The Unexpected Marathon

                Oh man.  This morning was just ridiculous.  In order to explain what happened, I will go by an outline to try to make it somewhat simple.  I can’t quite remember everything (you’ll understand why after reading this), so I apologize if this gets all confusing.

6:00 AM – Alarm goes off.  I roll out of bed, trying to remember why I wanted to run this early.  Oh yes – I want to start getting into the habit of running early so I’m prepared for next week when I start teaching.  Because I’m starving (I don’t know why – I ate a huge amount of Anne’s delicious cooking last night) I eat a half a piece of bread and just a little peanut butter.  I drink a swig of water and decide I don’t need to put on sunscreen because the sun’s not up very high.  (These details might seem boring, but they get a little more important later).

6:15 AM – Begin run.  My plan is to run the same route we walked yesterday, which should take me 30 minutes or less.  I wasn’t planning on being adventurous or exploring anything.  I was being safe, right?  Right.

6:35 AM – All the dirt roads start looking the same.  I see one I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to take.  It was not.

6:45 AM – I find myself in a place that I can only describe as a “shantytown.”  There were tons of little concrete shacks with laundry hanging outside the windows and stuff.  I came across this nice man with some adorable little kids and asked how I can get to the main road.  I can still see it at this point, but I’m stuck on this dirt road and there’s a river, fences, and lots of grass in the way (don’t walk in the grass – there could be snakes.  Again, I’m being safe, right?)  The man kind of tells me to keep going and then take a right.  I continue going.  I do not see a road going to the right.  However, I see all these people wearing backpacks, looking like they’re going to work or school, so I assume that this road has to lead to the main road.  (If you’re asking why I just didn’t turn around, I can’t give you a good answer.  That thought honestly never entered my mind.)

6:55  AM – The dirt road comes up to a main road.  Yay!  However, it’s not one I recognize, and it also splits into two directions.  One looks more like a highway and the other looks like it leads back towards shantytown.  I ask the people waiting for the bus if they knew where the Lutheran Seminary was.  Dee said anyone in the neighborhood would know where it was, so I was surprised when no one did.  (Alarm bells should have gone off, right?  Nope, they didn’t.)  However, I’m not worried, because I see the U.S. Embassy.  I know that the Seminary is close(ish) to that, and I now recognize the highway. I go on the main road.  I get to a T.  The Embassy is to the left, but I don’t think I’m supposed to go any further towards it.  I go right.  Ten minutes later – I change my mind.  I’m going to go to the Embassy to ask for help.  Ten minutes later – The Embassy is all fenced in and I feel stupid.  I’m so close!  I know it!  (I was wrong)

This is where it gets hazy.  Basically, I run, and run, and run.  Every once in a while I stop and ask for directions.  Most of the time, people say, “What?  I don’t know.  You want the Roman Catholic church?”  Nope.  Then people tell me, “Oh, yes, madam, it is just up the road.  Keep running!  Right up there on the left!”   

7:30 – My thoughts: “I think I see it!  I think I see the sign!  No, that’s not it.  Oh, well – I’m sure it’s just up the road.  What a good story this will be!  Plus, it’s okay that I ran a little over an hour.  I’ll just take it easy tomorrow.  No big deal!”

8:00 – I am not seeing any seminary, nor anything that looks familiar.  I stop at a gym and ask the guards up front if they can help.  I am given directions that were quite disheartening.  Up to this point, I really believed that every time I turned a corner, the Seminary would be “just up the road.”  I wasn’t worried, just a little tired and thirsty.  The guards, however, say I have to run back the same road I just came up for 6 kilometers, then take a right at the lights and run for another kilometer.  Then it’s “just right up the road.”  At the idea of running at least four more miles, I ask if I can get a drink of water.  I go into the gym – beautiful facilities, very American-like – guzzle some water, and then am offered a free trial for the gym.  I sign up for a 12:00 appointment tomorrow.  After all, if I’m just four miles or so away, I can bike in and enjoy a good workout.  Totally reasonable.  I take off, telling myself that four more miles really isn’t much.

8:20 – I’m thirsty again, and I’m starting to doubt the guards’ instructions.  It took a while for me to stop being so trusting – so far the twenty-five people I talked to before that hadn’t been right, but I’m forever the optimist, apparently.  I stop at a little grocery store and ask for directions.  No one can help me.  I ask for more water, and the sweet store owner gives me a free bottle of ice cold water.  He encourages me to take a big bottle from the back that’s nice and cold.  I took a smaller one, because by this time, I did believe I was, at most, half an hour away from the seminary. 

9:00 – I start to walk here and there, but I only walk for a minute or two at a time.  I’m trying to keep my pace up because I’m concerned that Rachel is worried about me.  At this point, I’m praying that she slept in and doesn’t realize I’m not there.  I’m still not that worried though because I keep seeing things that (I think) are familiar.  My thoughts: “I’ll get there by 9:15!  What a good story this will be!  I’ll be able to tell everyone that I accidentally ran for two hours, and they’ll think it’s funny because they won’t even know I was gone that long.  And bonus – now I know my way around here a little better, and I can tell everyone I was given a free workout at a gym.”

9:30 – I keep stopping and asking for directions.  “Just keep going – right down the road.” My thoughts: “Dear Lord, please help me get home.  Don’t let Rachel know I’m gone yet.  Just help me get home.  Why am I not hungry?  That’s nice…I should be starving by now!  Oh well – I’ll be home soon!  I bet I’m there in fifteen minutes or less.”

9:45 – Fifteen more minutes.  I’m almost there!  I know it.  I’m in a surprisingly good mood and greet all the nice Zambians as I run. 

