Chapter 6 – Normal runs
Discovery run
It was not my intention to ever get lost on the marathon track again. It was not going to happen, it would never happen. I mapped and remapped my route and was quite sure that I would make it for the run, without any trouble. I even scribbled on a small stick notepad, the few landmarks on each of my major junctions. Even without a map, I would refer to these landmarks and should be able to get out of any road situation. My run would be a simple loop from UiS, to the oceanfront, then back. I had mapped it as a 7km circuit. If I succeeded in the first loop, then I would do a second one, to give me the desired 14k Friday run. A simple, no pressure run. If anything, it should be a very fun-filled adventurous run, especially on the 2km stretch of the ocean front.
The weather was good, unlike the expected ‘bad’ weather that Ralph had talked about. In fact, we almost missed our trip to Stavanger town earlier in the day due to the anticipated bad weather. However, the Kenyans had insisted on this visit, come rain, come rain. Ralph and Hellen must have joined in, against their better judgment, since my impression was that they really believed on the weather forecast as the only source of truth in the happenings of the natural environment. The weather had turned out to be fully sunny and it was still sunny by six when I left P10.
The first 1500 meters would be a general downhill run, to the ocean front. I was still finding it difficult to cross over at any typical pedestrian crossings. First, because the vehicles were keeping right, and hence I did not know which direction to look first while checking out on the traffic, before crossing. Secondly, because I would always stop at these crossings to wait for the road to clear before crossing. However, I was finding it difficult to internalize the expectation here, where vehicles must stop for pedestrians.
In many crossings I would find myself waiting to cross, while the vehicles had also stopped waiting for me to cross. All, me and vehicles, would be at a stalemate, waiting for something to give – in this case, the human to cross first as the law dictates. It was becoming difficult to just accept and walk across. I was learning though, and I must have just run across one or two crossings later on in my run – though a bit uncomfortable in case a vehicle decided to break the law and run through the pedestrian crossing.
I was not to get lost. But it still happened. My ‘getting lost’ happened when I reached the ocean front. I followed the footpath that led me under the road to emerge on the other side of the same road. There, right after the underpass, I saw an arrow painted on the tarmac, pointing opposite to my approach.
“Now, what does this mean?,” I slowed down and asked myself while examining that red arrow that was pointing to me, “Does it mean that I cannot run in that direction on this footpath?”
Momentarily, I saw a bike rider coming towards me from afar. I thought of whether this was a one-way pedestrian sidewalk, or the direction of usage did not matter. An arrow, red in colour, painted on the footpath, pointing in my direction?
I did not want to risk the unknown. I therefore did a U-turn and went back to where I came from. I really missed the ocean front that I would have run along for ten minutes. I missed that ocean view that was so near, yet so far. I could even see the waters some one hundred metres away, but the red arrow was pointing me to turn back. I missed that moment when I would have discovered a new run route on such a good evening, but that was not to be. What was done is done.
I made the decision to turn back and I would have to live with it. Good new – I could actually approach the same ocean front from the other direction, if that was the big deal. That would make me conform to the direction that this red arrow was expecting of me. However, that would not be today. My running plan had been messed and I did not have good preparation for running this course from the opposite direction just yet. I now had to formulate a run-B in a hurry. It did not take long for me to realize that the routes around UiS, especially the forested area, were begging me to explore them. And that is exactly where my run took me on this day. Unplanned, but still a journey of discovery.
Running in the forest has its challenges. One of them being that all trees look the same and all footpaths also do look similar. After running around for some time, you become completely disoriented to even know which direction is which. In my case, I had already vowed never to get lost again, so I would run to an extreme end, then turn back if I had a feeling that I would get lost. I ‘discovered’ that hilly forested part of the geography finally reveals quite a scenic view of Stavanger.
You get to be perched up on the hill and savor the beautiful port that is laid out below you. The waters are glowing with the golden yellow reflection of the ocean waters as the overhead sun persists despite it being almost seven in the evening. I enjoyed every bit of this forest run. I met a number of runners or just leisure walkers. It was one of my great runs so far. And… I did not get lost. Two more circuits around UiS brought my run to an end in 1.20.51. The phone app finally mapped my run as a 16.02km. The analogue indicated that it was a 1.20.55 for 16.27km.
