Running with the Kenyans

by Adharanand Finn

  Japhet ends up in around twenty-fifth position. He seems happy enough when I see him afterward, holding his free bottle of water like it was a gold medal. “Did you enjoy that?” I ask him.

  “Yes,” he says, beaming with happiness. “I enjoyed it, yes.”

  After the men, come the women. Rose, unfortunately, limps in way down the field, almost at the back. It doesn’t bode well for her career prospects. This is easily the slowest race I’ve seen since I arrived in Kenya.

  As the last runners come through, a truck drives onto the field and pulls up beside the finish. Two men get out and begin unloading a marquee and stacks of white plastic chairs. It seems a bit late to be setting up a viewing area, but the men press ahead, working without haste, lining up the chairs in neat rows.

  Afterward, I meet lots of familiar faces milling around. Godfrey’s friend Koila is there. The marquee and chairs, Koila tells me, are for events later on. The race, the actual running, is just the appetizer. But before anything else happens, we have to wait for the guest of honor to arrive. The rumor going around the field is that it’s the deputy prime minister of Kenya, Musalia Mudavadi.

  It’s now 11:00 A.M. “I’d better go back and see how Uma is getting on,” says Marietta, clearly not enthused by the prospect of a political rally. The sun is coming out and people are beginning to congregate. It has all the rumblings of a long, drawn-out occasion, the sort of event that leaves the children hot and flustered. “I’ll take Lila and Ossian with me,” she says.

  By midday, Godfrey has shown up and has taken a pew in the front row of the VIP tent. But the deputy prime minister is still not here. I decide to head back home for some lunch. Two hours later I call Godfrey to see what is happening.

  “I advise you to come now,” he says, not elaborating.

  Crestfallen after missing out on a bus ride this morning, Uma now wants to come with me. Lila, worried that she might miss out on something else, is coming along, too.

  When we get to the field, groups of schoolchildren are performing traditional songs and dances. We sit down next to Godfrey and settle in for the show. The children are drilled to perfection, pulling eye-popping faces as they perform. Lila and Uma watch fascinated, particularly when their friends Hilda and Maureen stand up to do a performance. The guest of honor, however, has still not arrived.

  As we sit waiting, I spot on the road running along the far end of the field about fifteen shiny 4×4s zipping by one after the other. “The deputy prime minister,” Godfrey tells me, as the convoy of cars zooms onto the field. One by one the cars stop, the doors swing open, and large men in suits step out. It’s instantly clear which one is Mr. Mudavadi. He has a large, self-satisfied smile across his ample face. He has people crowding around him, and he’s waving cordially in all directions.

  The announcer is suddenly very excited and starts trying to organize the schoolchildren into lines so they can perform again for the guests. As well as the deputy prime minister, there are about thirty civic officers and local politicians in tow. Once they’re all seated and have finished congratulating one another, the children begin their songs again.

  Each time, one of the honored guests gets up and starts dancing along with the children. Then another one joins in. Sometimes the deputy PM himself gets up and shimmies around to the music, smiling for the cameras snapping pictures of him. Someone is handing out sheets of paper around the tent. It’s a schedule of the day’s events. According to the timetable, the whole thing was due to end at 2:00 P.M., but it’s now 3:30. The announcer is hurrying the singers along. “We have a lot of speeches,” he says. “So, please, just one song each.”

  By now a few thousand people have gathered to watch the proceedings, among them Marietta and Ossian, who were wondering what was keeping us. It’s almost four o’clock. Time, finally, for the speeches to begin. On and on they go, one politician after another, talking in a haphazard combination of Swahili and English about corruption, the coalition, the political parties, and many things I can’t understand. At one point, Daniel Komen bravely stands up and starts berating the politicians. “You politicians,” he says. “You take the money from Kenya and put it in foreign bank accounts. Then the athletes have to go and win it back.” The politicians don’t look amused.

  After a couple of hours we take the children home. But, curious to see how the day ends, I return alone back to the field. It’s past six o’clock and the speeches are still going on. I sit down next to Komen. “They’re still talking?” I ask.

