I went hunting for some running blogs this morning since my sisters aren’t posting nearly enough on our exercise blog to suit me. And this made me cry.
Favorite running memory, run or race?
This answer is a bit long, but funny. It is from my blog:
I left the house at 5:50 a.m. for a short jog before the kids woke up. I hadn’t gone more than a quarter kilometer when I saw a group of Djiboutian girls jogging toward me. We smiled and waved at one another, I was too shocked to say anything, and I passed them.
I have seen French men wearing too-short shorts, naked men, dead men, barking dogs, dead dogs, dead cats, dead crows, dead snakes, car accidents, dancing women, American soldiers showering homeless children with bags of peanut M and M’s, sky divers, fluorescent purple sunsets, body parts, toilet seat covers, condoms, fist fights, men urinating, men taking a dump, men taking a shower, men holding hands, men praying, six people on a bicycle, six people on a motorcycle…but I have never seen twenty-five obese Djiboutian girls jogging. I’ve never seen more than two at a time other than at the track.
I continued running straight ahead, then suddenly, without a second thought, turned around and sprinted to catch up with the group.
“Can I run with you?” I asked in Somali.
“Oui,” they answered in unison French, grinning.
“There aren’t many women who run, especially in this neighborhood,” I said, again in Somali.
They began asking me questions in French and I answered in Somali. They were out of breath but the pace was slow (about thirteen minutes miles).
We passed my house and I said, “Waa tan, xafadayda.” This is my house.”
“Allah!” the girl next to me cried. “You speak Somali!”
It only took them eight minutes to realize it.
From that moment on, I was a part of the group. They gave me a spot in the front, center, with three of the largest girls on either side. Their coach, Abdi, jogged on the outside. He motivated the stragglers and made sure cars and buses didn’t swerve too close to his team.
We ran about ten more minutes when I caught the blurred picture out of the corner of my eye of a sheep running at my side.
“How did a sheep get in here with us?” I asked.
“She’s ours,” Fadouma answered.
“You’re joking.”
“No. This is Gilane and that is Lulla. They run with us every morning.”
“Don’t they get tired?”
“Oh no, we are so fat and slow they keep up just fine.”
The two sheep ran at my side. I had never dodged sheep legs and flouncing, fat sheep butts before on a run. I lay one hand on Gilane’s back and laughed out loud.
I was a surprise vision for the entire neighborhood. Most people were used to seeing me run alone by now but they had never seen a group of twenty-five Djiboutian girls and a white woman running down the street with two sheep.
Men hung out of bus windows and cars pulled up next to us to stop and stare. Truckers swerved and coach Abdi yelled at them to back off. They yelled back that they wanted to watch the spectacle.
I was also a surprise vision to the team itself – a married women with three children who was strong enough to not even be breathing heavily. As we talked, they were so engaged in our conversations coach Abdi tripped over a stone on the sidewalk and almost face-planted in the dirt. Five minutes later Fadouma did an actual face-plant on the sidewalk while talking with me about life in Somaliland. The rest of the team had to stop and take a laugh break while she brushed herself off, chattering the entire time.
Most of the girls were seriously overweight, which their thinner friends pointed out with great joy and acceptance.
“Look! Look how fat Fadouma is. But she can run!”
“We run slow so the fat girls can keep up.”
“The fat girls run in front so we don’t pass them.”
“You aren’t fat. I’m not too fat. She is really, really fat. See how she bounces?”
The heavier girls smiled and waved and laughed, there was no shame in their body sizes. They all knew they were beautiful. They all knew they were stronger than almost every other female in Djibouti because they were awake at 5:50 a.m. running in the street with courage and happiness.
And sheep.