My bright green running shoes

I’ve taken up running in the mornings.  There is essentially one road that comes into Mangunde and stops, so I have generally been running as far as I can down that road stopping to do 10 minutes of very poorly executed yoga and a few push-ups before heading back the way I came.  There are a couple of things that make this a particularly interesting experience every morning..

                          

First of all, today two kids no older than 10 who had been walking on the road when I passed them decided to join me on my run.  What made this a thoroughly depressing experience was that they were both lugging large jugs of water and were not wearing shoes, yet they easily kept pace with me for a good 10 minutes without even breaking a sweat while I was on the verge of collapsing from heat exhaustion.

Speaking of shoes, and the second point I wanted to make, I bought these new Asics running shoes that are silver with neon green highlights before I left the states.  At the time, I thought that I was looking pretty sporty in my shiny new kicks.  I don’t know what I was thinking.  It is so embarrassing to wear those shoes here in Mozambique.  Most people don’t even wear shoes; if they have any kind of foot-ware at all it might be a mismatched pair of tattered flip-flops.  So when I come strutting along in my fluorescent moon shoes, it’s a site to behold. Everyone is completely and utterly distracted.  It’s horrible, I can’t even have a conversation with anyone because they are so entranced by these ridiculous shoes.  You would think I was wearing human heads on my feet the way people stare.  The problem is that they are my only running shoes, so I think I’m going to have to just deal with it.  I tried covering the neon green parts with dirt, but that doesn’t seem to do much to help.  

Even if I was wearing normal shoes, people would stare.  I don't think that the concept of running for exercise or leisure is entirely understood here.  Life is difficult enough, why would you voluntarily put yourself through that physical pain (a pain which is very apparent when you watch me run).  When I run by, people glance up curiously as if thinking, "what is that mulungu (white person) running from."  They look behind me, but there doesn't appear to be any pressing danger, so just continue to stare and laugh.  I must say, the staring doesn’t get any less intense when I stop in the middle of the road to do a dilapidated Warrior 2 into a half-moon (which are the only two yoga moves I know), and then finish off with some lunges.  At that point, I think people have just accepted that I am indeed from outer space.