How to Run a Marathon in Kampala

The MTN Marathon on 23 November 2014 was my first ever run and I did the 10k, along with a couple thousand other people. I thought I'd share some of my observations and musings.

First things first: Registration

There is no online registration. Where computer access, internet access, and electricity, are not aways a given, especially all at the same time, it makes sense. Also, very few events have good websites or online advertising (which makes getting information quite interesting). So registration tables get set up around the city. You show up, tell them your name, phone number, jersey size, and which race you are doing, pay your 20,000 UGX (currently about $7.41), and get your kit. The other option is to register via mobile money, which is a very convenient technology that we don't have in the US (yes, that's a thing). 

Race Day:

I didn't carry anything with me, so I couldn't take pictures. But here are some observations. I would be very interested in hearing if any of these are not, in fact, unique to Kampala (again, this was my first!). I would also love to hear from others who ran!

• Thinking of getting fancy running gear? Don't bother. ballet flats, dress pants, cut off jean shorts, converse shoes, it's all appropriate running gear for this crowd!
• An aerobics class is offered from the main stage at the starting point to help everyone get warmed up. It's good entertainment, anyway.
• For the love of everything good in the world, watch your step! Every. Single. Step. There is no such thing as a flat surface in this city. Holes, cracks, stones, bumps, dips and just plain uneven ground abound. 
• Similarly, roads are not completely shut down to normal traffic, please don't get hit by a boda, a matatu, or a car. And try not to run over unsuspecting pedestrians.
• If you're going to run the 10k, you're going to have to weave your way through hundreds of 10k walkers. 
• If you're interested in winning or trying to go fast at all, you better be at the very very very very front of the pack.
• Any person at any time can start yelling "WE GO! WE GO!" and a good number of people will join in with great enthusiasm. (This is the first half of the National Football team's chant. The rest is: "Uganda Cranes we go!" The chant gets used basically any time people get excited though!)
• There are no spectators cheering you on. But that one random American girl who was standing in the median with her umbrella cheering for us was awesome.

I was able to run almost the whole way, to my surprise. It rained all morning, which probably helped quite a bit by keeping me cool. Kampala is a hilly city, so that adds an extra challenge. I even wore by minimalist "5-toes" shoes, which I usually only wear for hiking, and they felt good the whole time. My knees, which usually give me trouble when hiking, started hurting pretty bad about the last 2 km, which slowed me down quite a bit. I crossed the finish line at 1hr 24min 04seconds. I feel like that's pretty good considering I'm not sure I've never even attempted to run more than a couple miles before!

Unfortunately, my lack of training had its adverse affects. The next day the bottom/outside edge of my left foot hurt pretty bad to walk on. After doing some online research I'm pretty sure I injured my perineal muscles. I also found that this is a pretty common runner injury, so for you runners, here's a link to a really helpful article that did a good job of compiling the info I found on several websites and after hours of research (why don't you ever find these things first?). I've done a lot of icing and stretching and avoiding running in my workouts (or anything that causes sharp pain). As of Sunday, 7 days post run, I was pain free. I'm really happy about that, and will ease back into the running. 

I had laugh out loud when I read this line in the linked article:  

"When it comes to the peroneals the thing to remember is that they are a stabilizer muscle. They help the ankle and foot keep you upright when you hit uneven/loose terrain."

As I said above, there really is no such thing as even terrain in Kampala, so these muscles are getting quite a workout on a daily basis, and it also probably made the run that much more of a strain to them.

All told, I feel pretty good about it, and it's nice to feel like you've accomplished something! I really like the idea of trying to train to do the 21k next year.  I say that without having done any training, of course. But if we can get a team together, train together, run together, and party together after, I think it can happen. I'm looking at you, Fitness 4 Life!

There's also this marathon in Kenya that goes through a wildlife park. How cool is that?

Makin' Pumpkin Pie in Kampala

I had a proper and delicious Thanksgiving meal with the American Chamber of Commerce last week. So when the official day came around the only thing I really wanted was pumpkin pie. But I couldn't go to a bakery and get one (even if there was one that sold them I would hesitate to trust that it would be what I expected it to be). There is also no canned pumpkin. There are no pre-made pie crusts. So this was a serious undertaking. I don't know if you all appreciate how much work goes into this kind of pumpkin pie creation, so let me lay it out for you.

On wednesday I hit the markets: produce is best bought in open air markets or from sellers on the streets, so that's where I got my pumpkin. It was huge and I paid 4,000UGX (currently that's $1.48), which was probably still too much, but I haggled the woman down from 6,000 so I felt ok about it. There are no orange "pie pumpkins" here, but having eaten the pumpkins here before I knew they were pretty sweet and would do the trick, even if the taste was not exactly the same. Then to the nearest super market, where fortunately I can get things like canned evaporated milk, canned condensed milk, unsalted butter, and dried ground ginger and clove. Since I only recently moved into my house and we are still working on equipping it, I also had to buy a pie plate and rolling pin. I hit a snag though when it came to whipped cream. I expected I would not find a can of whipped cream and would have to get a carton of whipping cream and whip it myself, but the market was out of it! My first thought: it's like I really am at home trying to shop the night before Thanksgiving. It was nice to have an excuse for something being out of stock though, after living in Gulu I learned to never count on anything being in stock. I would have to try somewhere else. But not tonight, I was already walking home with what felt like 50lbs of goods to carry! Eggs I bought the next morning from one of the small shops near my house. They generally have a stack of full egg crates and you just tell them how many eggs you want.

