Running the Wall

All summer, I read about running.

It started with a New Yorker article about Sammy Wanjiru, the troubled-yet-brilliant Kenyan distance runner.  I had a huge stack of back issues to catch up on but May 21, 2012 edition was my favorite. The descriptions of slow twitch muscles, VO2max, and lactate thresholds were strangely fascinating.  Almost as riveting as the human story that was Wanjiru's.

Sammy Wanjiru.  Image from WikiCommons. FaceMePLS from The Hague, The Netherlands

In Virginia, I mentioned this new literary obsession to Mama Congo Guest Blogger and everyone's favorite ultramarathoner, Andrew Jenner.  He said, "Here, read this" and handed me the thick 116th Boston Marathon program.  He promised me hours of fun.  It was.

Then, I came back to Kinshasa.  I told another teacher (particularly adept at book suggestions as well as a runner) that I wanted to read about running.  She threw this at me, saying, "The hipsters really like it, but he lost me at the point where he professed his love for the Walkman."

Before this book, I purposefully repeated the mantra that I was not a runner, I just liked reading about running.  However, my hipster tendencies took over and somewhere between passages like:

When I'm running I don't have to talk to anybody and don't have to listen to anybody. This is a part of my day I can't do without.

and

You end up exhausted and spent, but later, in retrospect, you realize what it all was for. The parts fall into place, and you can see the whole picture and finally understand the role each individual part plays. The dawn comes, the sky grows light, and the colors and shapes of the roofs of houses, which you could only glimpse vaguely before, come into focus.

I started to get curious about what it would be like to run.

I have run before, but not really.  I've always been that person who says, "Well, I hate running," just like my middle schoolers on run-the-mile day.  Plus, it felt hard to run with two little ones at home.  There was a brief time where I would cheat-run by making Elias go with me.  It usually started off strong and ended with me dragging and/or carrying him most of the way.  Who goes running with a 5 year old?

So, I decided the NHS should get involved.  And I downloaded a free podcast where an extraordinarily pleasant British woman tells me I am doing-a-good-job-and-now-it's-time-for-your-90-second-recovery-walk. Inspirational British pop fills in the spaces.

So, now I am running the wall three mornings a week thanks to Haruki Murakami and the NHS.

The wall?

This is the wall:

This concrete-barbed-wire-leafy-forest-path forms the periphery of our compound.  Once around is a little over 1 mile.  It's pretty great.  I ignore Johan when he tells me how fast he ran around four times.  And if I see Sarah also running the wall, I go the other direction, knowing we would both hate to have a running partner.

The wall at 5:45am is loud.  People are up and shouting for transport, children are crying, and sometimes I hear a rooster.  I can't see any of these things beyond the wall, but I hear them -even through my earbuds - and they remind me that I am thankfully not at a gym.

And it's true what Murakami says.  I don't have to talk or listen to anyone.  Except that awkward, breathless, "Bonjour!" - twice - as I run past the guard house. 

I'm not yet brave enough to be a runner runner.  But for those of you who are: Kinshasa actually has a lot of options.  There are these crazy people - many of whom I know and love.  And this club.  And then, there's the many folks who go out every Sunday for an energetic, national-fitness kind of communal run:

When we had our Kima Mbangu (Run Fast) 5K last year (which I, randomly, organized), Mamas Vida, NouNou, and YouYou ALL came to run.  And they actually ran it.  It was seriously impressive. 

Maybe this year, I'll be running with them.

**More running in Congo here.

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Guest Post: This Too Shall Pass (or) UNFAIR and STUPID

I've known Andrew Jenner since 9th grade when he first re-landed in the U.S. after an eight-year stint in Kenya.  He was fascinating then and now.  Lucky for Mama Congo, he's also a real writer.  

Here a little something fancy for your Wednesday.  Thanks, Andrew!

According to family lore, my parents were going to name me Adam until a second cousin of mine was born a few months before me and his parents stole the name. I then almost became Christopher, and I’m told my dad was partial to some of the B-list O.T. names like Noah and Ezekiel.


But in the end, they settled on Andrew. And so I happily began my life, sharing a first name with the patron saint of Russia, Scotland, throat ailments and fish mongers, not one but two relatively obscure U.S. presidents and an enormous number of other American males born during the late Cold War era.

For the first couple years, my name presented me with no real challenges or heartache. Then my parents moved to Kenya in 1989. Andrew, it turns out, causes non-native English speakers enormous difficulty, both with its lead-off aggressive American “AEH” and the tricky “dr” bit that comes off more as a “jr” in U.S. English. A couple of the more common Kenyan attempts:

• “EN-jel”

• “AHN-duhr”

• “AYN-jew”

• “AHN-too-roo” (about the closest they ever really got)

I don’t really hold it against Kenyans, either. I certainly inflicted a great deal of violence on Swahili grammar, syntax & pronunciation during the seven or eight years I lived there, and they were nothing if not gracious and kind as they went about butchering my name.

