Finishing Comrades, Starting Other Things

I ran the 89 kilometre Comrades Marathon in 10 hours and 32 minutes.

This year, 12,952 people entered the race. 10,077 finished before the 12 hour cut off time. My overall position was 5509. In case you are interested, here is the breakdown:

 

Gun Time:	05:30:14	Overall Pos:	5509
Finish Time:	10:32:06	Gender Pos:	4834
Net Time:	10:32:06	Category Pos:	676

 

Split	Race Time	Time of Day	Overall Pos	Category Pos	Gender Pos	Dist. Done	Speed
Camperdown (62kms to go)	03:11:46	08:42:00	8810	919	7527	26.77	7.16
Drummond (halfway)	05:22:08	10:52:22	8335	882	7156	44.97	7.16
Winston Park (31kms to go)	07:00:21	12:30:35	7513	838	6501	58.27	7.21
Cowies Hill (18kms to go)	08:33:42	14:03:56	7189	818	6205	70.97	7.24
Mayville (7kms to go)	09:47:54	15:18:08	6061	737	5297	82.17	7.15
Finish	10:32:05	16:02:19	5509	676	4834	89.17	7.09

On the day of Comrades, I woke up at 12:30 am to catch the bus that would take me and my fellow Tzaneen Marathon Clubbers from Durban to Pietermaritzburg—the reverse of the race we would all be undertaking shortly on foot.

By half past four in the morning, almost all of the other runners were nervously milling around the start line. People occasionally would share with me a funny aside—in Afrikaans. Being nervous and in no mood explain myself, I would laugh and nod my head despite my utter incomprehension. Half an hour, or so, before the race, I found my way to the G section of the starting positions; “G” as in “A, B, C, D, E, F, G”. Runners presumed by race officials to be faster than me found themselves in sections A through F, while anyone deemed slower than me landed in the final section, H.

Due to the roughly 10,000 people in front of me at the time of the starting gun, it took 5 minutes to actually cross the start line and begin a slow trot. The first thing that I had to wrap my mind around as the sun crept up over the horizon was the massive scale of the flow of humanity that I found myself in. Ahead of me and behind me (though mostly ahead of me) stretched thousands of people, all of whom had the same crazy goal of finishing a 55 mile race. The greatest virtue of this, at least from my point of view, was the glorious distraction if provided. There was always someone to speak with and if speaking wasn’t a priority, the enthusiasm of the spectators was enough. Spectators were present in high numbers all along the route, which is a testament to the importance that Comrades Marathon holds for South Africans.

So think Big. Also, think Party, because that’s what often surrounded the race route. The alluring smell of Botswana beef and boerewors on the grill, various tunes blaring from speakers, and the cheers and singing of the party goers/spectators followed us all the way into Durban.

When I reached the halfway point of the race I heard over the loudspeakers that Stephen Muzhingi of Zimbabwe had just won the race, beating out the Russian born favorite, Leonid Shvetsov. Muzhingi ran the race in 5 hours and 23 minutes.

When I crossed the half-way point I was in what is known as a bus. Not the kind with wheels, but rather the kind that is lead by a seasoned marathoner who knows how to keep a specific pace. The guy leading the bus had a long flag pole attached to his back with a flag on top of the pole that said “Sub 11 hour”. He had designated certain times for us to walk, so that we could preserve our leg strength. When we were about to start walking for a few minutes, he would have us all count backwards so that we could stop in unison and avoid a pile up. He also shouted soothing words of encouragement to us as we ran.

When we started running again after a walk break, he would yell, “Everyone easy, easy now, slowly, slowly, 1, 2, 3, shuffle!” and off we would go. Slow and easy and shuffle are reassuring words to hear when you are running an ultra-marathon.

I found the bus immeasurably helpful. It was at about the halfway point when I started to lose a little steam and the bus helped to pull me along. Eating was also essential. I hadn’t eaten much for the first half of the race. During the second half I was seized with righteous hunger and took two handfuls of whatever food was available at each water point for the rest of the race. Candy bars, baked potatoes, PowerAde, cookies, oranges and gummy bears fueled me. People along the route (being South Africans) offered their own foods as well, like grilled meat and beer. I declined on the latter but readily ate the former when it was offered.

