Humbled

Lately, I’ve been searching for humility in this town. As I get more and more comfortable with my job, I worry about outshining my counterpart or becoming too affirmative about my ideas. Still worshiped by the local children, I worry about jealously and such things. I am not anything special, I just have different color skin than you. And the fact that so many people are eager to befriend me, I have realized, may indeed be because they are looking for money. I still get asked everyday if I will give away my bike, my watch, and my two younger sidekicks, Cesalo and Amadou, with beg for candy if they ever find me alone.

So I live for humbling moments. I live for instances when I see that a person can do something remarkable on their own, something I cannot do, something I cannot help them with. It was, of course, Shaka. Our runs together have become less and less frequent as my work has picked up at the CSCOM. And if Cesalo and Amadou come, they are slow and interrupted. So the other night, I was lucky to squeeze in 5 miles with him in the evening. After 5 he said he was tired and we should go back home. It seemed unlike him, but perhaps his body was exhausted from working the fields all day. So he went to his house, I went to mine, got a quick sip or water, and headed out for another couple of miles before nightfall.

And we caught each other. I found Shaka on the road. Running like I have never seen him before. Bulleting through the dusty fields. He had snuck out to run faster, but did not want to embarrass me by saying so. The next evening, I asked him as we slowly jogged through the fields. “Shaka, do you run by yourself a lot?”
“Yes.” I figured he just kind of waited for me to run, and just did normal 12 year old kid stuff on his own.
“A lot?”
“Yes.”
“When you run by yourself, do you run faster than this?”
“Yes.”
“Show me.” He looked embarrassed, and almost ashamed, but when I gave him the encouraging look, he picked up the pace, little by little, so as I could follow. “Can you pass me Shaka?” And then he did it, he just flew by, with the most beautiful form I’ve ever seen, leaving me huffing and puffing, putting more and more distance on me until he graciously slowed down to wait for me to catch up. I haven’t run this fast in a while. And as I think I have a pretty respectable running resume, here I am, completely winded and dusting by a 12 year old boy. I’m humbled, and honestly, it feels great.
“Why don’t you run like that when we run together?”
“You are my teacher, it would be wrong to run faster than my teacher.” I explained to him that this was not correct, and that my running teacher was an old man who would drive his car next to us as we ran. Shaka proceed to answer my questions. He runs quite a bit on his own, and usually has already run earlier in the day when we go out together in the evening. He runs fast and far for two weeks, and then slow for two weeks. Not the most sophisticated training plan I have ever heard, but the fact that he has one, that his is systematic and consistent is above and beyond what I expected of him.
“Are you running with me to the market tomorrow?”
“Maybe.” He says with a smile, and I know he had already planned to run there, but to wait for my slow pace was not on the agenda.
“You want to run fast don’t you?” He nods with an embarrassed smile. And I explain to him that if I find an odemeter for my bike, the first thing I want to do is time him in a 5k.
And all my dreams for him came rushing back. I had been ignoring them for a while, thinking my work at the CSCOM was first and foremost priority. Which it is, but that doesn’t mean I still can’t really search for a means for this kid to shine. Its hard though, my homolouge and host family disapprove me spending so much time with him. My homolouge is convinced he is going to steal something from me one day, and I see how the other village kids are jealous. Something is drawing me towards him though. This kid is meant for something bigger than the millet fields of Dombila.
“What do you want to do when you grow up Shaka?”
“Oh I don’t know.” He thinks for a while. “I want to go to America and be a teacher. I want to teach Bambara to Americans.” I give a slight chuckle at his precious naivite.
“Americans don’t really study Bambara in America. But you could work for the Peace Corps one day in Bamako and teach Americans like me how to live in Mali and speak Bambara.” He agreed that that would be pretty cool.