The issue arose, though, in the Kenyan custom of referring to mothers as “Mama X,” X being the name of her firstborn child (or maybe son; honestly, I don’t remember, and it’s not like all those neat & wonderful “cultural traditions” that we sort of expect from quaint, poverty-stricken societies are really ironclad anyway, and regardless, I was both firstborn and a son). Janice Jenner should have been Mama Andrew, but the Kenyans just couldn’t swing it.

They could, however, nail my sister’s name: Hope. They could easily, on the first try, every time, hit it out of the park. Hope: one syllable with a nice long Swahili “o” and two straightforward consonants. And so, Janice Jenner – who, as I believe I may have already mentioned, was supposed to have been Mama Andrew – took the nom de mère Mama Hope.

To an eight-year-old boy, this came as a grievous, wretched injustice. My younger, hair-pulling sister gets all the glory just because my name is hard to say? It was a seriously UNFAIR and STUPID situation. When I brought my perspective on the matter to the attention of Mama Hope, she just kind of smiled and said something trite about life not always being fair. Which was doubly UNFAIR and STUPID because Mama Hope was the one that gave me my STUPID name in the first place and then showed no remorse or sympathy or anything. Do you remember the book Alexander and the Terrible,Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day? At least he wasn’t stuck with a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad name FOR LIFE.

I don’t remember much else about how this played out. I may well have gotten a little too mouthy about it a time or two, and ended up being unfairly sent to my room by Mama Hope. Sister Hope may well have goaded me about it, causing me to hit her or pull her hair, and then get unfairly sent to my room yet again. But then I got a little older, and the grievous, wretched injustice of the Mama Hope situation became a little less grievous and wretched. Kenyans never really got my name straight, but this became less and less of a bitter pill, until eventually, the experience coalesced and settled in my mind as a lesson about how extremely shitty life circumstances sometimes arise, and how sometimes they are unfair and stupid, and how making an issue of this inherent and immutable unfairness is usually counterproductive, and how sometimes, you just need to give things some time.

Andrew totes Elias around during a Virginia summer dusk walk.  Photo by Jill Humphrey

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Friday List!

Sarah's List:

Tipped off by good friend Andrew Jenner to Vice's Guide to Congo. An excellent five-part series. Look for Andrew's guest post coming up on Mama Congo.

  by  Julien Harneis 

 

Can you tell me how to get...how to get diapers without Sesame Street characters on them? Some good points about advertising and our children. And finally someone asks why newborn diapers always have a design with yellow swirls that fool all new parents into thinking their baby has a dirty diaper. This tripped us up every time, with both babies.

Remember this pic from this post? Jill and I both marveled at how beautiful this diaper is. Man, so beautiful.

Best part of my morning was seeing Robin Roberts' face when Maggie Gyllenhaal used the word vibrator twice before 8am. Anyone seen this movie?

I know I'm the last person on the planet, but I'm loving the show Girls. Nothing beats a funny girl in my book. Totally worth it just to watch Brian Williams' beautiful daughter. And in an interesting plot twist, Adam has become a bigger fan than me. He somehow manages to say, "It's just like that one time in Girls," in most conversations.

Speaking of working Girls into every conversation, here's a piece about f-ing redheads. As Ani's hair starts to peek out, we might have two redheaded girls on our hands. Only once has someone said, "Well, let's just hope that hair color is just a phase."

Redheads unite.

  by  e³°°° 

Jill's List:


Let's talk about this decorated diaper issue.  After peeling Lou out of the weird Turkish diapers we bought for the plane ride, I was ready to splurge for my old, I'm-a-lazy-hippie, standby of Seventh Generation diapers.  I mainly like them because they are an earthy shade of brown and nothing else.  They are aesthetically pleasing as far as diapers go.  No longer.  I went to buy a pack at the Friendly City Food Co-op and found that Dr. Suess has attacked them.  I'm not the only one who's mad.   How quickly I get picky after re-entering.

Just because we've become semi-famous for our attention to eyebrows on this blog.  The NYTimes is copying us and doing salon pieces.

Donna Alberico for The New York Times

Johan just got back from a 5 mile run with our favorite ultra-marathoner.  I'm super jealous.  It's not that I like running.  I don't at all.  But, I have been so busy this week that I haven't gotten to exercise.  And I'm really grumpy about it.  Am I like these people?

Have you all read this article?  Thoughts?  I have definitely made less-ambitious (or weirder.  move to Africa, anyone?) career choices because I have two young children who I'd rather spend time with.  I'll save my upcoming, lauded, high-powered, international public health career for later.

And, more from the Atlantic.  We talk about this "idea" a lot at my job place.  So interesting.

Not in the Congo, we don't.  See:

Oh, the French.  Adorable.

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