Wednesday:
I requested food from the hostel dining hall for the meals the kids would be missing. They gave it to me yesterday. It took 5 of us and a wheelbarrow to carry it all back:
17 loaves of bread
5 cabbages
5 onions
40 oranges
2 big bags of sugar
1 big bag of salt
1 big bag of loose tea
1 big bag of powdered milk
1 huge bag of powdered soup mix
1 massive bag of pasta
1 massive bag of rice
3 dozen eggs
2 kilos of peanut butter
4 liters of jelly
5 liters of oil
3 frozen chickens
1 box (~2ftx1.5ftx4in) frozen ground beef
1 box (same dimensions) frozen sausage
I stay up late frying my body weight in sausage so we can actually take something with us—there will no cooking facilities where we're staying (though we're not exactly sure where that is...)
Thursday
Not sure when the bus is coming to pick us up so I tell the kids to attend classes as normal and I'll let them know when I learn anything. Around 2:30 the kids come to hang around my house. I send them off to 3:00 study and tell them that I'll come get them when I learn something. At 3:45pm I get a message that the bus is about an hour away.
We waited out by the road and were soon joined by my principal and a couple other wandering teachers. Mr. Kudhumo entertained us with stories about how he used to play/coach amateur soccer and how chilly it can be in Swakopmund. Also, how in their traditional beliefs, you can bury a jar of sea water in front of your door and when witch-doctors come to try to witch you, all they will see is an ocean and be unable to get in. At that, the kids went sprinting back into the hostel to find empty bottles to bring.
The open truck (a lorry in Afrikaans, a "rolly" to the majority of Namibians who have frequent L/R pronunciation issues) eventually came roaring by in a cloud of dust. We rode, standing, to Rundu (it's actually pretty fun, you get some good air on some of those bumps). Thankfully, it's only about 30 minutes down the road). First we pulled into the gas station where a decrepit bus sat and I told the kids, "this looks like it!"
"Oh no, Miss," they tell me "This bus is too old, it will not make it."
"Since when did you guys become transportation snobs?"
We met up with all the other Kavango-region teams at the sports stadium. About 100 kids in all. A bunch of boys are hard at work securing 70 foam mattresses to the roof of a bus (the ministry let us use them which was great). Shortly after another bus rolls in, the one from the gas station. Apparently, it's going to have to make it. After much back and forth and confusion and preparations there's a coach's meeting.
From PC there's me, Mark, Kerri, Cedar, and Naomi bringing kids. There are also about 5 Namibian teachers with kids and a handful of kids without teachers. We discuss how, as of now, we still don't know where we will be accommodated when we reach Walvis Bay. But hey, let's get on the bus.
So we proceed to cram 100 kids and about 12 adults (Skyla and Maggie came too) onto two buses that have signs declaring a much lower capacity. Plus all our bags and food. But it works and is actually more spacious than I had anticipated.
Around 8:45pm we finally roar out of town--these are some decrepit buses and we never do manage to work up a lot of speed. We also seem to be stopping at least every hour. Sometimes at a gas station, sometimes in the middle of nowhere. There's also a ton of heat coming off the engine.
A couple hours later we stop at a police checkpoint and get off to pee and drink water. When we finally pile back on, the kids tell us somebody is missing. A wise-ass declares, "It's Snake. He's not here. There is not snake on the bus." Eventually this gets sorted out as something that the kids think of as a big hilarious joke, even after being warned that we needed to know for serious what was going on. Yeah, the joker got a bit of a smack from Mark. The problem was that one kid really was missing. After about 30 minutes it gets sorted out that he got on the other bus (which had already taken off down the highway). Sigh.
It was a long night but starting around 1am I lay down on the mattresses we'd squashed down the aisle of the bus and despite the fact that the kids never really settled down or got quiet, managed to sleep pretty well. As dawn broke and a light drizzle set in, we find that the windshield wipers don't work so every 20 minutes or so we pause so Mark can jump out and wipe down the windshield.
We rolled into Swakopmund around 8:30am and it's quite chilly. Misty too. Basically the complete opposite of weather in the Kavango. There's again confusion and moving kids on and off the bus. Who's going to work on figuring out accommodation? The buses need to go to
the garage for repairs... I tell my kids to meet me off the bus for a little "team meeting". They're gathered outside and I'm sorting my things when the bus driver slams the door shut and starts the engine.
"Excuse me, my kids are outside." He keeps going. "Um, you need to let them in! Where are we going?" He mumbles something about how they can just follow.
