Half-Marathon

On March 31st, I am going to attempt to run a half-marathon. My goal is simply to finish without walking, but I have decided that it is a good idea to prepare myself so I don’t die trying. For the past few weeks, I’ve been running in the afternoons after school. Normally, I like to run by myself, listening to my discman and working off the stress of the day.
Last Thursday, I started to run just like any other day. I was ready to go with my music, and looking forward to a nice, slow 5K jog. However, right before I reached to main dirt road, a 15 year old girl came running after me. “ke nyaka go kitima le leina,” she said. (I want to run with you). She was wearing a tank top (and no bra), a wrap-around skirt, and had no shoes. I agreed to let her come, thinking that she would last about 100m, then turn around and go home. So we started to run. She was running rather fast, and I had to struggle to keep up with her. Again, I thought that she would tire of this pace and turn around in no time. But she kept running. Fast.

We passed the stream with the goats and cows drinking. We passed Koko (my 71-year old host mother), who was out herding the goats. And we kept going. Pretty soon, I heard little voices behind us. About 8 small children, none over the age of 9, were sprinting after us. They also wanted to run. However, I knew that they wouldn’t be able to keep up. Chasing after us was a fun game, and they would quickly tire of the long jog. …wrong again! Somehow, these children (also without shoes), managed to run the rest of the way with us. They were sweating and breathing hard, but each one kept up—and they were going faster than me!!

So here I was, out of breath, running very fast so that I would not be beaten by a bunch of kids without shoes, as many of the villagers watched on. When we were about 1 km from home, we once again passed Koko. This time though, she raced out to the road and started running with us!! It was quite the spectacle for Jakkalskuil to see: a white girl, a bunch of shoeless kids, and a grandmother in a long dress, all running together on the dirt road!!

will admit, I was very skeptical of this rag-tag group of running partners, but now I’ve found that they are the best incentive I have, and will help me to not only finish the half marathon, but run rather fast as well!

Contributed by Erica.
For more stories from South Africa, visit http://ericainsouthafrica.blogspot.com/