I will start with the latter. As my dad pointed out astutely in an email, Unless I am incorrect on this, several great long distance runners came from Kenya (Kipchong Keino comes to mind--I think he won the gold medal in the marathon in 1972--but he would only be the first of many). If so, running would not be too "foreign" there. While this is absolutely true, it doesn't account for the fact that most great Kenyan runners come from the Rift Valley and are not of Luo decent. Kisumu is not a producer of great runners or runners at all for that matter as far as I can tell.
They of course have perhaps heard of Kenya being a land of great runners, but it is not an activity that they often witness where I am. I have been lucky, however, to have gone on 3 runs now (2 with a partner and one alone) - all of which have been great.
My first run was with Matt and it showed me parts of town I didn't know existed. He calls it the Temple run since it goes by 2 of the Temples in Kisumu. There are nice hills and it is overall lovely. No one cat called or said anything to us - it was great!
My second run I did alone very early on my 3rd morning here. It was also very pleasant. I could tell that some people were a little curious about what I was doing which I addressed by saying Good morning to all the locals I passed. On my way back home a young Kenyan boy (maybe 11 or 12) ran with me in flip flops for no more than a quarter of a mile. He just set in right beside me - not chasing me or bothering me but running with me.
My run this evening was a killer for a number of reasons. First, I ran with Erwan. Erwan is a Dutch gentleman who lives in Kisumu and is notorious among the X-pat community as being a great runner. I have heard about Erwan's running for quite a while now. I told him that I didn't want to slow him down but he said that I shouldn't worry about that and that we would stay together.
The plan was to do 20 easy minutes and then 2 sets of 10 intervals with 30 second high pace and 30 seconds of recovery. My first issue is that I have not done intervals in about 3 months. My second issue as it turned out was that I was running with a 2:39 marathoner! That would be a 6:03 min/mile pace!
Onto work: I began work on Monday and things are well underway. Despite everything that I had heard about how challenging it can be to get a project going, I got really lucky in my first few days. There are phenomenal people working here who have established relationships and have been able to impart phenomenal advise to me.
Marisa, a UIC MD/PhD who is here working on an infant circumcision project, has been really helpful introducing me to the right people. I hired my first Research Assistant and am working on finding a second. I have met with the hospital head at my work site and am putting together training documents for my staff and for sensitization sessions for staff at the work site to prepare them for the commencement of the study.
All and all a productive week - hopefully that will continue for the next few days!
Below is a picture of the matches and beer here. Not for any reason - just because I like the images:
Ashley
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