I don't even know where we're going and my kids have certainly never been here before so I grab my bag and jump out of the bus just before it pulls away. A fortuitous move it turns out. Seems that they went to the garage and once there the driver refused to let anybody leave because he didn't want to be responsible for all our stuff if anything went missing. So while I took my kids down to the beach and we walked through the town, everybody else spent 4 hours sitting in a garage.
The beach with the kids was great. They kept running up to me with shells or stones or seaweed and asking what they were. What causes the waves? Is it refraction? I attempted to explain tides and the migratory patterns of sharks. It really hit home the importance of field trips. The kids I brought are all pretty good students who show a certain interest in school but I've never seen this kind of enthusiasm to just know in the classroom.
Kambinda's first observation was that it was like Rundu (the town closest to us), but, "Miss, it is so clean!" We checked out the finish line they were setting up and the kids took time to admire a large statue commemorating the contribution of German soldiers to...something. Not sure what, but, really, it's a sort of bizarre thought as the German influence on local populations wasn't such a historical hightlight (ordered genocide of the Herero tribe?). But anyway, they'd never seen a statue so that was cool too. They may all be between 16 and 19 but there are so many things that are new and great to them. It's fun to watch.
After a couple of hours we were starving as the kids had elected to delay breakfast until we were off the bus and now our food was locked away somewhere on the bus. I bought a few chocolate bars and bananas at a grocery store which we split. I knew they were hungry because I was famished (and had even indulged in a slice of peanut-butter bread before leaving the bus) but they didn't complained, only replied when I asked that, yes, they were hungry.
Finally we all met up again with the buses and ate our brunch of sausages and macaroni on the beach. Jeremy got to town and joined us. Soon after, we rounded everybody up and headed to Walvis Bay, about 30km away, to take care of registration for the race. This is where we would stay the night and where the race would begin. It was a pretty painless process and the race organizers (Etosha Fisheries) were able to arrange us accommodation at a local rugby club--inside
the club for girls, a big tent for the boys. They were well organized and really helpful. They fed us all dinner (spaghetti with ground beef and a sandwich with mashed sardines) and even though each team of 4 only paid N$50 to register, every kid got a t-shirt, a keychain, a can of sardines, a medal at the end of the race, a can of coke, and a bag lunch. Somebody out there is being really generous.
We showered in the employee locker rooms then herded all the kids back on the bus to drive to the rugby club. Silly me thought that after an all-night bus ride with little to no sleep then an exciting day touring a new town the kids would drop off to sleep in no time. I severely underestimated them. Even as Jeremy and I put up our tent and immediately passed out, the sounds of an impromptu volleyball game raged on.
Friday
Up early and amazingly the buses are ready to take us to the starting line. Flurry of activity getting kids going but they're fantastic. There was never any complaining about tired, hungry, cold, or bored. They were quick to wake up and get their things packed and ready. They followed instructions and didn't give me a hard time and when things got tough (and you will see that they do) they stayed positive.
We had peanut butter sandwiches on the bus and got them to the starting line. Got their numbers pinned on, and Jeremy got stuck with everybody's sweatshirts and sandals and whatnot. My race started at 7, the kids started at 7:30.
The race itself went well. I felt good and much of the course is incredibly beautiful. Big, sharp sand dunes rising out of the desert on one side, the ocean on the other. The weather was great. Water stations were regular though they didn't provide Gatorade, instead, there were cups of flat Coke. Yes, this sounds disgusting but after awhile you just need the sugar. Fell into step with another runner and as soon as he opened his mouth realized I'd stumbled on another
American (a welcome change to the group of Afrikaans-speaking runners I was trapped behind at first). We chatted for awhile, seems he's doing a 4-month PEPFAR rotation in Windhoek with the state department.
Lots of PCVs had come out. Maggie was cheering us on from the halfway point as well as other volunteers who were only running half the marathon. Skyla decided to walk half. Kids were stationed every quarter to take up their leg of the relay and they also cheered, also yelling out the bus windows for us as they were shuttled to the finish line. Jeremy was at the 3/4 mark with a much-needed Cliff Bar. I really think it saved my race. I hit the wall about 5km before and
eating it while going up the hill was a big help. I finished in 4h21m and I felt good crossing the finish. Passed people in the last 3km who had passed me in the first 3. That felt really good. Actually I felt worse once I started walking. Post-race icing and rub-down at the massage table helped. The kids did well though got completely blown away by some of the other teams. Some schools are putting out some really fast teams. It's actually a bit disheartening as you're plodding along to hear the slap-slap-slap of bare feet coming up behind you and having a kid 2 feet shorter than you blow by.