With a mere half-marathon to go, a little before Cowies hill, I bid adieu to the bus and took off at my own pace. After enduring the torture that was the second half of the Long Tom Marathon, I had vowed to start Comrades at a reasonable pace. Having done this, I felt the exhilaration of a second wind once the prospect of crossing the finish line felt real. For the last 20 or so kilometers, I felt great and spent my time passing people.

Crossing the finish line in Durban’s Kingsmead Stadium felt amazing. An intense feeling of relief was manifest on the faces of the runners sitting and lying on the ground. At least the conscious ones felt relief; there was a steady stream of people getting carried away on stretchers out of the stadium. The guys from the Tzaneen Marathon Club that I came to Durban with were at the stadium to greet me after the race, as were three fellow Peace Corps volunteers who had come to see me.

15 minutes after crossing the finish line I noticed that my legs were incredibly sore, though perhaps it is not so incredible that my legs were sore after running the equivalent of two normal marathons back to back. All 10, 000 of us had the same funny looking walk for days after. In the backpacker that I stayed in Durban directly after the race, my fellow Comrades were immediately identified by their painful hobbling down stairs and their contorted face when sitting down.

So, I am glad that it is over and I can hardly wait until I do it again. Worrying about my ability to finish the race is over and I can now focus more on other things. I am currently charged with creating a documentary about one of Tsogang’s water projects. This is something I’ve never done before but am eager to start on. The real trick will be showing Oros how to work the camera and use the video editing software. Once I learn how.

I am also heading to Cape Town next week with Rachel. It will be my first time in Cape Town and her first time more than 300 miles from home. Everyone says that going to Cape Town is like going to a different country since it is so different from the rest of South Africa. I will report back on that and anything else of note.

Thanks for reading.

Comrades and Singing

Last week I was awoken from a turbulent dream to find myself in need of a bathroom. I was staying with the Chauke family, so going to the bathroom meant getting dressed and taking a stroll through the darkness of the corn field to the pit toilet. Stumbling out through the corn stalks, I noticed the faint sound of singing as it emanated from some unknown yard the village.

As I walked backed to the house, the singing gradually became more distinct. Once back in bed, the singing flowed unimpeded through my window along with the moonlight. I could not sleep. After a few wasted minutes of trying, with great effort, to keep my eyes shut, they popped open and I quickly re-dressed. I had resolved to find where and who and why there was singing happening at this hour.

Once outside, I looked at the sky and tried to gauge the time. The sky seemed to glow promisingly, so I assumed that it must be early morning, perhaps five. With quick steps I walked towards the music, avoiding donkey poop – which is large and dark and sometimes hard to see – and generally tried to warm myself up. 10 minutes later I was peering at a group of about 30 people standing in a circle, in close proximity to a healthy looking fire. They were singing and clapping their hands in a way that was absolutely memorizing to me. An individual singer, without accompaniment, might sound a little off-key or even unambiguously dissonant. But when the whole group was singing, the harmonies sounded perfect. Really, it’s almost good enough to entice a person out of his bed in the middle of the night.

Upon finding the source of the music, I was presented with a dilemma. In physics, they call it the observer effect: sometimes, the very act of observing something alters how it would have acted in the first place. In certain social settings, my presence brings about a response that is potentially distracting. Perhaps this is something private, and my presence will not be appreciated? If, as can be reasonably assumed, this is a gathering of religious significance, will I be desecrating something or the other by participating? 

I had come too far, however, to creepily observe the group from afar. Besides, I’ve lived in South Africa long enough at this point to feel comfortable participating in such events. After the requisite explanations, my presence is almost always tolerated, sometimes even celebrated. So, I strode out of the shadows and into the yard with the singing. Heads turned and I waved and gave a perfunctory “Avuxeni” to the group. Since they were all singing, there was no response. I sat down next to an old man and suddenly noticed that everyone present, myself excluded, was wearing a Zionic Christian Church pin on their shirt. Since they are ZCC members, there is a special way to greet them.

