The last few days have been rich with experience and connection and love and full of learning and growth too. Ange and I travelled to the airport early Wednesday morning and the flight passed in a long catch up chat and a little bit of reading! The air hostesses said when we got off ‘you two have talked the whole way’!
I stepped onto African soil for the first time over forty years and I felt a deep sense of home coming. I wasn’t sure what I would feel, but I recognized and felt comfortable with the people and I said to Ange ‘I like it here’ – in fact I have continued to say that at rather regular intervals – and Ange now replies ‘I know you do Jue’. I also have told everyone and anyone who will listen that ‘I was born in Africa’ – and ‘I was the only white baby in the hospital’!
We drove into the night time energy of Nairobi, alive and chaotic in a familiar and organized way and eventually bed at midnight after a lovely bath. We had been adviced to leave Nairobi at dawn to avoid the traffic, so with Ange driving as she feels safer that way! – we negotiated the streets alive with people walking along the roadside, crowded into vehicles, gathered by the side of the road in big groups – and the traffic was piling up.
We were told it would be easy to find the road to Mombasa and that then it was a straight road all the way. I was map reader – but there was little to show us on the map whether we were on the right road. After over an hour of driving we found we were heading in the completely opposite direction! Being with Ange is a joy as both of us responded in the same way ‘It is what it is’ and we laughed too – by 9.15 we were back in Nairobi!
By the time we found Chris (www.hearourvoicekenya.com) we had been journeying for 11 hours, but the connection between us and the experiences we had along the way – the rhythm of the landscape and the sky, the towns, the people, the times we stopped to stretch or have a drink in a little roadside café were so intense and immediate that we didn’t want the journey to ever end.
Chris was in Mariakinu, and as we approached he came out and stood in the road. We were wedged between two lorries as we negotiated the busy town when suddenly there was Chris, waving on the roadside, his bright and powerful energy shining out. We ate with his team, Steve, Lee, Iasiah and Evans in a little restaurant and sampled the diet Chris has been living on for the last 6 weeks, Rice and stew and Chapati. It was delicious. Ange and I has eaten very little for the last two days! Chris looks so well and fit, even though he has at times been through days when he has hardly known how he would take the next step.
We slept so well in our little cottage, which was basic accommodation, but provided all we needed to rest our heads and sleep for a bit longer than the last two nights!
Early in the morning we were gathered by the roadside in the humid hot African heat – another bit of the road stretching ahead for Chris, running in the country where I took my first running steps for me – and a chance for Chris and I to catch up.
We set off and talked all the way – about his journey – about his experiences and about how this run , which is huge and awesome, but is still but one step in Chris’s vision – in the journey he begun two years ago with the street children. It is all about his work, the running is allowing his to carry his message further and wider.
We ran together deep in dialogue, waving to the children that ran out to greet us, in step with each other and our desire to make a difference, but the difference is still only possible from the place within us, we are the difference and so the commitment always is to keep returning to our own core truth so that all we do is from a clear place and from this place we will know that our actions will be true. However this is a minute by minute commitment and we never know when our next lesson will come from as I was about to find out.
We had run about 20 miles and we were approaching a busy town and I was suddenly feeling very spaced out and thirsty and strange. A combination of the heat and humidity, a long haul flight, a long drive, and little sleep and not enough food about to show me that body was going to say ‘No’. We reached the support vehicle and I couldn’t stand up anymore, because if I did I nearly fainted – so I lay on the road, with the African people around me, drinking electrolyte drink until I felt better, which I did after awhile. Chris and I set off again and less than a kilometer down the road my body cramped and I was in an intense pain like I have never known in over forty years of running, out of control of my body and clutching Chris, who was trying to make sure I was lying in a bit of the road away from the vehicles! I lay with my eyes closed not knowing how to escape the pain and heard Chris saying to the support team ‘get back here now’ get back here now’!! When I started to feel better and opened my eyes, I had gathered an audience of about twenty! – huddled in close fascinated by this strange ritual that was unfolding before their eyes.
Being vulnerable allows us to reach such understanding, both of ourselvess and of the support around. surrendering and letting go, is something I have had to learn to do, and to allow others to support me and to know it is okay to be really seen .
Chris and me wanted to continue our dialogue, so at first the plan was to have a break and get me back on the road – but after awhile I decided there was no need for me to do that – for Chris it has been important that each day he has taken the next step on the running road as this is his path and where his own growth and understanding is coming from, whereas for me – at the moment it seems my lesson is in knowing its okay not to!
His day ended with him arriving to where we were all gathered with about fifteen little barefooted children who had joined him about five kilometres from the end –and they were running with him.
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