When running
The other day, on my first run from my new place, I was greeting a group of children as they pushed a janky little wheelbarrow across my path when one of the faces swam up into familiarity. “You! It’s you!” I smiled and pointed at him and we hugged each other, but not before he winced a little bit as I raised my arms and jumped up to him. Even though he was wearing a skirt, I knew this little boy. Maybe about 4 or 5 years old, he lives by my old place, and he was one of a gaggle of neighborhood kids who would excitedly, screeching, run up to greet me, giving me a send-off at the start of my runs and welcoming me home with equal enthusiasm.
What was he doing over here, on the opposite side of town, at least a couple of kilometers away from where he lives? I don’t have the Luganda skills to formulate that question, and to children no less! Instead I asked his name. I couldn’t understand what he mumbled in reply. It took another, older kid a few tries before I finally heard “Tony.” “Tony!!” I smiled and hugged him again.
Recognizing my little friend Tony, even disguised in a skirt, on my first run from my new place felt like a good sign. This place is still my place. In some villages I am greeted by kids who know me by name. I can’t get too used to that; it is a special honor to be treated like a kween on the regular. But kweens also have duties to spread friendship and good cheer.
“Mamerica!” I was called on today’s run, the first time I’ve ever heard that one. “Yes, I’ll be your ‘Merica, but there’s a price,” I imagined purring back; “you’ll have to be my friend!” [Said with equal parts sincerity and irony; Mamerica.]
There’s a price for playing princess: I’d say for every 10 kids I see who are ecstatically happy to see my mzungu ass running down the road, there’s 1 kid scared to their wit’s end at the sight of me. Of one thing I am certain: I have looked sheer terror in the face. Regularly. I know how to say “Don’t worry, I don’t eat children!” in Luganda.
Things that may have influenced my faster-than-normal speed earlier this evening:
· Impending nightfall
· Storm clouds rolling in
· Meeting a 6-year old girl on the road carrying a baby on her back, who could keep up with me…When I stopped and walked she was happy to, and when I ran she did too. As much as I didn’t want to leave her, (because who wants to exit the presence of their new personal shero any sooner than one absolutely must?), I also didn’t want to force her to run. The only way out: I had to shake her. For her own good. So I did. I ran faster than a tiny barefoot girl carrying a baby today. I’m not sure if I’m proud…
On my run today, in the middle of a low, swampy, open area, I smelt that sweet yet nasty scent. I hadn’t quite placed the source before I heard the flies and saw a cute dead little thing just a few feet away from me on the side of the road. Hit by a motorcycle or a car, it was a puppy. Or maybe it was a rabbit. I didn’t look back to try to discern its species, so it is both. But life was teeming all around it: flies on the carcass, a cow in the field, kids pushing bicycles loaded with jerry cans, empty or full, depending on whether they’re going or coming. In this oddly beautiful moment, death had been allowed to remain in the land of the living. To see death up close, intimately, removes some of its mysteriousness. Unknown, but known a bit better through proximity and nostrils, death’s power over us can be overcome by living a life of immediacy. To fret about a future assured fate steals your time to be alive. Seeing death on the road in a cute little anonymous animal makes it pretty black and white: you’re either dead, or you’re not. If we’re alive, we’d better live.