“Khotsong”, I said to the old man.

“Ayete”, he responded, looking at me with sudden interest.

“Le Kae?” I asked.

“Ra gona”, he replied, extending the “o” sound until it trailed off. He did not inquire as to how I was.

We were silent for a few moments until he asked me my name and where I’m from since I am clearly not from here. There was more silence between us after that.

Then he asked me “In kari muni?”

I took out my phone to see the time and was surprised to find that it was 2:30 in the morning. Do these guys do this every Sunday?

In between songs, the old man speaks some rapid Shangaan to the group. I don’t catch everything, but I do catch “white guy”, “America”, and “Obama”. To my relief, no one takes interest and the singing resumes. After a while longer, a guy in a Che Guevara T-shirt takes me by the hand into the circle. I find myself clapping along with the group, though not singing because I don’t know any of the words. Every couple of minutes, the guy in the Che Guevara shirt falls down to the ground, holds his position for a moment, and then rapidly ascends back to his feet. Despite the chilly morning, he is sweating.

Minutes fly by and the thrill of being in such close proximity to the music it making me glad I got out of bed, despite my initial misgivings. Fatigue inevitably sets in and I eventually bid the group goodbye and headed back home to catch a little sleep before sunrise.

~             ~             ~

I have been running quite a bit lately, though I am concerned that it hasn’t been enough. I completed the 56 kilometre Long Tom Marathon at the very end of March, my birthday in fact, in six and half hours. That time qualified me to run the Comrades Marathon, which is somewhat longer at 89 kilometres (roughly 55 miles) and much, much better attended with fifteen to twenty thousand participants. Having, literally, just crossed the Long Tom finish line, a few of the many Peace Corps volunteers who had cheered for me as I completed the race asked me if I now intended to run the Comrades.

I was in a weakened mental state when they asked me. The first 2 hours of Long Tom felt great; too good, in fact. I whizzed through the first part on track to complete the course in 5 hours flat. I was confused too, since there had been much talk about hills and how difficult they would be to traverse. Why aren’t I hurting yet? Am I that good? Reality set in during a conversation with a fellow runner, perhaps 20 kilometres in. He pointed to landforms in the hazy distance that looked suspiciously like mountains to me. He informed me that we would be crossing them before the end of the race.

“That’s going to be the hard bit”, he reflected casually before surging ahead. Sure enough, once the hills began, my pace slowed down rather significantly. Suddenly my goal of “not ever walking” fell by the wayside. The new goal was simple: finish. At whatever cost. The hardest part of the marathon was not the mountains, however. The final 5 kilometres of the race were a slog for me. At that point my body felt ravaged. There was chaffing in some obvious places and some less obvious places. There was an intense sunburn enveloping my legs and neck. I was famished. All of this and I was feeling pain in every muscle I could think of. During my physical decline, I managed to chat with a number of people. One woman, the woman I guess I can blame my decision to run Comrades on, told me that she thought Long Tom was harder than Comrades due the hills.

With those words still fresh in my mind, I hastily decided to run Comrades on the reasoning that it can’t be that much worse than what I had just done. My fellow volunteers forced the point by pledging emotional and even monetary support for my venture. The emotional support has been great and a few volunteers are even coming to Durban to celebrate with me or commiserate, depending on whether I finish. The monetary support was great too, since getting to and from Durban, arranging accommodation and the various race-fees add up.

The Comrades Marathon, www.comrades.com, is the most popular ultra-marathon in the world. It is also a sporting event of some significance in South Africa. They even show it on TV! The race is from Pietermaritzburg to Durban in Kwa-Zulu Natal province and it promises to test my physical limits. This will be my second ultra-marathon and the longest distance I have ever run over the course of a single day. It is on this Sunday (May 24th, 2009).

That is what my mind has been consumed with lately. After the Marathon (AM), I will have to collect myself and begin to asses my remaining PC service. After Comrades I will have scarcely 11 months left until my South African visa expires.

