And the Age of BC Comes to An End

The Comrades Marathon. Watching it was the first thing I did after touching down on the continent in June 2008. My two years here have been BC- Before Comrades.

And Sunday is the big day.

It's 89 kilometers. And this year-it switches direction every year-is downhill. I am told that what you gain in the 10-20 minutes of speed, you pay for in utter pain.

I am told that it is especially painful for little runners. I asked for the definitition of little. It is 10-20 kg bigger than ME. So I joined the gym (an even bigger stretch for me than running 89 k). The gym is one of the local expat crossroads. Invariably I run into people I know at the gym and invariable they ask if I'm running. (I hate treadmills!) No, I tell them, I getting big (is it not obvious)?

I am told you have to relax and pace yourself. But not too much. If you don't reach certain points at certain times (most notoriously the finish line by 12 hours), you are forcibly removed from the course and loaded onto the bus of shame, a pathetic vehicle piled with the carcasses of devastated runners and reeking of vomit. You try to lie down, but a race official hauls you to a sitting position to rip the racing numbers of your shirt...

I am told it will be freezing in the morning, sweltering in the afternoon, and for the most part, beautiful.

I am also told it is the ultimate human race.

The Kilometer Brain and Other Parts

I got my kilometer brain and just in time. After years of measuring distance in miles, I have finally honed my kilometer thinking to the point where I don’t have to do mind numbing conversions to figure out my running pace. It took nearly two years, and going on five marathons/ultra marathons, and frankly, I never thought I would get it. Ask me the temperature outside in Celsius, and I can’t even hazard a guess. How many grams of flour I just put in a vegan chocolate cake? I would have to get a pencil and paper. But I can now speak kilometers.
I started trying to train my brain and my feet to think in kilometers about a year ago. I asked my neighbor to use her car to measure a half mile, kilometer and mile on the main road near our house. Thus, the second taxi stand, the bushy tree and the Media Institute of South Africa sign have become staple landmarks of my interval training. The first time I attempted to do kilometer repeats I couldn’t begin to guess what time I should aim for. To solve this conundrum, I asked myself, “How many meters is a kilometer?”

I know, I know. Even someone without the kilometer brain, someone with any brain at all, should be able to name the number with the automaticity of stating one’s age. And, failing that, the slightest reflection on etymology would have revealed the answer. But my brain, if we’re going to be generous, was just too mile-y. So here’s what I did instead. (Bear in mind I was running at the time.)

A 5k race = 5,000 meters. (Yes, that should have tipped me off)
5K=3.1 miles
Therefore, 3.1 miles = 5,000 meters
5,000/3 = a little more than 1600 meters

Duh! 1600 meters is one mile! I knew that! And 800 meters is a half a mile! So somewhere between there is one kilometer.

I fiddled around with some more calculations I can’t recall and concluded, “One kilometer is about 1,000 meters.”

It wasn’t until several hours later that the light bulb went on.

At least my arithmetic isn’t too bad.

So while there is really no excuse for not knowing (or figuring out really quickly) that a kilometer is a thousand meters, I’ll give some anyway.

Like I said, in the US, we race in miles. Sure we have 5k and 10k races, but anyone who runs them knows that the former is 3.1 miles and the latter is 6.2. Furthermore, we measure our running routes in miles, do grueling workouts of mile repeats, and during the races, our mile splits are clocked. A standard high school cross country race is 5k. So the coaches gather at the mile markers and shout out the times for your first, second and third miles, rather than the times for your 1st-5th kilometers. (At three miles, you’re not finished. You’ve got a sprint to the chute). If someone ever yelled to me somewhere on the third mile of the course, “You’ve only got one kilometer to go!” it wouldn’t have made anymore sense than if he had yelled, “You’ve only got one mfjuketvu to go!” And, looking back, we did have an occasional 1,000 meter race during track season, but no one ever called it a kilometer.
So now that my kilometer brain is screwed on tight, I’m focusing southwards. That would be the busted knee, and the mid run chats it has to the opposite hip who creaks in reply. After three months of anti-inflammatory pills, anti-inflammatory gel, anti-inflammatory patches, R.I.C.E. with extra ice, icy hot for horses, bandaging, stretching, gym-ing, biking, limping, the occasional codeine stupor, glucosamine chondroitin and guttural screams of frustration, the rebellious IT band has quieted down it’s protests of ultra long distance running. For awhile it seemed to be riding the see saw with my right hip, vying for my attention with various tactics such as swelling, clicking, cracking, snapping and good old-fashioned pain. I had my last trip to the orthopedist last week. Possible cortisone shots were on the menu, but since the pain hasn’t been bad, for weeks, he ordered X-Rays instead.