  “This is Kenya,” he says. “It’s twenty-five laps. There are two more to go.”

  Eventually, the deputy PM says “Asante sana” and it’s over. The crowd claps politely. The faint sound of a tractor can be heard struggling along up a hill somewhere. The prizes for the runners, who finished running over nine hours ago, are finally handed out. The curtain comes down.

  As I cross the field back toward my house, I spot Beatrice. She stops, surprised to see me. In the darkness I’m not sure it’s actually her. “Hi, Beatrice?”

  “Hi,” she says, holding out a limp hand for me to shake.

  “Did you run today?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” She doesn’t answer, but just grins bashfully as though I’ve asked her a personal question. “You might have won a prize,” I venture, still unsure how fast she really is. “There were prizes for the top ten.”

  “Top ten?” She looks surprised, shaking her head. “For the women, too?”

  I nod. She looks thoughtful, but doesn’t say anything else. The headlights of a matatu swing around into my eyes for a second and then drive on. “I should get back,” I say. She just nods shyly. “Well, good night. I’ll let you know when we’re doing our next run.” She wanders off into the night. There are no streetlights in Iten and once night falls, it can be very hard to see where you’re walking if you don’t carry a flashlight. I scamper off home while I can still see the ground.

  Beatrice may not say much, but she is actually quite outgoing for a Kenyan athlete, particularly a woman. Despite the country’s incredible dominance of one of the world’s most popular sports, if you stopped a stranger in the street in any Western city and asked him to name even one Kenyan runner, he would probably struggle. One reason for this is the shyness of the athletes. Their awkward looks and monosyllabic answers when placed in front of the media can drive their agents mad. Marketing a Kenyan runner in a saturated field is already hard enough.

  Unlike athletes from other parts of the world, such as the Jamaican Usain Bolt, Kenyan runners rarely seek out the limelight. Even when they win gold medals, they always bring their teammates with them on their lap of honor. The teammates, who may have finished in last place, can often seem as happy as the winner. Kenyan runners will also often race as a team, with one of the athletes sacrificing his chances of winning to act as a pacemaker for his countrymen. All this selflessness is simply a reflection of how Kenyans are raised.

  “Very few of the Kenyan champions come from a sheltered family unit,” Toby Tanser explains to me one day, sitting on the grass in our garden. “Instead, they are brought up as part of the wider community of a village, almost like pieces of a bicycle chain. They soon learn about harambee.” Harambee is a Kenyan tradition, in which a whole community will come together to help itself. It literally means “all pull together” and is the official motto of Kenya. “When a Kenyan wins a medal, or a large amount of money,” says Toby, “he reflects on the journey that took him to that moment, and he realizes, perhaps better than we do, that no person achieves without the help and support of those around him.”

  One of the fastest runners around right now is Mary Keitany, yet she’s also one of the most shy. I first meet her at the cross-country race at Salaba Academy, Chris Cheboiboch’s school. She is there as a guest, sitting along with everyone else under the flapping gazebo as the winners are presented with their prizes. Dressed in a purple suit, she could easily be one of the many school administrators
who are also sitting with us on the rows of plastic chairs.

  When I see her again at the Iten race, she is wearing the same purple suit. She has just broken Lornah Kiplagat’s half-marathon world record, winning $75,000. I ask her if I can visit her. As one of the fastest female athletes in the world, perhaps she can add another piece to the puzzle of why Kenyan runners are so good.

  One of the runners from the Run Fast camp, Raymond, is Mary’s brother-in-law (his brother Charles is married to her). When Raymond hears that I’m paying a visit, he says he wants to come, too. It’s only about five minutes outside of Iten, but he says he wants us to drive there. He’s been coveting my car since he first saw it. To me it looks just like any other car in Kenya, a slightly beaten, old, white Toyota. But to most Kenyan men I’ve met it’s a gleaming dream on wheels. Wherever I go, they stand staring at it, shaking their heads in disbelief. “You don’t often see a car like that,” they say. “You can tell it’s a mzungu car. Mzungus know how to look after their cars.” Raymond asks me to sell it to him, but it’s not mine. It was lent to me by my brother-in-law, Alastair. And I’ve already promised Godfrey that he can buy it if Alastair wants to sell it. But Raymond isn’t giving up. He tells me not to tell anyone that he wants it. I’m not sure what his strategy is, but I agree to keep it as our secret.