Discovering the costs
Today is exactly one week since I got to Stavanger. I have survived the week far from home. I am likely to survive the next twelve weeks. I have now experienced enough Norwegian lifestyle and culture to guide me through the remaining time. I now have some authority to make observations, deductions and conclusions. This is my point of view based on my observations. It could be different from other people’s point of view, which I still respect. So here goes my view….
I am now used to the night sun and long hours of daylight. The sun and daylight persist until ten o’clock. It is the way it is and I am now used to it. It took me time to adjust, especially in terms of taking my dinner, which did not seem ‘eatable’ before ten. I am now a bit flexible. I can just close the curtains and take dinner, even before ten P.
Talking of dinner, I now can authoritatively talk about food and its associated costs. I shall have to live without the Kenyan favourite ugali. It is just the way it is. I am likely to survive on rice only. The cost of rice is lower than what it is back in Kenya, with a 2kg packet of polished rice going for about $2.4 over here. Another lowly priced item is chocolate drink, with a 800g packet, that is almost a kilo, going for $3. The other comparable item that I have found worthwhile is jam. A kilogram of jam costs the same $2.4. That is exactly how much it would cost back home. Enough.
Now, let me shock myself. Every other food item costs four times the price back home – repeat, again, every other food item costs four times the price back home. You have to shop around carefully, do brand substitution, juggle around with economies of buying in bulk and look around and identify some shop locations in order to be lucky enough to get costs that are three-times what I would pay back home. That is just the way it is. I shall just sample the typical items that I use most times, which are likely to persist for the next twelve weeks.
A litre of milk costs $2. A 1kg loaf of bread, which is the economical size, costs $4.5. A kilogram of onions costs $2.3. That is a bit reasonable. And please, I beg, do not buy eggs, Oh! The cheapest costs $0.4 each. Ok, just buy, since you have no choice. Sugar costs $2.4 per kilogram. This is probably one of the things that I cannot do without, but if the price persists, then I shall have to go ‘dubia’. Cooking oil costs $2.2 for 1 litre bottle. Lastly, with due pain, I am not sure whether I shall taste any other ugali when the unga that I purchased at Little Asia is finished. I say this because a 1kg packet of yellow maize flour that costs $3.5 or 1kg of white maize flour for $3.6 is a scheme to prevent us from taking ‘food’ while in NO. I may just have to survive on ‘snacks’ such as rice for another three months.
There are some mistakes that I made in the first one-week learning period when I arrived in NO. Mistakes that I shall not repeat. A packet of carrots for $3.6 (which I got in place of veggies) and food seasoning (Royco is the general name that we give to anything like this back home) that cost me $3.5 for a small 150g sachet starts off this list. I am also never paying for packaging polythene paper for $0.2. Remember that coffee mate of 200g that disappointed me on day one by being just being white creamer? Instead of being real coffee? It goes to this list with a price tag of $4.8. A 250g sachet of ground coffee, what my homefolks would call ‘bad coffee’ costs $2.4. I like it for the strong aroma in my locker, but that is the furthest that I shall entertain it when that pack is gone.
One cabbage head for $2.3 is not fair and is not recurring, nor is a 650g packet of macaroni for $2.3. But for the cabbage thing, I have no choice since this is the only veggie available. It is either cabbage or cabbage. Forget sukuma wiki or traditional veggies. Forget spinach. Get used to cabbage or cabbage. Then, I purchased two CR2016 lithium batteries for $4.8, after failing to get CR2032. This battery thing is necessary for my runs, though the 2016 is a bit thinner than 2032 and one even failed to fit on the shoe accelero gadget, but at least the other fitted on the watch. I am likely not to repeat this purchase simply because it shall take that long for the batteries to run out. However, I would buy these batts again should it come to that since… running is a must.
