was also stressed by the thought of her being with me in the Sahara. For weeks, it had been just the guys. Our days were filled with bad language and bad smells. All we had to think about was moving forward, fueling our bodies, resting, shitting, running. Having her drop into the middle of it all felt a little like having your third-grade teacher show up at your bachelor party. I didn’t know if I could speak to her like a normal person, give her the attention she deserved.
On December 23, I called her to make sure everything was set for her trip.
We talked about what to pack and what the weather would be like.
“Hang on,” she said. “Someone is at the door.”
I heard her talking to a man.
“Sorry,” she said. “It was the mailman. I had to sign for a letter.”
“What is it?”
She opened it. “It’s from Countrywide Mortgage. . . . Oh. I’m sorry to tell you this, but it looks like your properties are being foreclosed on.”
I had left North Carolina certain that everything would get sorted out with the lender while I was away. This was ridiculous. One of the properties had more than 100K in equity in it. How could Countrywide just take it? I asked Lisa to call my accountant to see what else we could do to fight it. I was sure I could get it all straightened out when I returned home. (I was wrong about that; my properties were gone.) For now, I had no choice but to put this mess out of my mind and just keep running.
- - - -
“You feel good, Kevin?” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Are you happy you will see Nicole soon?”
“Yes.” He smiled.
We were following our support vehicle’s fresh tire tracks in the sand under a milky-blue sky. In the distance, mountains loomed above the scrubby, flat expanse. Kevin and I were running next to each other. Ray was ahead of us. So often, I wondered what Kevin was thinking about while he ran. He was silent most of the time, his mouth set in a straight, expressionless line, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses.
“Do people back home ask you why you are doing this?”
“Yes,” Kevin said. “They ask.”
“Me, too. I say I do it because I don’t know the answer to that question. Maybe after I can tell you why I did it.”
“I say, too. When I finish, if I finish, I will tell you.”
“For now, the only reason I do it is because nobody has done it before. I want to see if I am strong enough, good enough,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And this is my ego. You understand ego?”
“Yes.”
“This is because I want to be special. Maybe sometimes I don’t feel special, and so I have to do something to feel special and make myself different from other people.”
“Yes.”
“Because if I don’t do that, then maybe I don’t feel good about myself,” I said. “But this is not a good reason.”
“I think you want to do something in your life. Life is just maybe seventy years?”
“Yeah.”
“So you have to do something,” Kevin said. “To find mental happiness.”
“Right. And we have to trust. You understand trust?”
“Yes, I know.”
“We have to trust that we are on the path, you know, we are on the trail to something else.”
“Yes,” Kevin said.
“And whether you believe in God or Buddha or Allah, you know, we have to trust that we are doing this for reasons that we don’t understand, and maybe this will take us to the next thing. Maybe when we get home, the phone will ring and it will be a person who says, ‘Kevin, congratulations. Now I want you to do something else very special, very different, that will help many people.’ And who knows what the opportunity will be? I think it’s the ultimate in faith. You know the word faith?”
“Yes,” he said. “F-E-A-R.”
“No, not fear. Faith. Faith means ‘to believe.’ ”
“Oh, F-A-I-T-H. Faith.”
“Faith means to believe that something will happen.”
“Yes,” Kevin said.
“We have incredible faith because we are doing this for ten or twelve hours every day and we don’t know why. You know, most people, for faith—they just go through their normal life and they think, ‘Okay, I believe in God or I believe that something is going to happen to me,’ but they don’t really . . .”
“Do something,” Kevin said.
“Right. They don’t take risks. We risk everything.”
“Yes.”
“We risk our lives and we risk our jobs and we risk our family, everything. And we have faith. That is faith. We have faith that when we finish, something important will happen.”
“Yes,” Kevin said.
“It’s like if you hold a book and you put it against your face, you cannot read it. You have to hold it away so you can read it. You have to have a different view, a different perspective, or you will never understand. And that’s where I think we are now. Right now, we can’t read the book, but later, we will be able to.”
“Yes.”
We kept running. I felt good that Kevin and I had had this conversation. Then I laughed to myself when I realized that, as usual, I had done almost all the talking.
On Christmas morning—day fifty-four of the expedition—we ran into Agadez, the geographic center of our journey. The city was a labyrinth of one-story sand-brick houses, dominated by the wood-spiked minaret of the grand mosque. I was shocked by how the population had swelled since I’d been here during the scouting trip. Mohamed said the water crisis had hit this area harder than anywhere else. Nomads, forced off the land, had come here out of desperation.
A year ago, Agadez felt light and cheerful. Now it seemed more like a bloated corpse on the verge of splitting open. Everywhere, hollow-eyed Tuaregs in filthy, ragged robes were watching over small herds of emaciated animals.
My exhaustion and ailments were self-inflicted; these people were suffering because they had no choice. I wanted to tell them that I was doing this for them, that I would help bring them water—that I was not just running for myself. But maybe that was a lie. I felt certain that even if I made it across the desert and raised millions of dollars, many of these people would be dead by the time H20 Africa dug its first well.
In a simple Agadez hotel room, I stripped down and stepped into a hot shower—my first in seven weeks. It felt fantastic, but I couldn’t get the misery I had just seen out of my head. I had no right to use water like this. I reached for the handle and yanked it sharply to the off position.
We went out to the airport to greet Lisa, Kathy, and Nicole. They were tired from thirty-six hours of travel, but happy to be here. I hugged Lisa hard, and she felt good in my arms. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed her.
After the women got settled, Don asked us to gather in the hotel’s stone courtyard.
“So, I just got off the phone with the UN,” he said. “I wish it was better news. Although the Libyans have known we want to come in for nine months now, we still don’t have
an answer. They haven’t said no, but they haven’t said yes. I don’t think they are inclined to give us an answer. There is really nothing in it for them to say yes or no.”
He added, “We’re making calls to everyone we know.” He said that Omar Turbi, a prominent Libyan American businessman, was working on it. Matt Damon had even flown from the Bourne shoot in London to meet with the Libyan embassy in DC. So far, nothing had helped.
“What are our options?” I said.
“We could go north to Algeria and Tunisia and finish at the Mediterranean. Or we go east through Chad or the Sudan. But we wouldn’t have the support of the UN. The Sudan has announced that any Americans without proper paperwork will be considered spies. That means that if we are caught, we could be imprisoned or executed.
“Hey, it might still happen,” Don continued. “It’s a thousand kilometers from here to the Libyan border. There is time. They might say yes. But you could run those thousand K and still get a no.”
There was silence. I felt a dangerous shift of attitude, as if maybe people thought that we might just give up.
“Do you think it’s too late to call this Running Most of the Sahara?” I said.
Everyone but Kevin laughed.
Later, sitting at a long table at a restaurant in a traditional mud-brick house, we continued the conversation.
“I think we should just attack all the options,” Don said. “We can go after Chad and the Sudan.”
“Chad shouldn’t be hard, right?” I said.
“It’s not hard to get permission. But it’s not predictable there. And in the Sudan, we’d be going right into the middle of the problem.”
“Darfur?” Ray said.
“Yeah, right into Darfur. And it’s all mined—you would see unexploded ordnances just sticking out of the sand. It’s bad.”
“What do you want to do?” I said, looking at Kevin and Ray.
“Definitely not go to Chad, right?” Lisa said.
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