I run every other day on the school ground, the football pitch. I go before everyone else comes down to play sport, listen to my ipod, and generally try to have time just to myself. I try to run at least 10 laps around and then walk to cool down. Yesterday I was on maybe lap 3 when a little village boy, maybe 8 years old, just stood there and watched me run. At first I was annoyed because I get tired of being stared at. Then another boy came and the two sat together and watched me run. Half way through lap 4 I noticed one of the boys was running back and forth in the goal box.
As I jogged by, I asked the boy in KiSwahili: “Do you want to run?” He paused and looked at me, wondering if I was really asking him that. “Come,” I told him in KiSwahili. All of a sudden the boy sprints off ahead of me and leaves me in the dust, following the path around the ground. When I finished lap 6, I told the other boy to come too, and once again, he sprinted ahead of me. I’m jogging around the ground nice and slow, and these two 8 year old village boys are running full speed around and around the ground. It was hilarious! Each boy probably ran 3 times around. I sprinted with one for a while but couldn’t keep up. A bunch of boys from the other secondary school stopped to watch this white girl running and two village boys running laps.
I chuckled to myself as I walked back up to school.
