Coach Misch/ David Marino Update #3

Misch-Kenya blog entry 1-4-13

Led by the two David's- they destroyed us on this run. 

More Shots from the waterfall

The flooded roads from heavy rain the week before we arrived

We frequently find ourselves in the back of this tiny truck. ,,,It's awful.

Children who wait outside of the ATM area hoping for money.

Us with Lydia Cheromei (center), winner of the 2012 Yokohama Marathon

Nick, who just left for home early.

Well I figured it was time for me to post an entry to the blog so here we go. As I sit here typing this on David Marino’s laptop (hopefully before it runs out of juice) the guys are finishing up washing their laundry outside while listening to Kenyan tunes on the radio from the Yellow Submarine (that’s the 1997 Toyota truck that the camp uses). It’s a beautiful sunny day here so our clothes should dry quickly. Then after lunch, some of the guys are hitching a ride into Eldoret (about 16 miles from our camp) when Nick Kern heads to the airport and that’s where they’ll post this blog entry while getting caught up on e-mail, etc.

I however will be spending the afternoon reading, writing and hanging out with kids after having spent all day yesterday after our morning training on a 15 hour adventure across the back roads of Kenya with David Karos and Philip Maiyo. There is so much to write about that adventure that it would take an hour or so. But in short at one point we had 17 people in the Yellow Submarine, I ended up a guest speaker at a ceremony for one of David’s sons and we spent about 10 hours traveling to the  Nandi Hills and back including a stop to pick up the cow that our team bought (we named the cow “Harambee”) for the camp. The story of how we came to buy the cow and transport it in the back of the pick-up in the dark is a story for another day. But our crew felt like buying a cow was a worthwhile investment for the camp that will pay itself off in about five months and produce milk and birth calves for about 10 more years. “Harambee” was very happy to be untied and let lose in the small pasture with the other cow next to the camp and today seems like she is doing well after her long journey last night.

Other than that the days have been filled with training in the mornings, plenty of things to see and do with the kids and locals and walking all over the place to visit others while basically take care of the normal activities of life. As for the camp itself, life is slow and a lot of quality time with the kids reading, playing, cleaning, building, etc. There are plenty of projects to keep busy. And as for the running scene, as I always tell the guys “running is running” and just like everywhere else in the world you put one foot in front of the other. There are a few training camps in the area so we see a lot of runners on the roads each morning when we’re training. We are training with a couple of the guys from Coach Maiyo’s group (David Sr. and David Jr.) and they have been great. Overall things have been good and we’ve been knocking the workouts and minutes on the miles of rolling dirt and clay roads around us.

Well the guys just said lunch is ready so I’m going to close this out. Tomorrow we’ll be headed to the Kenyan Discovery Cross Country Challenge in Eldoret. Not only will it be great to be at the meet, but our own Luke Dakin will be mixing it up in the 8k race. Go Dakinator!

Take care and God Bless – Misch



Take Two: 1/4/13

David Marino here, and indeed the laptop did die before we were able to post. However, my laptop has a safety feature that auto-saves my session before the computer shuts down. Yay! Windows for the win!

However, as I sit in our familiar internet café we have dubbed “The Fort” (as it sits above the main floor, to get to it, one has to climb a sketchy set of stairs to a landing that doesn’t have a solid floor feel… kind of like a rickety old tree house a couple of nine-year olds tried to piece together) I have the intention of describing the animal presence in the orphanage and surrounding areas.

Subject 1: Maggie

If you’ve been keeping up with our blog, you might have read a few days ago the miracle of Maggie, the dog who lived. Before the incident, Maggie was an extremely social and energetic dog who for the life of her couldn’t keep herself from jumping all over you. In fact, when we did laundry today I washed her paw prints from the neck of my shirt when she first laid her little brown eyes on me. After the incident, however, her personality has mellowed and her paws stay planted on the ground for the majority of the time. She walks cautiously towards you when you call instead of her old uncontrolled puppy run. This may be the case, but she still holds a good amount of excitement, enough to cause the tail half of her body to sway to the cadence of her wagging tail when she greets you. She stands just a few inches below my knees and can’t weigh more than 15 pounds. Her ears rest like a folded triangle when she isn’t engaged in anything, but when you call her, they fold back revealing her sharp face and submissive look. Black and brown sack of skin and bones run against our legs at lunch waiting for someone to give her either food or attention. With other dogs, if you happen to run a finger against their fur they might not notice and carry on. With Maggie, if you so much move your finger in tiny circles on her fur, she clings to your side as if you were giving her a good ear scratch. She’s a gentle creature who I personally wouldn’t mind taking home with me. However, I say that about almost all seemingly nice creatures I tend to come across.

Subject 2: Tracy

Tracy the cat is 2 pounds, grey with barely visible black stripes and is about the length of a forearm. She looks like a kitten, but rumor has it that she indeed is fully grown and descends from the fierce cats of the savannah themselves. The most striking feature about this kitty is most definitely her eyes; a vicious green that is so intense it almost seems cartoonish. In the morning, she always makes herself known with a series of long meows… more like subtle screams that pierce through the morning silence. As she becomes more comfortable with us, she chooses which person she wants to pet her and which lap to jump on, usually unexpectedly. In the mornings and at night are the times which we are blessed with her highness’ presence, especially after dinner when she jumps on the counter where all the dinner dishes wait to be scraped to get her fair share. Not a single malicious bone in this cats body… so far. For now, we are under her spell when she situates herself on our lap in a furry, purring mass of cuteness.

Subject 3: The Rooster

Nobody. NOBODY likes the rooster. All of us are sleeping so soundly when the call of the rooster sounds at the unearthly hour of 4 a.m. Needless to say the next 3 hours are full of muffled curses loathingly whispered into our pillows. This continues though out the day as well, however it’s more like white noise when we’re busy talking with the kids or playing soccer. Thankfully, the rooster made it into our meal a couple of nights ago, and there was much rejoicing (cue the Monty Python jubilee). However, in Kenya when the day is lived by the rising and setting of the sun, the rooster plays its role much as it did in our own American history. The work ethic displayed in the orphanage and even in the farms around the orphanage is nothing short of astounding. Ask an American kid to clean the fields of debris or clean the floor and they might laugh thinking it as a joke. Of course there are good kids out there in the States, but here at the orphanage, I have never heard a single child cry, complain (looking for the tone on this one) or rebel in their duties to the establishment. Truly a sight to see.

For now, the plan for the day is to finish up at the internet café, go back to the orphanage to spend some more quality time with the kids. That’s all folks!

Barely keeping up with the Kenyans,
David Marino