If you have brittle bones or partake in risky hobbies, this next paragraph will not impress you. I have only ever had teeth X-rays and lung X-rays. Neither was particularly high tech (the latter-for TB tests- taking place only in Lesotho and similar locales) so I can’t really compare this X-ray experience with one of a similar kind. I can only describe it as awesome. First, I was told to stand on a platform, and shift at minute increments until the shot was perfect. Then the X-ray technician told me she would take the next one of me lying on the bed. I start to step off the platform and she says, “No! Don’t move!” The wall my back was against tilted 90 degrees until it became “the bed.” It scared the crap out of me, a sensation quickly overtaken by motion sickness, and then awe. Finally, I was given my X-rays to take home on CD! To enjoy from my laptop anytime I want to recall what my hip looked like in May of 2010!

Brain, check. Knee and IT Band, check. Hip, check. X-ray to prove it, hell yeah.

To Do List: 89 Kilometer Race. (This Sunday).

The Transatlantic Library Has Landed

The number one thing I have the tendency to accumulate are books. They have taken over my house, and while easy to box, are expensive to ship, especially when I have to get them all the way back to the US, just to send them back to the continent to the DRC. (DRC is not known for it’s stellar postal services and my new boss said the import taxes are so expensive I might as well fly to Kinshasa to drop them off before heading to America for my summer vacation).
I limited myself to carrying one book here to Africa (The Alchemist, purchased especially for 2 months of backpacking, which I hated) but two boxes preceded my arrival. As the only American school on the continent with diplomatic pouch privileges for school supplies, I was able to ship all of my teacher resource books and picture books to the Lesotho embassy in DC, where they would be loaded on a South African bound plane, and delivered to the US embassy here in Maseru.

Since I had a couple friends in DC, I figured I might as well haul them myself in a suitcase for hand delivery. I spent my last hours at Harvard performing with the Pan-African Dance and Music Ensemble in a tent worth more than the house I lived in for a fundraiser for the Fogg Museum renovations. After a rapid change out of my fake kente cloth costume, I sprint-hobbled to get the T to South Station. From there, I rode the Chinatown bus overnight, with a suitcase filled with books, and as packing material, a collection of blinding silk scarves inherited from my Grandma Ethel and my great aunt Maisie.

After breakfast with my friend Vivian, we mapquested the address of the Lesotho embassy, only to find it smack in the middle of a river. As luck would have it, my future boss was online and when I told him of my predicament. he refrained from calling me an idiot and explained there actually is no Lesotho embassy, and the address is merely the diplomatic pouch section of the Dulles airport, where no mere civilian may enter. So the United States Postal Service took care of things, and I was left to a weekend in DC with a feather-light suitcase filled with the leftover scarves.

I coerced my friend Sam into accompanying me to a performance of by an all-blind all-male African American tap dancing troupe before I got on the bus back home to Jersey. When we arrived at the address of the theatre, I found that I was nearly the tallest person in line, second only to Sam. We were behind a very long line of children. Sam said, “What did you say the name of this dance group is?” “The Wild Zappers.” “Uh huh. And what did you say the theatre is called again?” “The Discovery Theatre.” “Right. Did it ever occur to you that this is a children’s theater for children’s performers?” He insisted we stay, and I insisted he would look like a pedophile. So we visited several of the free museums in the area (this is really the only thing I like about DC), where security measures required that I open my suitcase at each metal detector and empty the contents. Now, remember, the contents included silk scarves and nothing but silk scarves, so I ended up looking like an undercover midget clown as I pulled scarf after scarf after scarf from my suitcase, breaking into a sweat, and rambling on about books and packing and diplomatic pouches.

Anyway, the two boxes of books made it to Lesotho before I did, and they served me well during my two years here. Unfortunately, the diplomatic pouch only works one way for packages and it was going to be tricky to get all these books to DRC for my next job. But book-lovers share a certain solidarity, and when a newly arrived American owner of 3,000 books (arriving in trickles as I type from her family’s last post in Addis Ababa) heard about my plight, she offered her husband’s generosity and spine to haul this particular collection back to the US and ship them to my parents.