Afterwards we all hung out at the finish until everybody crossed then they had an awards ceremony with prizes and bag lunches (sardine-sandwich, apple, juice, raisins+peanuts--can you tell that
Lucky Star is a sardine company?) for the kids. Also, a running club in Cape Town had seen pictures from last year's race and were touched by the pictures of these hard-working little kids running this race without shoes. They'd managed to collect 40 pairs of used sneakers to donate to teams. Don't get me wrong, this is really laudable and given the amount of racism that I see in S. Africa and Namibia, it's really inspiring to see white adults taking real interest in village
kids. But a lot of the kids actually chose to run barefoot, even if they did have shoes. That's how they train and when they put on the running shoes they complain that they're "too heavy." Even some of mine tore off their shoes before starting. Oh, Africa. But hey, everybody wants to at least have shoes, right?
Afterwards we took the kids to the Aquarium which is actually pretty lame (entrance fee for learners equals 15 cents U.S.) but was fun for the kids and watching them was fun as well. Walking there we passed a group of people who were working with their dogs on silly things like
jumping hurdles and running through those little tunnel things and weaving back and forth between posts. I don't know how to ask them what exactly they think of such nonsense. But it was fun to watch.
From there we had time to swim in the ocean for a bit and the kids all collected bottles of sea water to take home. The ocean is freezing, being fed on an Antarctic current, but the kids jumped and splashed in the water, playing with the waves. We drove to Dune 7, one of the biggest desert sand dunes in Namibia and I even managed to climb to the top and get pictures. I think the best part was the running/tumbling down.
I'd wanted to actually take the kids into KFC for dinner but time/transport wasn't on our side so while some other teams grocery shopped, a few of us ordered a few buckets of chicken to take
back—Cedar and I luxuriously sipping on a milkshake while we waited. The kids thoroughly enjoyed their dinner as did I. Ok, it was probably the best-tasting chicken I'd ever eaten. I was really tired and hungry.
Again, in my naivity, I figured the kids would drop off fast. It had been an early day with running, food, swimming, and excitement. The plan was to get up at 3:30 and on the road at 4am. My kids told me they went right to bed but even if so, plenty others were up late. I don't know where they get it from.
Sunday
Up at 3:30am and then we have to keep calling the bus drivers who tell us they're having mechanical problems (I think they were having post-night-of-partying-problems). We sit around, packed up, wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags, dozing. We don't get going until 6:30.
Considering it took us 12 hours from Rundu to get here, this does not bode well. Especially because some teams live 3 hours outside of Rundu. The buses are similarly slow and continue to stop constantly.
We don't make it to Rundu until 11. Then we find that of the two buses, only one is authorized to take kids back to school who live on the east side of Rundu. West side (where we are) doesn't actually have anything arranged). So in the middle of the night we're calling the transit authorities and end up meeting at the government garage which appears to be full of vehicles we are not allowed to take.
"What about that truck over there?"
"It is being used."
"Not right now, it's not. We'll get them back by morning."
We hang out and Jeremy and I feel like dying. The kids somehow maintain this almost creepy level of energy and enthusiasm. The boys ask the girls to make them more peanut butter sandwiches and Jeremy decides this is a good time to shame the boys into making their own: "What if you don't have a wife one day, how will you eat if you can't make even a sandwich?!" So they stand outside the bus singing, dancing, and making/eating sandwiches.
Finally, somebody manages to locate a small 21-passenger bus we can use. So then we wait for it. Then we drive around getting gas and dropping off more people in Rundu. The driver manages (in town!) to get the bus stuck in sand and the boys have to jump out and push. We finally leave town around 2am. They put in a CD of really high-energy Namibian music and the kids are bopping around and singing. If anything else went wrong or if Jeremy hadn't been there to commiserate, I probably would have burst into tears. We pull into Leevi around 2:30 and I left a note on the door of the school saying I won't be in for my morning classes. The kids got about 2 hours of
sleep before they were woken for classes.
So that's my marathon. The trip down really wasn't bad. The trip back was. And yet, after two years here, we're all still musing that, "At least we had transport." As I told somebody "I never would have thought that my first marathon would be followed by climbing a giant dune then spending 20 hours on a bus."
And over a week later, the kids are still talking about it.
