A Day at the Races January 28, 2006

I received an email recently informing me of a school running event at the American School of Kinshasa (TASOK). It is a K-12 school on a large campus complete with tennis courts, trails, and a swimming pool. Since September, this is where I spent most Sunday afternoons playing Ultimate Frisbee with American Ex-Patriots.

The school was hosting odd distance events for school kids and a 5000m for adults to raise funds for library books. The entry was reasonable and I gave consideration to turning loose some of my next door kids on the offspring of affluent diplomats and other children of English speaking parents. Only the 5-6 year olds ran a reasonable distance, 300m. All others ran 1.8km and further. A week before the event, I hosted Time Trials to see who would be on my team. I ran the kids, barefoot of course, around the neighborhood on broken concrete and dirt streets over a distance of just over 1km. The kids will do anything for a Coke so persuasion was easy. I picked out 4 girls for the meet as the boys were all too young.

The night before the meet, I was asked if supporters could attend. No problem, but when I arrived on race day, I was greeted with all my kids wearing their Sunday-Go-To-Meetin’-Clothes. Fortunately, everyone had a small bag with play cloths. However, there were 15 extra passengers. I loaded all 19 into the Landcruiser along with myself a nervous driver and eyes grew wide as we entered the school gates of the lush campus.

First event was the 5-6 boys and girls 300m run. A single lap around a soccer field where I placed all of my spectators along the ropes and they immediately started chanting my lone runner’s name. “Latishia-Latishia-Latishia” was the only words heard during the brief race. Latishia had her racing shoes on and briefly held the lead half way through the race; that is, until she stopped completely. Seems…shoes hurt her feet. Afterwards, everyone ran barefoot.

Enthusiasm grew and shortly afterwards, I now had nine entrants, including a boy, Isuau, whom I met as we boarded the Toyota earlier. The following race jumped to just over a mile at 1.8km and featured my 4 fastest girls, Melanie, Tanya, Crystal and Abigail. Now, kids can run that distance in about 8min; yet, Melanie led the charge out
of the woods just after 5:00 and won the race with 20 other kids behind her. Three minutes later, some swift boys appeared confused with other kids ahead. Seems a guard gave bad information, caused confusion and diverted some runners the wrong way.

The meet director was so impressed with my kids that he then bought the finishers cokes and hotdogs. Just as my 4 girls consumed the last of the hot dogs, an announcement informed us of a re-race. I managed to buy some time to allow digestion and the meet director agreed that puking kids is not good for morale.

After Olga took 4th in her race and the new boy, Isuau finished 2nd, my 4 bloated girls again took to the starting line for a shorter and simple 2 lap race around the soccer field. It was getting hot and they had already run hard. Thing is…my kids can sprint. I placed the spectators along the field for support and at the gun, they once again broke to the lead. This time, they held, and at the finish, Melanie, at 7 years of age, the youngest and smallest girl in the race was leading, only to be out leaned by a crafty boy at the line. The results were simple. Amongst the girls, we placed 1-2-3-4.

Of the nine kids, only two finished lower than 4th out of the 100 or so in attendance. Unfortunately, there was the matter of the adult 5000m run held at 12 noon. I was suffering a sinus infection, had slept little the night before and had been herding cats all morning. Unbeknownst to me, at the gun, I heard chants of “Captain Luke” every time I completed a 1mi loop around the school. I somehow managed a 3rd place finish and was literally mobbed by my kids at the finish. Outside of a long ago 2nd place finish at the University of Georgia Relays with family in attendance, not winning a race had ever been such fun.

At 9:00pm I walked by the neighbor’s compound and saw most of my kids still wearing their new t-shirts and numbers. The medalists were still wearing their awards around their necks and probably continued as they fell asleep. For everyone, this was their 1st track meet. Chances are, it will be their last.

My work here is complete as I depart the Congo tomorrow for a new job with Air Serv for the remaining six months of my world tour. I’ll tell you about that when I arrive.

JLH

Nice Medal

Everyone's a Winner

Luken is Mobbed by the Crowd