The week of the Marathon! No time for whining

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Kili a few days before the marathon

Perhaps because it was marathon week, this past week was full of surprises and lots of “This is Africa” (TIA).  As usual, most of the time, my African friends bailed John &me out, and at the end of the day, we both accomplished our goals for the week, culminating with good performances in the Kilimanjaro marathon, John for the 21K, and me for what was to be a 5K that turned into a 10K.

Is it a mamba? or just a helpful garden snake?

The week began with Pauli discovering a snake in the garage that nearly everyone believed was a mamba. We were scared of course to death.  I had my book out, others offered their opinion and almost everyone thought it was so.  Unfortunately for this snake, s/he was a nice garden snake hiding in the garage to catch rats, and we all in our terror mistook him for the dreaded black mamba.  (I verified his identity on Mountain Club night when I took his picture to the experts.)   

 

Mama and her amazing teeth

Unhappy couple

 Two days later, Pauli caught and ultimately killed 2 rats. (probably the mama and baba of the babies that were living in the car when we returned home.)  Because we had no snake to kill & eat them, they had returned to the garage with joy.  Fortunately for us, Pauli dispatched them in due time.  These events also bring curiosity and thrill to little children and our dear Rubach neighbors were over to view and touch both the snake and to exclaim GROSS about the rats, but to also be horrified by the size of their teeth.

Haika and Happiness

Haika Ema and Jonathon

Haika, Happi, Jonathon, Trish and Stella

Members of our youth CAB met to discuss their ideas about the lasting value of Usalamaa Barabarani (Chrissy’s research) and it was such a privilege hearing them talk not only about how much they looked back on their training and the presentations to the schools but about how much it seems that the school children have retained.  

Jonathon

In the process, I realized that I had first met Jonathon back in 2007 when the Weiss’s came to Moshi and we spent days driving around with Stephen talking to kids who needed assistance, and what they were doing.  I was so proud that he remembered the Weiss’s and Sarah and how much she and they meant to him as they helped him through school.  I even remember him showing them his reports from school and some of the work he was doing.  Wow!!!!

warm up for the Kili Marathon!

Then marathon preparations began in earnest.  Ema began preparing T-shirts.  We had ordered an additional 12 and instead of the various sizes, they all came in 2XL.  That equaled approximately an American L, but still for some they fit like a night-shirt.  John and Matt and I registered ourselves and 34 people for the run.  It took quite a bit of time, and as anyone can imagine there were some distraught people waiting in line behind me as the payment came.  But, once done…CHECK  ✔

Amazing air inflated sign

Even with the marathon, the weddings must go on!

Saturday was even crazier.  Since we had 34 Community advisory  board members signed up, we had to get the numbers to them, as well as their transport and T-shirts.  God Bless Sister Bona who sat through the whole afternoon with me until every T-shirt was handed out.  And Ema who got the T-shirts to me in time (before he had another meeting to attend) and Prisca who assigned cost value for transport.  Whew.  By 5pm all t-shirts and numbers were handed out.  ✔

 And thank heavens you can find sewing (tailors) fundis who for a few shillings will run a seam up the sides of these huge T-shirts. ✔

 I found my husband and his friend watching a really terrible ultra marathon movie (so terrible that I put my earphones on to cook dinner) With power out for the 3^rd day in a row, creative cooking was essential.  And on top of it with one half marathoner and one whole marathoner in the house, carbs and mild food was equally important.  ✔

 Our neighbors had agreed to host 8 young people to sleep in their front yard in tents.  None of us thought through that one very carefully.  They only had one bathroom and it just wasn’t going to work for so many people.  But they made do and as promised the young people were quiet.  We all learned a valuable lesson from our neighbors “experiment” in camping lore. We carefully laid out our things and were ready for a 4:30 am wake up to arrive at the stadium on time.

me ready to go at 6:30

Sunday arrived.  Pick-ups by dear Carol were on time.  Seemed like an energetic but carefully planned day.   

A fraction of those who participated in 5K

Ema & Youth CAB members

The first surprise of the day occurred in the 5K’s.  All CAB members accounted for: ✔ , but rather than starting at 7:45, the race suddenly started at 7:15!  