So that’s one pile taken care of. By like I said, I accumulate books. Some were sent in care packages or brought by visitors, but I bought a lot as well. Used bookstores anywhere get me excited. But used bookstores in South Africa, in light of the dearth of books in Lesotho get me particularly excited. When I run out of used books to read, I take them to the monthly book swap and trade. I first went with Ron, my former neighbor/colleague. The book swap used to be held right behind the school, so we worked late, ate pizza across the street and got drenched in a downpour on the five-minute walk to the swap. I was freezing and miserable by the time we got there, and said, “Ron, I can’t stay if I can’t at least take my pants off.” He looked at me dubiously. I told him not to worry, that my top was actually meant as a dress and once I had removed half my clothing I felt a lot better though still soaked. Ron and I had pooled our books and agreed to share the traded-for set. So while we dripped puddles underfoot, we prowled around the table, consulted each other, made piles and finally agreed on the new titles, while the other attendees sipped wine and chatted and looked at us like we were totally nuts. Apparently the book swap is a sort of social affair but don’t try to explain that to two book-starved teachers who love to read.

I became a regular attendee of the book swap, but Ron and I did not repeat the strategy because 1. we have absolute opposite tastes in books and 2. it is really laid back and no one keeps track of how much your leaving behind and how much you are taken. It’s rather karmic really. They just assume all the books will eventually come back to the swap (little do they know, when I find one I love, and keep it and unload a poorly chosen bookstore purchase instead). So these days, I choose my books, eat some soup and discuss the pros and cons of kindles and Stephanie Meyers books (I can’t bring myself to become familiar with either) with the other readers.
When another neighbor had to leave Lesotho urgently and for good, she left all her books to me. She said, “You can trade them at the book swap. Who knows, you might even like them.” I tried to read some of them. I really did. But with titles like Cherry Cheesecake Murder and Apocaliptick, multiple books by Janet Evanovich, and bafflingly, Crime and Punishment. I just couldn’t get past the first few pages. And, call me a snob, but I was really embarrassed to bring them to the swap in case anyone thought that I would actually choose to own such things. So I would bring one book at a time, hidden between John Irving novels and Bill Bryson travel diaries. It took me half a year, but I’ve traded them all. Some people were surprised to see me still accumulating books at the April swap when I had less than two months in Lesotho. Little to they know, I’m not going to miss the May one. I’ll only have three weeks to go by then, but I need something for the plane ride.

How To Grieve For a Baby

The title of this post is rather misleading. I don't know how to grieve for a baby. Especially the banana-eating baby on the left, who happened to have suffered enormously. Babies don’t have to die of measles. Even in Africa. Even orphans. Even if they have HIV**. But that’s not what I’m writing about. Like I said, I don’t know how to grieve for a baby. But I made some rules regarding writing about it.

1. 20/20 hindsight is banned.
2. Also banned: the words “senseless” and “tragic” (even if they apply).
3. Also banned: the phrases “better place,” “for the best,” and “at least.”

So maybe this isn’t about grieving for a baby at all. Maybe it’s just about a baby.

Tsepong arrived at the orphanage almost exactly a year ago. This was before the babies started arriving at an alarming rate, at a time when each new arrival was an event, and when the smaller numbers, although not necessary to know and love them, at least made it easier. His mother had died. He and his older sister and brother were brought by two other female relatives, along with a garbage bag full of clothes for the three of them. The arrival of the new children was made all the more memorable by Tsepong’s spectacular diarrhea that day which managed to all but destroy his brother’s clothing, his crib and the carpet. So I bonded with him that first day over a sudsy bucket bath and a pair of clean pajamas. (This episode did not prove to be a habit with him, although he was remarkably, frighteningly, skinny).

In my mind he is dressed in white short-sleeved onesies, so these particular memories must have taken place in the dead of summer, because even in springtime their care-givers dress them like they are about to enter the tundra. I would sit him on the blue mat, with his legs splayed, his hands between his feet, and lie down on my stomach facing him. Unlike some of the others, he didn’t mind toppling over. He used to fall asleep in my arms in the late afternoon.

I was away for the month of July, trying my hand at organic farming and related arts and sciences. When I returned, he was walking. And no longer skinny. He was approaching a spherical state, really. Any time I entered the nursery at the orphanage, though far below my eye level, I always knew that the first little body attached to my leg like a barnacle was his. Even better, the moment I knelt down or scooped him up, the side of his warm head would connect to my collarbone, like a moth to a flame, a paperclip to a magnet. He made me think I had the best collarbone in the world. A magic collarbone. And with his soft hair tickling that bone of mine that still has the imprint of his skull, he would put his cool, moist smile to my neck, and greet me with the laugh that lived in his throat.



**I do not know what his HIV status was.