Good morning 

Free time

It’s starting to feel like late August here now. On my usual running route, the broad yellowing tobacco leaves are beginning to obstruct the view that, up until a couple of weeks ago, the farm workers enjoyed of my jog past in the evenings. So my run’s gotten a bit quieter, but I still get the occasional shouts of “Good morning” (at 6 pm), “thank you” and “how are you” from the locals practicing their English. I took to running out here in the tobacco fields, about 5 kilometers from my house, because running in town became too much of a virtual obstacle course--an exercise in practiced nonchalance in the face of quizzical open-mouthed grins and stares, good-natured taunts of “muzungu” (the African equivalent of “gringa”), and the occasional uninvited running partner hoping for a date. I get the same reaction out here in the matu, but the population density is much lower, so I pass only a few weary souls returning to the village after a day’s work in the machamba. Most are groups of women and children, sometimes with husbands in tow. Mom and older children carry the younger children swaddled in capulanas tied tight around their around their shoulders and backs, everything else is balanced on the women’s heads—cords of firewood, baskets and burlap bags of harvested food, huge bunches of bananas, thatch for the roof, farming tools, basketball-sized squash, everything goes up.

So I understand the puzzled, bemused looks directed at me. To stay fit, I have to consciously seek out exercise and turn down food. I have to think about burning at least as many calories as I take in each day. Not worries shared by my trail-mates. So they see me run past and shake their heads—crazy muzungu that I am. Meanwhile, I marvel at them. I pass two women, both carrying at least 80 pounds of firewood on their heads and perfect, serene babies on their backs, smiling and chatting as they stroll by, their bare feet striking the ground for maybe the ten thousandth time that day.