Written By Luke Dakin:
Hello All!
We are
about 3 days away from leaving the children’s home to go back to Nairobi and
are wondering where the time has gone! It has been a phenomenal experience so
far and we are looking to make the most of our final couple of days.
On Tuesday
we had the experience of a lifetime for running nerds such as ourselves. We
went to Iten, which has proclaimed itself “The City of Champions”. It was
obvious why after our day. We started off by going to the local university to
watch a track workout where many of the best runners in the world were
training. For example, in one workout the last Boston Marathon winner and the
Yokohama Marathon winner were working together. They were doing an “easy”
workout to stretch out their legs. 20 by 400 meters at 68 to 72 seconds! That’s
averaging 4:40 mile pace!
We just did
a recovery run on the campus of Chepkoilel University which was a neat
experience too because we got to see what life was like at a Kenyan University.
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| Winner of the 2012 Boston Marathon, Sharon Cherop |
After we
left there we went to St. Patrick’s Boys School, which has produced an
incredible amount of Olympians. They planted a tree outside for every Olympic
medalist who had passed through that school and it seemed like there was a
forest out front! There were easily 30
trees outside. As if that wasn’t impressive enough when we went inside we got
to take a look at their school records board. Keep in mind this is a high
school. The school record in the 5000-meter race was set at the Los Angeles
Olympics! My jaw was on the floor at this point. It was a humbling experience
to say the least to be at a high school where the school record of the 10000-meter
run was over 3 minutes faster than my personal best.
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| The most prestigious high school for runners in the world. |
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| Accolades |
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| Remember, these are high school boys- all under 19 years old. |
The best
experience was yet to come though at this school. As we were leaving we stopped
by the coach’s house on the off chance that we might get to shake hands with
one of the most legendary cross country coaches of all time. Not only did Coach
O’Connell take the time to say hello when we came over unannounced, he stayed
and talked to us for over an hour! Many people who had accomplished what he
accomplished would be arrogant and would never take the time to talk to some
college students. However, this man was the humblest man I have ever met and we
ended up having one of the best conversations I have ever had. He currently
coaches the 800-meter world record holder David Rudisha who lives next door to
him so he gave us a tour of his home but unfortunately he wasn’t home.
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| One of the greatest coaches of all time. (We just knocked on the front door of his house) |
Anyway, I
could write a short novel about all the cool running stuff I saw but I’ll spare
you. There were a lot of other amazing things that happened to us in Iten. The
city is nestled into these gorgeous hills that really reminded me of Machu
Pichu. From the town we got to see some
pretty amazing views of the surrounding Great Rift Valley. Plus it was far
enough away from the big city of Eldoret that we got a much-needed break away
from the smog of the city.
Also while
we were driving along the highway the Kenyan National Cycling Team passed us!
This was interesting for several reasons. For one, nobody in Kenya is into
cycling. Apparently at some point some cycling coach thought, “Hey there are
all these phenomenal athletes coming out of Kenya, I wonder if they would be
good cyclists…” so now Kenya has a cycling team! It will be interesting
following their progress. This was also interesting because driving in Kenya is
the most terrifying thing I have ever experienced. There are no lanes, stop
signs or stop lights so people just kind of drive wherever they want on the
road and then “negotiate” for spots on the road. Plus in an effort to slow down
drivers, the government has put in a speed bump about every mile along the
highway. However, Kenyan drivers found a simple solution to this. Drive around
the speed bumps into the shoulder. These cyclists are far braver than I.
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| The Kenyan National Cycling team |
The kids
here at the Children’s Center just went back to school yesterday so we had a
pretty relaxing day. We just did a hard workout in the morning with our Kenyan
friends David and David. After they wore us down in that workout we just went
back and got a nice restful day.
Today we
got to actually take a tour of the children’s primary school and we had a very
powerful interview with the headmaster of the school. The school is a public
school, yet a large amount of funding for the school comes from donations from
the parents. Most of these parents are very poor and have little in the way of
excess income to donate. The school serves all of the children in the area from
1st grade to 8th grade. They have 440 students and only
11 teachers. The 1st grade class has 54 students in it and only one
teacher. Everybody knows that at this teacher-student ratio learning is slow
and often creates an environment where only those students who can learn fast
succeed while the others cannot keep up without the individualized attention.
Yet even with all of these cards stacked against them, the current headmaster
has succeeded in making drastic improvements in the school’s ability to educate
children and send students on to secondary school. His first year they had only
8 students graduate primary school to go onto high school. Yet this past year
over 80 percent of those who started 1st grade at Cheptigit Primary
School went on to high school. Much of this success can be attributed to
outside donations, which has gone to expanding the facilities, bringing in
running water and hiring new teachers.
We have
been very moved by what we have seen here and are hoping to do our part to help
out. A teacher’s salary in Kenya is roughly $600 a year. We are currently
attempting to figure out a way to raise enough money to hire a few more
teachers to reward a school that is doing truly miraculous things. Hopefully we
will have good news to pass along soon!
That is what we have been doing the
past three days, thanks for taking the time to follow along!
Luke, Rob, David and Coach Misch
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