Little Joys in a Big World

Kids are kids. When I'm up at the school I often notice things about the students that seem so universal. The cool kids leaning up against a wall flirting with the popular girls. The younger girls giggling to each other when the older boys mess with them. The class clown shouting things out in assemblies to get a laugh. They get detention for being late. They roll their eyes when they are bored. They get excited when they see explosions in chemistry class.

But this weekend I got to see firsthand that while kids are kids, not every one of them sees the world the same way. Or lives in the same world for that matter.

After holding trials at the school a couple weeks ago, we took the fastest boy and girl from each grade to compete in the Kilimanjaro Marathon 5k Fun Run in Moshi - a 4 hour drive from Mto wa Mbu. The students and a couple teachers were leaving at 3am Sunday in a full car, so my roommates and I headed up a day early on a bus to stay the night in Moshi. This story is full of a lot of ups and downs, but I think the downs of the weekend made the ups even more amazing.

We had a fun adventure there with our colleague, a local teacher named Edward, who was going to visit his mom and accompanied us on the bus. It was great to have him there to lead the way and help us find the best bus (one in which we each got our own seat!), rather than just the first bus, as I'm sure we would have done without him. However, when we arrived, the adorable hostel we'd booked did not have our reservation and so the manager moved us against our will to their awful budget hotel down the road. It was clean, but that was the only thing going for it. Where was the charming patio restaurant surrounded in trees? Where was the on-site bar packed with runners and Kili climbers? Where were the house cats waiting for me to scoop them up into my pet-deprived arms?

I was overheated and frustrated that my plans to meet some other travelers had been thwarted, but a walk about town culminated in a delicious coffee milkshake and a wonderful one-hour massage - something I've been seeking out since I arrived. Things were indeed looking up... until they weren't. Come dinnertime, Faye and I were standing outside a restaurant, on an unfortunately dark street, when a motorcyclist almost rammed right into me. At first I thought he was drunk so I jumped out of the way, at which time his passenger snatched Faye's purse from her shoulder. Aside from losing her phone and a fair amount of money, as well as her sense of calm and security, our hotel key was taken.

Turns out I was right to fret about this shithole of a place because we came to find out they don't keep spare keys. Our friend Jane was staying in another room and the front desk attendant told us in broken English that we could share her key. Wait, WHAT? The keys work on all the rooms? Are you kidding me? And now the purse thief has one of the hotel keys (labeled with the hotel name no less), which will open any room in that hotel? Let's just set that absurdity aside for a minute.

The biggest problem was that the rooms in these weird hotels can only be locked from the inside using the key, but now we only had one key between two rooms. So after hassling the guy, he tried dozens of random keys looking for a match but to no avail. At some point it was 1am and we were getting up at 5:30 for the race so we just said screw it, dragged a mattress from one room onto the floor of the other and got settled in, only to realize that the key locks just one of the rooms from the inside. The other one. Of course we had also picked the room with a door that doesn't latch shut, requiring a key to even close it (we chose this one because the fan in the other room sounded like a machine gun that hadn't been cleaned in 100 years). When it was all said and done, we were too tired to bother switching back to the other room, so we ended up sleeping mishkaki in the busted room with a table jammed against the door to keep it closed, just praying that the thieves weren't going to come to the hotel to try to snag some more loot. As we're drifting off to sleep I muttered out loud "You know, if we'd just done this table thing from the start, Jane could have stayed in her room and we could have been asleep an hour ago." Silence from them both. "Let's pretend that's not true."

Flash forward to the next morning. An expensive cab ride later (from which we had to jump out and walk anyway because the roads were blocked for the marathon), a quick change of clothes at the car and a pre-run run to make it to the start in time to race with the kids and my weekend finally started looking up for real.

There were hundreds of people crowding around waiting for some sign that the race would begin. At some point, with no warning or signal, we all just started running. I stuck with the girls while the boys raced ahead. Turns out the two slowest girls were running at just my ten-minute-mile pace so we had a really nice time together, running through charming neighborhoods and passing more people than passed us. We took selfies as we ran, threw water over our heads at the 2k station and rejoiced together at the finish line. After the race, the kids stood around for at least an hour watching the half marathon and then the marathon racers finish. They were entranced by the drones flying overhead and couldn't believe that the Kenyan winner would take home 4 million t shillings, or 2,000 USD.

We made our way to the car and packed the whole gang in -16 of us in all - for a crowded and sleepy ride to Arusha. Just like last year, the organization took the racers to a hotel to go swimming and eat lunch. Many of them had never been swimming and even those who had were still scared of the water. I gave them underwater piggy back rides and they howled with laughter when I oinked at them. Glory even gave me a ride back once she conquered her fear of leaving the edge of the pool. I held up the scared ones under their bellies so they could practice kicking their feet and then I let them go so they could learn to tread water. Sarah had tears in her eyes when she realized she could keep herself floating by simply kicking her feet in place and moving her arms. I told her to just imagine she was running the 5k underwater and she would stay afloat. I instantly got tears in my own eyes as I watched her confidence soar.

After swimming we sat at a big table and ordered them plates of pizza and spaghetti. They all sat there politely and quietly waiting for their food. It was almost uncomfortable watching them be so well behaved. Ashley had given them a speech in the car about being good guests so we could come back again and they took this seriously. It was the most serious I've ever seen teenagers. When the food came, they dipped their pizza in ketchup (cause why not?) and laughed as they slurped up noodles covered in sauce. The adults ate Indian food and at the end of the meal we passed them our leftovers. Some of them loved it and others were completely appalled at the taste. I think it's safe to say every one of them ate something new.

The most magical part of the trip was after lunch. Last year the kids had discovered the elevator, or "lifty" as they call it, and they had been talking about it all day. Ashley went up with the girls first and then I joined the boys afterward. We stepped into the elevator and pushed floor 9. As we began to rise, Yohana shrieked in fear and turned his back away from the glass walls overlooking the city. He laughed at himself and trembled at the same time. The other boys were glued to the windows with eyes wide. When we reached the top we stepped out and looked across the city from the 9th floor. Losotu, a Form I Massai boy who'd never left Mto wa Mbu, was in utter shock at the view from up high. My heart melted as I watched them all experiencing something new and amazing for the first time. Something so mundane and utilitarian to a Westerner was a thrill to these kids. And it was a thrill to me to watch their brains expanding before my eyes.

After lunch, we all piled back in the car and the kids used each other as pillows to sleep the whole way home. They were completely exhausted, overstimulated and the happiest I'd seen them since I arrived. This was the first time since I've been here that I've spent a significant amount of time with any of the kids and I finally feel a connection and an investment in them. It's hard not to after watching them live so extraordinarily.

All this to say that sometimes, when you get to glimpse the world through someone else's eyes, it's a completely different place. When's the last time you looked out a glass elevator and marveled at the impressive technology beneath your feet? Can you even remember your first road trip? Or the first slice of pizza you ate? Have you ever seen a child completely astonished when you tell her you've been 100 stories high in a building? That evening in Moshi felt like a nightmare at the time. But then I think about how Faye's money and phone can be replaced so easily and how what I considered a shitty hotel would probably feel like a palace to all the students. It's embarrassing and humbling but most importantly, it makes me excited to see what else these amazing kids are going to teach me.