Despite the cost of shopping, it is worth remembering, which has taken me a second reminder, that all shops are closed on Sundays. In fact, everything is closed on Sundays. Had I not remembered this, then I would be stuck without food tomorrow. It is good that I have remembered this, though it is seven. It is still daylight, and I am going to walk to Kiwi, some 1km away, and get my provisions to cover for tomorrow.
Discovering our abode
My Monday run was done at the forest paths. I had realized that it was better to be out there, in the thick of things, where there was no danger of competing for the road with vehicles, nor struggling to look for and sticking to the pedestrian walkways. In the forest you just go with no care in the world. The only fear is that of getting lost, but I know the better and I ain’t gonna get lost again. If I can find the UiS tower, then I cannot be lost in that forest. I observed that relatively many other people would be found in those thickets, mostly walking by themselves, walking the dogs, biking or occasionally, once only in fact, jockeying.
I had already found a way on those hills that would draw a ‘H’ shape on the running map, to be combined with the usual 2k loop, the ‘O’, around UiS. That is what my Monday run looked like, two loops on all the routes. I therefore did the O-H route in 1.12.59 for the 15.06km route as per my now trusted Endomondo. On the same day I did take another digital app to the test. The Runkeeper gave me a 15.15km in 1.13.06. The good old analogue that never fails registered a 1.13.16 for 15.75km. I started and stopped the three gadgets in that order.
I knew that the students were reporting one by one from August 12. I had observed that Paviljong 10 was initially quiet, even eerie, especially the first floor left wing where we were staying. We were initially just the three of us in the 14-room wing, which also had two kitchens and three washrooms. This section was crafted from an initial 24 cubicle configuration, only that some of the cubicles had now been converted to washrooms or combined to form kitchens.
My room was exactly opposite the kitchen, only that the kitchen was the size of two standard rooms. The combination meant that they had to decide on the positioning of the single door. The door turned out to be facing the next room. My own door therefore faced a sealed wall, which once had had door to a room. My room was also next to the emergency exit at the end of the long narrow 1m corridor. While I had no difficulty getting to the kitchen across, I have to walk the whole length of the corridor to access my assigned washroom at the extreme end of the walkway, towards the exit that led to the stairway.
We had four washrooms of the same size on this left wing of P-10. Two washrooms were assigned to 4 people each, while the other two are assigned to three people each. The assigned rooms were indicated on the washroom doors. The two kitchens were equally assigned, though they differed in size. Our kitchen crafted from combining two cubicles served seven rooms, being rooms 214 to 220. I was in 217. My other colleagues are in 216, 218 and 220. We had therefore been assigned the same kitchen. The four of us had been the only members of our kitchen for the last one week. We had for long not seen the other three members of this kitchen.
Our kitchen was well equipped though. It has two fridges, an electric cooker, a microwave oven and an electric water jug. We generally have all that we needed. We were lucky to get ‘left over’ utensils, and even some left-over spices. It marked a good starting point in settling us down. The working surface was laid on one end of the room from door side to window side wall. The surface had a dish washer on the extreme left, followed by the kitchen sink, with a closed cabinet underneath it, then we had the cooker. After the cooker there were two cabinets, each with three drawers. The kitchen worktop was laid from the cooker position all the way to the end of wall, on top of these two cabinets. All the ‘left-over’ utensils had been left well arranged on these cabinets. Spoons, knives and all other small cutlery were stored on the topmost drawer. The other drawers contain pans, containers, and boards.
The overhanging cabinets in the kitchen had utensil cabinet on the left of the oven, and the spices cabinet on the right. On the extreme left were three shelves labelled 214, 215 and 216. We immediately assumed that they were the storage slots for the occupants. The overhanging cabinet on the extreme right, on the windows side, was also a three-shelved structure, labelled 218, 219 and 220.
It took lots of disbelieve and talks of conspiracy when I realized that ‘217’ did not an allocated shelf slot at all. That meant that while the rest of the country people immediately set their kitchen stuff, such as beverages and spices on the allocated shelfs, I was left with no choice but to keep my kitchen materials in the cabinet in the room. I was the only one unfortunate enough to have to operate from the room, by having to carry kitchen necessities from the room whenever I was to prepare a meal.