Looks so calm--looks deceiving

 

We're off

And, as the fast runners reached the first round about, there was no official there to tell them which way to turn, and they turned right instead of left…So all of us (about 3000) turned with them.  I knew it was wrong, but didn’t know what to do (plus you never know here if route had changed at the last minute.) Up the long hill we went.  I was sure that they would turn right again then, but they turned left.  This is an area I run frequently, and I knew it had to be wrong.  Suddenly we were in the direct path of the descent of the marathoners and the wheelchair 10Ks. But no one turned us around, and even at the water station, no one said a word no matter how much I asked.  And then even worse, we turned right again to go up the road that we live just off of.  As far as I could tell, there was no point that we could get to the finish line without completely turning around and we had already run 4kilometers. Suddenly, a motorcycle plowed through the crowd with a woman screaming into a megaphone.  “YOU ARE ALL GOING THE WRONG WAY.  YOU HAVE TO TURN AROUND NOW AND FOLLOW ME.!” And off she went.  All the walkers were behind so now they were in the front, and running through them was a real killer.  To top it off, the wheelchairs were now barreling down the hill and there was no time to call out as they came through.  I started screaming at the walkers who were oblivious to the dangers for these other athletes, especially the half and whole marathoners who would be really counting the seconds in their finish time.  So as we say here, I became the most “mama mkali” in Moshi at that moment.  At least I had enough Swahili to yell out, “ Hatari, angolea, watu wengi watakuja sasa hivi, watu watakimbia kilometa ishirini na moja na watu watakimbia kilometa aerobaini na mbili!!!!!” and then “GET OUT OF THEIR WAY!!!!!”  

It was actually amazing to see people running up from town, the right way!  We learned later that the real starting time of 7:45 did in fact occur and over 4,000 people turned properly to the left instead of the right and finished about the same time we all did.  They of course had only run 5K and were pretty happy about it.

10 CAB members caught in the act of rounding the corner to the last 2K

 I was so thankful when I turned off the road to the last 2 kilometers to the finish line so that I did not have to see the disaster anymore.  I was really happy to know that I had run these 10K in one hour and 5-7 minutes.  Not too bad for an old mad lady.

wow 10K

not dead

nice red face

Of course Carol was there to great me and take really crazy pictures showing my beautiful old red face!  And he helped me through to get my bag & little prizes.  I was indeed proud that I found that I actually could run 10K.  No better way to find out I guess than accidently.

We went over to the finish for the half and whole marathoners.   

runners come start/finish deflating

trying to hold it up

more deflate

down

The next event was just as wild.  The Finish line started to deflate.  At first Carol just said, “wow”, but then it continued to come down.  “Take pictures Carol!” and he did.  Runners were coming under this horrifying deflating massive “balloon” and the futile efforts of three people to hold it up were soon over and the whole thing fell right on the fast halfs and wholes who had just started coming in.  Runners were picking it up to get out, and others jumping over to avoid the fallen.  It was crazy.  Equally crazy was that they started pulling it off the track but forgot that it was tied on each side, so they formed a perfect trip line for about 30 seconds.  Again before someone fell, a genius grabbed a knife and cut the line.  No one could actually tell where the finish was, but the later arrivals were none the wiser for the insanity of the day.

Agnes

The CAB performed amazingly well.  I was incredibly grateful to cute little Agnes who would run ahead of me and then walk until I caught up.  In this way we were together until nearly the end when she probably just outran me entirely.  

We caught Jan and John arriving only a few minutes apart.  Both actually looked pretty good!

Jan

 Then John....

John is hardly out of breath!

Next all the Moshi CAB bonding!

Cuties

half the grop

Miss Tanzania

Dr. Eliza & Agnes

Dr. Eliza and Ema

Dr. Eliza!!!! Yea

Frank and CAB

The cuties

Happi Jacenta

Happy group

Ema, Prisca, two great leaders!

The girls!

Trish JB Thomas & Suzy

Moshi CAB is awesome!

No way they ran 42K

But Stella and Alphonce still got medals and full marathon T-shirts!!!

The last hysterically funny moment was when I saw two youth CAB members suddenly appear running across the 42K finish line and run to the tent.  Of course they had not run 42K, and they had 5K numbers on, but the people in tents gave them medals for the whole and a t-shirt.  I just could not stop laughing.  What a day. 

Guido before collapsing a second time!

It ended with great drama when Guido had significant medical issues at the end of the whole marathon (due of course to his Guido-ness, having run a whole marathon the weekend before and just arriving here two nights before the race) but he did recover, and minus Guido John and I joined a crowd of others for a grand beer & eating fest in the afternoon.

I have to say it is hard to settle back to normal life in Moshi.  But, actually, what is normal in Moshi anyway?