All told, here was my expense list:

Pie Plate: 20,000UGX

Rolling pin: 10,000 UGX
cling wrap: 4,500 UGX

evaporated milk: 4,500 UGX

condensed milk: 5,000
Unsalted butter 500g: 10,500 UGX

ginger spice: 2,000 UGX

clove spice:  4,800 UGX

4 eggs: 1,200 UGX

pumpkin: 4,000 UGX

whipped cream: 8,000 UGX

Then the work begins. The skin on the green pumpkins here is like wood. It took some serious effort between myself and my butcher knife to get the thing cut up. I only cut half of it, which turned out to be more than the 3 cups I needed for my recipe. After cutting it into chunks, I steamed it. After letting it cool, I peeled off the skin (note in the picture how the pieces of skin are still whole? Wood, I tell you.) Then I mashed it up as best I could with a fork, and set it aside to be mixed with everything else the next day.

On Thursday morning I started the crust. It is quite a process. First, cut the butter into pieces and place in the freezer  for about an hour to get hard, so it won't melt when mixing it into the flour. After waiting about an hour I start working on flaking the butter into the flour. A lot of butter. I didn't have a choice but to do it by hand, but I had read that if you do it by hand and flake it (rather than clumping it which I guess happens with a food processor) that's how you get a flaky crust. Once that is done you form the dough into 2 discs, and put it back in the fridge to chill. 

While the dough chilled, I mixed the pie filling. After waiting about two hours, I pulled out one of the discs to start rolling it out. I did this on the counter top. I floured the counter top, and moved the disc several times, but by the end it still had thoroughly stuck to the counter top. Trying to get it off was a total disaster, so I had to roll it back into a disc and put it in the freezer to start over again while I worked on the second one. This time I rolled it out on plastic wrap. Much easier. Placing the crust in the pie plate is also quite challenging! You don't want it to break or fold over on itself or get scrunched up or be too far over on one side so there isn't enough dough on the other side. Seesh. But finally I got it all sorted.

Now for the baking: hoping that the power doesn't go out as it had briefly twice already. And in an oven that is barely even big enough to fit 2 pies in. I should have just done them one at a time, but I was inpatient. Since both pies were very close to the top and bottom burners, I just kept switching between them (have the top one on for a while, then turn it off and turn the bottom one on) to prevent burning. It was working pretty well until I left it too long and the top pie burned. At this point it was cooked, so I took out to cool off and left the other to cook, this time putting it on the top rack and leaving the bottom burner on. I was able to peel the burnt top layer off the first pie, but it wasn't very pretty and I wasn't sure if it would taste burnt, so I was hoping I wouldn't end up serving it to my friends! The other pie cooked beautifully. 

Now to go after that whipped cream. I went to another super market near by: again nothing. So I had to go further afield, but not too far and to a market that was huge and surely must have it. So I get on a boda after serious negotiation (he wanted 3,000UGX to bring me there, but he finally agreed to take me there and back for 3,000). Luckily, not only did I find whipping cream, but cans of whipped cream! Hooray for Capital Shoppers Ntinda.

My friends all thought the pie was delicious, and it was suggested that I not wait for Thanksgiving to make it again. Now that I've figured our how to make it happen, I just might. It took hours of labour, but my craving for Thanksgiving pumpkin pie has been satiated!

Reverance

A potential dam. The cave where prospective chiefs are brought to be received by massive pythons. The site where chiefs are crowned.  The ceremony to kick off construction keeps getting postponed by forces outside human control (eg flash flooding at the site).

A road. Trees, reportedly inhabited by spirits, that refuse to be chopped down. The man who tried, died.

Today I heard some stories at the office about conflicts between development projects (roads, dams, etc) and local populations, from a researcher who's just come back from the field. The theme is when local traditions, sacred places, ancestors, and spirits are not acknowledged and treated with respect, bad things happen (including mysterious deaths). The researcher (a man from northern Uganda) said he has always heard about these kinds of things but has always discounted them. After the stories he's heard, he's not sure he should.

ln practical terms it doesn't matter where you are or what you call it--superstition, tradition, backward beliefs, witchcraft, spirituality--it seeks to maintain reverence for everything that we don't and can't fully understand (and that's a lot), and necessitates that in our eagerness to impose our understanding of things on the world we leave space for respecting places, resources, and people. And space to learn (and preserve) what we don't yet understand, before it is lost to us. Space for us to attend to more than our immediate physical needs/desires. To maintain our sense of wonder and awe and recognise that our place in this vast universe is really small.

There is always more to learn. We shouldn't discount something just because it doesn't appear to be scientific or because it doesn't fit into the model we learned. In the US people used to believe that chicken soup was good for a cold. Then we thought we got smart and labeled that a "old wives tale." Then we decided to actually research it, and guess what? Chicken soup is good for a cold. Just because it's ancient knowledge that wasn't informed by modern day physics and biology and textbooks, doesn't mean it's not valid.

Slow down. Look. Listen. Proceed with caution. Because as I always say, good intentions are not good enough. There are lots of great benefits to roads and dams, but that doesn't mean there are only benefits, or that those benefits mean anyone can just plop them down anywhere at any time.

(P.S. This doesn't just apply to development or to government, it applies to you. It's up to you to figure out how.... Slow down. Look. Listen. What can you learn today?)