A 32-inch TV had been affixed to overhang the right side of the door upon entry. Next to it were the two fridges at the extreme end of the room. In the middle of the room were two tables adjoining each other. Around the table were six chairs, two on each side, apart from the side touching the window side wall. Next to the fridges was one couch, just slightly behind the two table seats on that side. The TV ‘somehow’ only tuned in to 3 stations, each transmitting in Norwegian. Occasionally you would get lucky to see a movie in English with Norwegian subtitles. This ‘occasionally’ had only occurred twice in two weeks.
We had formed a habit of just washing up utensils after use. But the habit was also based on a nasty sign at the main entrance. As you got to the block, while on the lower floor of this one-story structure, you were met with a very conspicuous notice…
Notice (white letters on red background)
“Your Mother Does
Not Work Here
Clean Up Your
Own Mess”
This notice was just fixed on the notice board to the right as you get in. The notice board also had all manner of notices, mostly information to residents. The ground floor has two wings, just like the first floor. The right wing of the block had fewer rooms – 12 cubicles in total, six on either side of the narrow corridor. Out of these cubicles, three had been combined for form one large kitchen and two other cubicle made up the two washrooms. These are shared by those using that wing. That left 7 student rooms in that wing. The right wing of the first floor had the same configuration as the right wing of the ground floor.
The left wing of the ground floor also replicated a similar configuration of the upper floor, in terms of rooms, kitchens and washrooms. The only change on the ground floor was that one room had been converted into a common laundry for the whole block, where we had six washing machines and six driers. In the switch room, below the staircase was a storage room for the two hovers that were to be shared by residents in cleaning their rooms. Each resident had a key that opened both the main door and their respective rooms. The main door was permanently locked and you were roasted if you forget to come to the block with your key. You would be locked out of the block and had to rely on the luck of someone coming in or going out of that block to give you access. This is not something that you wanted to try, so it was easier to just carry your key, even when going for that evening run.
Back to that sign on the notice board on the entrance yard, it did hit quite a nerve on us. We had once discussed it with the MSc students, who were enjoying their Sunday on their first-floor right wing room. They had at that time ‘somehow’ gotten access to EPL broadcast on their computer, which they had then connected it to the big screen on the table at their kitchen.
“Which type of place is this, where they keep reminding us of our mother?,” I wondered loudly.
“Yes, we saw that too,” one of them responded, “It is quite strange!”
“But why mother? Why not father? Or house servant?,” I ignited a debate.
We debated over this for some time. I know that at my workplace such a notice would cause so much controversy. It cannot even be put up since there would be a serious gender discrimination lawsuit filling the air even before it is posted.
That notice had kept us on our toes at our upstairs kitchen. We just ensured that all was well and all was cleaned at all times.
Life was good until the block started filling up and all the expected students started streaming in. All seemed well until the unexpected happened…. We found a girl settled and relaxed in our kitchen – preparing something-that-seemed-like-would-eventually-become-a-bugger. I approached, carefully, hesitantly.
“Hi, I am Barack, like Obama.”
“Really, you mean, I beg?”
This is not happening, again. Two strikes.
“Yes, true, that is me.”
“Me I be called Tina. That go be my name Oh”
“You stay here?,” I reconfirmed. She was just too settled to be a visitor.
“Yes, I go stay here too, Oh! I be a student. M-S-C, I beg. Even my room be two-fourteen!”
This is not happening. They cannot unisex us on this pavilion! Life is already hard as it is. What with being reminded about our mother every time we get into the block? Now we have to cope up with MSc girls and boys and all their issues! This is not just happening. I have nothing against MSc. They just had their MSc issues, such as being reluctant to cook, yet benefiting from what was cooked. In their kitchen, there was a ‘do not blink’ policy. If you cooked and left the kitchen to your room for something, then expect to stay hungry, since you would find your food gone by the time you were back… at least that is how the legend was told. What with names such as Chui amongst the group?
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