Pictures & Diversity

I related my experiences at an Ethiopian birthday party for the Peace Corps South Africa diversity blog, which is moderated by the Peace Corps South Africa Diversity committee.

Here is the link: http://meltingpotintherainbownation.blogspot.com/

If the entry seems a little too polished to be mine, you can thank Jade for her gracious editing.

I am also posting some photos I have accumulated over the last couple of months. These include shots from a visit to Mabula to see the Chaukes, Christmas with my boss and some other PCVs, and various random shots from around Tzaneen. The album is called “Signs etc.”

The website for the race I am running on Saturday of this week is here: http://www.longtominfo.co.za/.

A couple weeks ago, my boss taught me how to swim, which is a skill that has eluded me all my life. I can now doggy-paddle for short periods of time before sinking, which is fantastic.

Thanks for checking in. There will be more soon.

Oli

Taxis and Land Claims

I am on a taxi that will take me from Nkowankowa to Tzaneen, a roughly 30 minute journey. This taxi is the old model that seats 15 people. The South African government is trying to phase out these older,  taxis as part of their 2010 World Cup preparations. The driver had been going slowly until he filled the taxi to its limit. Now that we are full and on an open stretch of road, the taxi’s already over-taxed engine is being coaxed into ever greater speeds. Taxi drivers are notorious for driving fast, and it’s because they have to drive fast if they want to turn a profit. Even with that understanding in mind, every so often I find myself at the mercy of a driver bent on putting the fear of God into his passengers for no discernable, logical reason. It is exactly this situation that I find myself in now.

As the whine of the engine grows louder, and the blurred landscape accelerates, I make a furtive glance at the speedometer. It reads zero, as do all of the various meters and gauges located behind the steering wheel. On one level, this ought to put me at ease. If the speedometer reads zero, that means I am not plummeting down a hill while the driver dodges oncoming traffic and farm animals. The reason he is dodging oncoming traffic is because R36 is a two lane road which frequently becomes an unofficial four lane. The farm animals are from the villages that line the road.

As we crest a hill and begin our final descent into Tzaneen, I have decided to close my eyes. I am closing my eyes because I don’t want the driver to see the look of horror on my face at everything he does. While I have blocked out visual stimuli, there is nothing I can do to avoid the toe-curling G-forces that move me this way and that.

The taxi suddenly slows down; jolting all the passengers forward in their seats. My eyes snap open and I see the tail end of another taxi, mere inches away from our front bumper. He is passing all other vehicles, just like us, but at not quite as high a speed as our driver would like. The rest of the trip was spent hurtling up and down massive hills, horrifyingly close to the taxi ahead of us, which refused to let my driver pass. When we finally pulled up to the petrol station in Tzaneen where we are dropped off, the drivers glared at one another and exchanged a few terse words. Clearly, there is some back story to all this that I will never know.

Question: What do Kentucky Fried Chicken, Curves, The Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints all have in common? Answer: They are all institutions which have a presence both in Tzaneen, South Africa and Des Moines, Iowa, USA. The KFC is very popular here in Tzaneen; the only complaint that I’ve heard is that they don’t sell any pap. I have eaten at KFC infinitely more than I thought I would have before I came, which is to say I’ve eaten their twice.  When I was conducting a survey for the Dept. of Water Affairs, people in the Lenyenye township often thought I was with “that church” since that was the last context in which a white person visited their home. “That church” turned out to be direct Des Moines connection #4, the Mormons. I tried to get in to one of their newly built churches in Lenyenye, but found it to be all locked up. I found another Mormon church in Tzaneen proper, but it was also gated and locked. I’ll try back later in my never-ending search for other Americans.

