Run to Kati

It had been talked about so much it had almost become a joke. Someday, we’ve been saying since last year, Shaka and I are going to run to the city of Kati. I tried writing training plans for him, get him to stick to some routine. However, I’d be ready for an afternoon run to find that he was cross-training by pulling water in the garden or that he went out to chase some rabbit through the fields with a sling-shot, or he was biking all around town doing his father’s errands. A week would go by and he’d only hop in a couple of my runs for 20 or 30 minutes. Then when he’d finally buckle down and run for an hour, it’d be like nothing. He was a natural, and just ran to the beat of his own drum. So finally I abandoned the notion of a routine, and proposed that we just do it.
We’d kid each other by backing out, or suggesting that we run even further than Kati, or that we’d each do it with one of the kids piggy-backing. I think we were both a little nervous, on my end, I was nervous that I was pressuring him into doing something he wasn’t ready for or he didn’t want to do. We decided to break up the 19 mile run by running 5 the afternoon before, spending the night at Caroline’s in Dio, and then run the remaining 14 at the crack of dawn. I wasn’t completely convinced he was serious about it until he showed up at my door, wearing the new jelly sandals I had picked up at the market, complemented by knee-high rainbow and heart studded socks with “LOVE” printed on them. They were another treasure in the infamous Christian gift boxes.
“Why are you laughing?” He asked.
“Nothing it’s nothing. Your socks, they’re high that’s all.” He starts to roll them down. “No! No! Please don’t. Leave them like that.” Caroline had to see this.
The three of us spent the evening playing cards and strolling the town. I was nervous he wouldn’t be able to eat in an unfamiliar setting, and at first he was reluctant to even admit he had an appetite. But as I watched him wolf down a large plate of beans and pasta I realized that this was probably the best meal he’s had in a long time.
Shaka didn’t sleep that night, fighting the heat inside Caroline’s house. Nevertheless, he was up with the dawn, left for his usual morning wander (he likes to just walk around a little in the morning), and joined me for some bread and coffee. I let him fix his own, and boy do Malians like their sugar. In the silence of the sunrise, we hardly spoke, except to crack a few jokes. “Let’s just run home.”
But he was all business as we set out on the road in a slow trot. The first 5 miles or so were like any other run we’ve done. We chatted away, about the buildings we passed, and what could be inside that mysterious cement factory, and how far the train tracks go. He kept asking me if we had arrived at Diago, a village about 8 miles from Dio, starting 10 minutes into the run. Does he realize how long this is going to be?
I clocked us at a safe 8:45 pace and forced him to take a sip of water after 75 minutes. He was doing fine, and I think enjoying seeing these new landmarks on the gloriously paved road. After about an hour and a half we arrived at the poste, the truck stop about 3 or 4 miles out from Hunter’s house. It was there we took a ten second water break, and there that Shaka stopped talking to me. I told him we were 20 minutes out, knowing it was more like 30 minutes. His eyebrows hardened, and his arms took wider swings. “It’s not your legs or your body that will get you there now,” I said, “it’s your courage.” We treaded on up a gradual uphill. A few minutes later he replied, “My courage is ‘a baana’”. ‘Finished.’
Yet he refused to stop or to slow the pace. We reached the city, and I knew that he thought every house we passed was Hunter’s. Little did he know we still had a couple of miles. “Yes we can!” I said in English. He thought we had arrived. Oh, not yet.
Cresting the last hill, just 600 meters from the finish, he proposed we walk a bit. “No way! I said! We’re already there!” So he picked up the pace, somehow landing softly on a rocky ground in flimsy plastic sandles, automatically corrected his posture, and soared. I did a little cheer as we rounded the last corner, a minute over 2 hours, slapped him a bunch of high fives, and caught his embarrassed smile toward the ground.
We found Hunter still asleep but prepared with Shaka’s reward of cocunuts and cold soda pops. The day was a bit awkward, walking around the city, showing the quiet Shaka things he’d never seen before- the jail, the hospital, the internet café. I bought him some yogurt, which he loved, and we made avocado and egg sandwhiches for lunch. We relaxed in Hunter’s house with fans and tile floors, and I asked Shaka if he had ever bathed in a shower before.
“No,” he replied, “Have you?”
I turned it on to show him, and he jumped back in fright at the water spewing from the shower head. But when he emerged looking clean and content, I asked him how it was. He nodded. “It was alright.”
We watched a movie with Hunter on his computer, and Shaka said he missed his mom. The whole day, I wasn’t sure if he was glad we came or not. We piled in a bush taxi to get us back to Dio, and then he biked alongside me as I ran back to Dombila. We passed an old man who asked, as they do every market day,“Hey, did she run all the way from Dio?” Shaka answered yes, and biked by. Then he turned around and replied, “Do you think Dio’s far for us?” And I told him of the great feat that we had just accomplished- running to Kati. After that, Shaka opened up and talked with such enthusiasm about Hunter’s house and the Kati market. “We gotta go back,” he said. “But next time, we’ll take a car.”
“You didn’t have a nice run?”
“No, the run was great!” he said. “But next time, we’re taking a car.”