Most Hustle & Desire

Self-portrait It is not quite clear if my feet are taking me through life or the world is just moving past. Running is not the proprietary activity of the fleet-footed featured in running magazines or even of the harried bipedal human. A student of mine who snapped his spine in a surfing accident off the Boso Peninsula, Japan, still goes running, rolling along in his wheelchair as he trains for rugby. And when Dad called to say his mother, who sat much of the time in her chair by the TV, had died at the age of 91, I replied, “She had a good run,” considering his father’s heart had failed at 59. It was a couple of years after Grandpa’s death I took up long-distance running, when a girl I secretly liked joined the cross country team. Our coach was a 6-foot 200-pound man in a blue polo, gray polyester coach shorts, knee-length tube socks and the latest pair of New Balance running shoes. He drove alongside us in his minivan while we ran the backroads in and out of town. I learned stretch...

I was posted there ten years after Independence, when I was slim, yes, a slim young boy. I was so slim and young the people almost threw me out. They didn’t think I’d be able to take over for the very fat old man from that community. I was the first non-Kalenjin, see, to be posted there. So it was politics—but not only did the people not know Swahili, not a single one was using the toilets. The toilets were dirty. Very dirty.   And when I asked why, I was told the Kipsigis by culture could not, should not clean feces. So what to do? In my first week, I woke early and went to clean the toilets. I did it for one week. For one week. Until they were clean. And when they were, when there were no more feces along the back, people started using the facilities. And that impressed me. So I cleaned them for the second week. On the third, I told my deputy, a Kipsigi, ‘Now it is your turn. Things have changed. You have been posted here by the ministry of h...