I have finished the project I was working on for the Dept. of Water Affairs. In the end, about 15% of the households we surveyed had leaks. Since South Africa is considered an “arid” country, water is an increasingly hot commodity. As with most infrastructures in South Africa, it was built to keep only the white population living at first world standards. Once Apartheid ended, millions of new people flooded a system built to accommodate only a fraction of the total population. This is true of roads and electricity, both of which are under increasing strain as new users are added. This is also becoming true with water as well. As water use increases and running water is gradually spreading to areas that previously had none, South Africa is heading towards a water deficit in the near (roughly 10 years) future. Therefore, water leaks ought to be a high priority issue for the government to tackle, lest South Africa’s water table disappears down the drain. Or at least that’s the point I tried to make in my report to DWAF.

So with that project done, I am to be turning my attention towards two new water reticulation projects Tsogang is currently working on. I’m not exactly sure where I’ll fit in, but I’m sure to find out eventually. I’m also working on a large stack of training manuals that have fallen into disrepair. This is rather dry work to do, but I understand its necessity, so I am able to keep motivated.

I’ve spent the majority of my mornings training for the Long Tom Marathon, which is a 56 kilometre race which I will be running on the 28^th of March. Running provides me a golden opportunity to explore Tzaneen and, inadvertently, meet people. One morning I found myself utterly lost at a T-intersection surrounded on all sides by banana trees. I found a guy standing by the side of the road hitch-hiking and asked him which way I need to take to get back to Tzaneen. His response was “Are you running?” I said yes and told me he’d just run back to Tzaneen with me. He was dressed in dress shoes, a nice pair of jeans and thick woollen sweater. Despite his attire I quickly realized that he wanted to run much faster than I did.

After about 20 minutes I am dyeing. I look at him in wonderment. He is not sweating, or showing any visible signs of fatigue. “Gee,” I say between ever deeper breaths, “You sure do run fast.”

He beams at me and explains, simply, “I am a Makgoba.”

The Makgoba clan is a well known one in these parts, chiefly for families’ most famous member: King Makgoba. In the mid 1890s, white settlers began to push into the Tzaneen area in ever greater numbers. King Makgoba defended his land and people from the invaders in what became known as the Makgobaskloof Wars, but was eventually killed and beheaded by Swazi mercenaries at the behest of the Boer commander General Joubert. Makgoba’s subjects were forced to leave their land or stay on as paying “tenants”. So, it is this defiant, warrior spirit that propelled my running partner into town, dragging me behind him. It turns out he was late for class and decided to make a run for it instead of waiting for a ride.

If I hadn’t been so tired I would have asked him about the recent land claims made by the Makgoba clan. The Land Claims process is meant to address past injustices, like the Makgobaskloof War where the Mahgobas were thrown off of their ancestral land. While on the face of it, this seems like a good policy, there has been some grumbling. Part of the Makgoba land claims includes a tea farm which is a major employer in the area. I’ve spoken with a few different people who are concerned that once the land passes from its current owner to the Makgobas, and all of the farm equipment is sold, the jobs will disappear. The right path forward is unclear to me.

Random Community Events

I am often mistaken for a missionary. This was the case yet again as Oros and I made our way, house by house, through the Lenyenye Township outside of Tzaneen. While Tzaneen is predominately home to Shangaan speaking people, Lenyenye is mostly Sepedi. This is a legacy of the Apartheid policy of keeping ethnic tensions high amongst black groups so as to channel anger and resentment away from white rule. Thanks to a certain church that has set up shop in the area, my presence made many homeowners rather suspicious. Apparently this church has been sending out white missionaries door to door for months now. After greetings, many homeowners asked Oros, in Sepedi, why our church was bothering them again.

 

After explaining ourselves, we are finally able to get to the meat of our survey, which is very short. We ask how many taps the household has and then we see if any of them leak. And that’s it. People are often disappointed. After perhaps 5 or 10 minutes of introductions and explanations, the survey itself takes maybe 30 seconds.

 

We’ve found some interesting things along the way. One woman had her tap running constantly, at full blast, for months. She couldn’t turn it off because of damage to a thin rubber washer in the faucet that had broken. I wondered why she didn’t bother to try to fix it, at least for the sake of saving money if not water conservation. The problem is that she already owes 10,000 Rand to the municipality for her water bill. 10, 000 rand is an insurmountable bill, one that she will never, ever, pay off. She pays 50 rand a month when she can; often skipping a month if the money is thin. She hasn’t got any incentive to save water because there is no relationship between the amount of water she uses and the amount of money she has to pay at the end of the month. This is something we saw over and over again. The poorest families often owe massive amounts of money to the municipality for their water.