  We drive out of town and then immediately turn off the paved road and down a dirt track, clouds of red dust billowing behind us. The car is as hot as a sauna after being parked in the midday sun with the windows shut. Up ahead a woman in tracksuit bottoms and a bright yellow T-shirt, with a small boy holding her hand, stand by the side of the road. They watch us as we pass.

  “That was Mary,” says Raymond, after we’ve gone by.

  “Really? Should I stop?”

  He doesn’t say anything. I look over at him. He’s grinning at me. He nods. I pull the car to a stop and wait. In the mirror I can see that she’s walking back toward us. I wind the window down.

  “Hello,” I say as she comes over. But she’s looking past me, to Raymond. They talk hurriedly, as though there’s a problem. I lean back in my seat so they can see each other.

  Raymond looks at me and points ahead to a gate. “In there,” he says. I look at Mary. She smiles, stepping back to let me drive.

  “She was going to a neighbor’s house. She forgot we were coming,” Raymond tells me.

  We drive through into a small compound. To one side is some farm machinery and two men. One of them, Mary’s husband, Charles, watches us suspiciously as I park the car. I get out and wave to him. “Hello,” I say. He gives me a small nod, not returning the smile, as Mary and the boy follow us in and then disappear inside the house. Raymond gets out and stands by the car, stretching his hands in the air as though we’ve just been on a long journey. I’m not sure where to go.

  Charles eventually comes over and shakes my hand and gestures toward the front door. “Karibu,” he says. “Welcome.”

  I step through into a small living room so crammed with sofas and coffee tables that there’s almost no space to stand. Mary, who still hasn’t spoken to me, is fixing up two glasses of a toxic-colored orange drink. I sit down in one of the armchairs. Raymond, following along behind, sits in the far corner of the room. Mary gives us each a drink and sits down somewhere midway between us.

  I look around the room. The walls are full of photographs. Most of them are of Mary or Charles running. The biggest pictures are all of Charles. Medals hang from the corners of a few of the pictures. A shiny, gold HAPPY CHRISTMAS sign hangs over the door.

  “You must have been happy to break the world record last week,” I say. She looks at me confused, perhaps surprised by my accent. “Did you know you could break the record, or was it a surprise?”

  “A surprise,” she says, looking away. Charles comes into the room with their son and sits down beside her. He picks up the remote control and clicks on the TV. It’s just behind my head, so I can’t see it. They all stare at it. It feels like they’re staring at me. Mary is running the London Marathon in a few weeks. I ask her if she thinks she can win. She laughs. I’m not sure if it’s in answer to my question or at something on the TV. Our stilted conversation goes on for about ten minutes, Mary looking away shyly every time I ask her a question, while Charles and Raymond sit watching on silently, their eyes flicking back and forth between me and the TV above my head.

  “Well, I’d better leave you to get ready for your afternoon run,” I say at last. Mary just nods.

  Once we’re outside, Mary disappears. Charles takes me around the back of the house to see the cows. I ask him if they’ll use the money from Mary’s world record to build a bigger house. He looks at me, confused. “Why?” he asks. I feel like I’ve insulted him. Their place is nice, but it’s fairly simple. It’s not the house you imagine a world record holder living in.

  Money is clearly an awkward subject. Mary has been a fairly late developer. She’s twenty-nine and is only just starting to make a mark on the world stage. Up until recently, Charles was the star runner in the household. The house was probably built with his winnings.