10:00 – FOUR HOURS.  I am going on FOUR HOURS.  I keep seeing things that are slightly familiar to me, so I stop at a grocery store that we had driven by.  I assume the seminary has to be super close because Dee pointed it out as a place to shop, but by this time, I am sick of running and just want someone to give me crystal clear directions.  I go into the store, get every single person working at the store to help, but none of them know where it is. (“Weird…Dee said everyone in the neighborhood knew about the seminary.  Hmm.”)  They get a cab driver, and he says to run down this road, take a left at Roan road, and it’ll be on the left.  He seems confident, so I trust him.  I get to Roan road in just a minute or two, and after about five minutes of running decide he’s wrong and turn around.  I decide that this is officially crisis mode.  I see a white woman driving into her gated community, so I flag her down.  She has an accent (I thought it was Australian, but it was actually Zambian – I realized I haven’t heard a white Zambian speak before that, and it’s a little different than when a National Zambian speaks) and is super sweet.  She tells me to hop in the back of the truck so she can drive me to her house to get me some water.  I am covered in mud and sweat, am exhausted, and didn’t do anything to my appearance when I rolled out of bed.  So, basically, I look like a homeless person.  She was very willing to help, though.  Thank God!  She gets me water and then tries to figure out where I need to be.  I tell her the Lutheran Seminary.  She’s lived in Lusaka her entire life and has never heard of it. Bad sign.  I tell her that if I could get Internet access, I could look up the phone number on my emails.  She takes me back to where I had just run from (the shopping center with the familiar-looking grocery store) and go to an Internet café.  She pays for me to get on the computer and find the phone number.  I call Dave and he then says that Dee will pick me up.  I thank the woman profusely and ask for her address so I can send her a thank-you. 

10:15 – I am waiting outside the grocery store, still looking like a homeless person.  Getting stares from lots of people.  I don’t blame them.   

10:25 – Dee and Christine pick me up.  They tell me I’m at least 10 miles away from the seminary, so thank God I didn’t continue to try to wander and find it myself.   When I start describing some of the things I had seen, Dee is shocked and can’t believe I was so far away.  I’m estimating that I ran at least 3 hours of the whole trip.  I kept thinking it was “just up the road” so I kept my pace up quite fast the whole time too.  Then, when it got late, I was so worried about everyone at the campus freaking out, so that kept me from wanting to slow down or walk for very long.  So…I ran what, between 15-20 miles?  The road I was on by the embassy is about six miles away and that store is ten miles away, and those two spots were definitely not close to each other at all. 

I kept a continuous prayer going the whole time, but I was never too concerned or worried. I truly thought I was really close to the seminary, so that kept me from freaking out.  I kept a running monologue in my head of how I would retell this story.  With each hour, it changed slightly:

One hour: Oops!  I ran a little further than I meant to.  It was such a nice run, and I got to see how some of the poorer people lived, so it was a good experience.

Two hours: Phew!  I ran two hours today when I meant to run less than a half an hour!  Now I really know the roads around here better, and I won’t get lost again.

Three hours: Wow – what a crazy morning.  I can’t believe I ran so long!  I wasn’t expecting to run my half marathon so early in the year. 

Four hours: My mom and dad are going to be so mad!  What is wrong with my sense of direction???  Did a toenail just fall off???

Wow, this is long…sorry about that.  Anyway, once Christine and Dee picked me up, they (after giving me the appropriate amount of sympathy) scolded me and then made fun of me, and then asked if I minded if we would run some errands on the way back.  I was so happy to be in a car that they could have driven to Egypt and I would have been fine with it.  They bought me some fruit from a roadside vendor and then I got to tour pretty much the only part of Lusaka I didn’t run through.  We went to the heart of downtown; it’s not exactly pretty – there’s a lot of rundown concrete buildings.  There are some skyscrapers that were built after Zambia got their independence in 1964.  Countries like Sweden came in and tried to start big businesses there, but most of them failed, so these huge buildings are empty for the most part. I saw people selling lots of items on the street, including heaps and heaps of clothing just laying on the sidewalk.  On the way home, I saw a really nice area of town, too, not far away from where the President lives. On one of our stops, Dee and I waited in the car while Christine ran into the store.  Four men came up and started talking to us.  Of course, they were very friendly, and of course, they asked for money because we are “muzungus” (white people).  Dee, who is funny, sarcastic, and quite nice, dealt with them in a good way.  I wasn’t sure how to act, especially when they started trying to charm me: “You have such beaaaautiful eyes,” and “You look so nice and humble!”  (I’m not sure what they were trying to do with that one).   

Finally, I got home around 1 in the afternoon.  Dave, who loves to make fun of people, made a “welcome home” sign for me.  This is just the beginning of the abuse that is sure to come.   

Once I showered, ate, and had some coffee and about five bottles of water, Rachel and I walked up to the store that’s just a block or two away.  We bought some little snacks and then had a long conversation with one of the guys for a while.  He assumed I was a basketball player (shocker) and then asked for our numbers.  That seems to be a common theme here too.  We declined, but he gave us his card.  Don’t worry Mom and Dad, we won’t use that one either.

Every Tuesday evening, Dave, Dee, and Sue play volleyball with the ladies and some of the men.  They’ve never played before, so this was definitely basic-level volleyball, but it was so fun!  They’re all so silly and happy – I have a permanent smile on my face when I’m around them. 

Random things from Zambia:

The water makes my hair feel like I still have conditioner or soap or something in it.  Kind of gross.  Keep this in mind when looking at the pictures and you see the crazy mess on my head. 

They sell long-lasting milk, which means you don’t have to refrigerate it until you open it.  Weird, but it works.  I haven’t tried it yet but apparently it tastes just fine.