 

As we conducted our survey through Lenyenye I noticed a long train of elderly women, referred to as kokos(with the ‘k’ sounding like a ‘g’), in bright yellow vests running through the streets. I was told that this was a charity event for children. After the koko run was over, we heard loud horns and drums coming from a few blocks away. We followed the sound until it lead us to a large community centre. Inside we found a stage and an audience, with kokos dancing and the music alternating between live horn music and incredibly loud, thumping techno music. Oros and I sat down near the back, hoping to observe the event in an unobtrusive way. Immediately we were approached by one of the officials for the event. After asking us who we were, she insisted that we sit on stage at the VIP table. We tried to get out of it, but quickly realized that to refuse would be impolite.

 

South African community events have a few necessary components. There must be food. If you want anyone to come, you must cook up some porridge, beef stew, cabbage and other traditional food. There must also be very loud music. The music is almost always techno or house music—the sort of music my mom couldn’t stomach for two minutes is joyously accepted by 80 year old kokos in South Africa. There must also be a VIP table. This is a table which faces the audience and is reserved for ward counsellors, chiefs, representatives from government ministries and other notables. Since Oros and I had literally wandered in off the street, we wanted nothing to do with the VIP table. We didn’t even know what exactly the event was for.

 

As I nervously approach the stage, the music suddenly turned off and all eyes were on Oros and me. We took our seats at the table and wrote our name, place of birth, and company on sheet of paper so that the MC can introduce us to the audience. I looked at the program and noted that the event was running about two hours late, which is actually pretty good for this sort of thing. Once Oros and I arrived, however, the show began.

 

The MC asked me my name and, as expected, couldn’t figure out how to pronounce it, “Al… Alfred?” he asked. The trouble people have here understanding my name confused me when I first got to South Africa. There are a couple notable Africans who are named Oliver that almost everyone knows. There is Oliver Mtukudzi, a well known Zimbabwean musician and there is Oliver Tambo, a former president of the ANC during the struggle against Apartheid. The problem lies in my pronunciation. I pronounce Oliver as “Ah-lih-ver” while the African pronunciation is more like “Oh-lee-vah”. They may as well be different names.

 

When the MC realized I am an American, his face lit up. Once the MC introduced me as such, the crowd was appreciative as well, actually giving me a standing ovation. After that, my duties as a VIP were essentially complete. For the next three hours I watched various groups of children dance, hula-hoop, and sing their way through the program. It was delightful. Even though I should be used to it by now, I was still surprised to see that almost every kid in the room had impressive dancing ability. Prior to each dancing competition, all the children in the room surged towards the MC to volunteer to compete. As the program continued I found myself glancing more and more at the women preparing the food that I was increasingly hungry for. At the end, the VIPs were showed to a back room with a private buffet and a table while everyone else stood in a long line to get their food.

 

Moments such as this present a problem for me. My instincts are egalitarian, and I feel funny coming from a place as wealthy as America so that the Lenyenye Community Center can pay to feed me better than I feed myself or the majority of their community. These sorts of dilemmas are strictly academic however. While I may feel funny walking out of the community hall with a full stomach as hundreds of children wait in line for food, to not accept the generosity offered to me would be self-serving and impolite. I can’t count the number of times people have flown out of their chairs so that I can have a place to sit, and I can’t count the number of mangos, papayas and bananas my friend Patrick has brought me over the course of my stay here. People are so generous here that I have trouble keeping up.

 

I’m visiting my host family, the Chaukes, this weekend. It is Dodo’s and Mamaza’s birthday (they are twins) and I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Beyond that I am now training for a 50 kilometer race in March. This is a daunting prospect, especially while training under the harsh African sun. 

I have added new photos, by the way.