out of necessity

In the past month I have lost count of the number of professional athletes I have met in my town and village. I have a cousin (I have been adopted by a family here) who runs for the country of Qatar and was inbetween trips to Korea and Switzerland. Some teenage boys walking home with me told me that their older brothers are in Venezuela on running scholarships. A friend who owns an internet café was a hurdler for the University of Arkansas. A man on the dirt road near my house, stopped and said “my name is Vincent Limo. I am a marathon runner and run all over the world. Do you know me?” I met an Olympic gold medalist the other day, and accidentally assumed he was the mechanic there to fix the car. Olympic runners seem to come a dime a dozen here. I am sure that every third person here is a professional runner of some sort.

My cousin, who runs 5km in 13 minutes (I can barely tie my shoes up in that time) commented to me that “you north Americans run for exercise; we run out of necessity.” I asked him to explain. He said that as a child, he had to walk or run 7km to school, each way. If it was raining, they ran the whole way. If they had to herd the cows, they had to run after wild cows or the predators out to get them. One colleague often recounts his childhood encounters with wild animals (i.e. giraffes, elephants, leopards). There are not nice smooth city paths here or indoor tracks and gyms. One has to dodge potholes, jump over fallen trees, and find their way down paths in the forest. They don’t run for exercise, they run out of necessity. Watch out for that leopard!