running in Namaacha.

When you run everyday in a town like Namaacha, people notice you. Namaacha has become somewhat accustomed to strange foreigners, like myself, who really love going for a run in the morning despite the muddy road, tremendous heat, and unsympathetic chapa drivers that like to run us off the road.

I have been running nearly everyday since I arrived (there was one day that I woke up and just walking to the latrine resulted in an embarrassing fall and a muddy mess and I decided it was just not worth it to run that day), and I have had some pretty great interactions during these runs. This post is dedicated to the children I high five at 6 am, the lady with the pink spandex, and the bread vendor.

Usually, I am the only person running for fun in the morning. Usually I will see a couple of people running after chapas (public buses about the size of the big, blue, 13 passenger van we had when I was little), but no one is running just to run. Last week, however, I was heading up one of the big hills in my neighborhood, and I saw four women, power walking up the hill. For a second I was displaced back to Roxbury, Massachusetts, where the four women in bright pink spandex, power walking up a hill in the morning, would have been somewhat common place. The barbed wire fence separating me from Swaziland reminded me that I was in fact still in Mozambique. As I got closer to the women, they turned around and giggled after all looking at me. When I passed them, one started running with me. Excited to have a local running partner, I quickly started a conversation with her. Our short-breathed conversation lasted all of five hundred yards when she told me she was going to join her friends again.

Younger kids on their way to school usually join me for short periods during my run, too. They run next to me and don’t speak at all, just smile. The kids that don’t run with me, high five me. Its like I am winning a race, every morning.

Often my “bom dias” are met with confused glances, chapas chicken fight me for space on the road, and the guards at the boarder say ridiculous things about me as a run by. I have grown to love the English that I get to hear on my run. Clearly a foreigner, Mozambicans take the opportunity to use all of the English they know when they see me, sometimes all strewn together into one word: “hellogoodmorninggoodafternoongood-night,” or “howareyouveryfinethankyou.”

I have gotten three marriage proposals during my morning runs. If anyone reading this has run with me and seen how very sweaty and unattractive I get by the end, you know that I should maybe take the suitors up on their proposal. Toward the end of a run on a particularly hot day, a man said, “I must marry you.” To which I replied, in Portuguese, that I couldn’t right now as I had to get home. He responded, in English, “I must marry you. I am a cup full of serious.”

Running has become a blessing to my host mother, who appreciates my willingness to stop by the paderia (bread shop) on my way home. People will like up at the paderia and buy hundreds of loaves of bread to then re-sell in their neighborhood. The first morning I went to get bread for the family, a girl in front of my in line asked how much bread I was buying. When I responded four loaves, she grabbed my hand and walked me to the front of the line. There the bread maker told me if you want less than ten loaves of bread, you don't have to wait. Now, every morning, he jokes with me about how sweaty I get and how strong I must be. I also notice that he always gives me the biggest loaves of bread, which I find both ironic and fitting.

While it isn't Blue Line coffee, running to the paderia makes me feel useful at home and a little more at home.