  A farmhand is milking one of the cows. “Do you sell the milk?” I ask him. Again he looks at me as though I’m mad. “No,” he says. “It’s for us.” The majority of the people in the Rift Valley are brought up as subsistence farmers, so when the athletes win any money, the first thing they do is buy a cow for milk. I can’t help thinking it would be easier and cheaper just to go to the shop and buy it every day. Every street has a tiny kiosk selling fresh milk for virtually nothing. But the mindset is to own a cow. A person without a cow is not really a person. You can judge the importance of someone by the number of cows he owns.

  Charles tells me that when they were younger, they used to drain some of the blood from the cows to mix with mursik, a fermented milk drink. They would make a tiny hole in the cow’s neck to get the blood out, and then seal it back up, letting the cow run off unharmed. “It made us strong,” he says. The mixture of blood and mursik is often cited by runners as the Kalenjin secret, even though it is rarely drunk these days. Mixed with charcoal, it is an unpalatable but potent tonic. When triumphant athletes return home after winning a big competition, they are often met at the airport by a ceremonial gourd of mursik, which they drink to loud cheers.

  Charles and Mary also have a small field of maize growing nearby. “For ugali,” Charles tells me. Yet another Kenyan secret. Mary is certainly running fast on it. A few weeks later she does indeed win the London Marathon, with the fourth fastest marathon time in history.

  Raymond is standing by the car, waiting to go. We walk over. Charles wants to know where I got the car. “KXE,” he says, referring to the license plate. “It’s a very nice car. You don’t see KXE like that, in that condition.” He asks if he can look under the hood. He stares at the engine, fascinated. “Do you want to sell it?” he asks. I tell him it’s my brother-in-law’s car. “Well, tell him,” he says, “that if he wants to sell it …”

  I assure him I will. Raymond has climbed into his seat and is waiting like a moody teenager to go, so I wave good-bye. “Say thanks and good-bye to Mary for me,” I say, as we pull out through the gates and up the bumpy road back to Iten.

  Sixteen

  The Kenyan national championships, Nairobi

  The next day I hop back into our coveted Toyota Corolla and set out on the long, perilous drive down to Nairobi. Godfrey and I have a pilgrimage to make. In some ways it’s just another race. A bunch of people running around a field. But the Kenyan national cross-country championships is probably the toughest, most competitive running race in the world. The top hundred or so Kenyans in each age group come together, the very fastest of the fast, racing one another for a few coveted spots on the national team for the world championships. It’s the most densely concentrated gathering of running brilliance anywhere in the world. I simply have to be there to witness the spectacle.

  Godfrey had said that he would give me a lift, bu
t a few days before, he rang to tell me that there had been a change of plan. His car was still in the garage, he said. He was now going to take the bus to Nairobi a day early with Anders as he had to help an athlete get a visa. So that afternoon I find myself standing by my car in a hot, dusty town about 50 miles from Iten, waiting for another runner and his wife. Godfrey has arranged for me to give them a lift, so they can keep me company and help me find the way.

  A man in a striped shirt carrying a big jacket under his arm approaches me as I stand there, his hand stretched out. “Yes, my friend,” he says as I shake his hand. “Where are you going?”

  “Nairobi,” I say.

  “I’ll come,” he says. It’s only half a question. I can’t tell if he has just decided to go to Nairobi because I’ve suggested it, or whether he was going there anyway. Spotting my concerns, he says: “I am a police officer.”

  I agree to give him a lift. He’s heading home to see his family for the weekend. The runner I’m waiting for and his wife turn up soon after, looking harassed and complaining about the matatu journey from their home village nearby.

  As the midafternoon sun burns in patches of light across the town, we all climb into the car and head out along the potholed road into a landscape scattered with spiky cactus plants and dry, stony riverbeds. It’s a straight four-hour drive to Nairobi, past small, ramshackle crossroad settlements, big school gates, and up into the hills, overtaking tractors, trucks, avoiding the matatus and smoking cars coming the other way. At one point we pass a group of baboons sitting right by the roadside grooming their young and watching the passing vehicles with disinterest. Finally the road drops down into Nairobi.