Chapter 8 – Better be ready
Marathon prep
I would be running a full marathon in ten days’ time. This was now inevitable. The other alternative was to lose my $100. That was not an alternative that I could even think of dreaming of. That meant that I had ten days to prepare for an international marathon. The only part of the marathon that I did not understand was the dichotomy between the registration fees charged and prize money given back.
The winner would get a paltry NOK6.000,00. That was just 60k Kenyan money! What was the catch? Back home even the most local of runs would have a first prize of over NOK100k, especially for the 42k distance. The deal was made worse when I realized that all winners got the same prize money despite the different distances – surely? They have no regard or reward for distance? Don’t they know that 42 is never 21x2, but more like 21x4? You suffer four times over and above the 21k pain, every time you do a 42k run! Yet, the reward is the same?
Now that I was already knee-deep in the marathon, I had to formulate a training regime that would ensure that I would be as ready as I could for the Saturday run. It takes at least twelve weeks to prepare for a full marathon – I had ten days to do this. Not to worry, I would just take it easy aiming at hitting the finish line. There was a 6-hour maximum run time stipulation. Even if I walked at an average of 8min per kilometer, I would still make it in the 6-hour time. But who wants to walk for 6 hours! Surely, having conquered Kilimanjaro? Can this oceanfront town with hardly an altitude compare to the pain of Kili, which even has a 10km uphill?
But that was besides the point. All marathons are never easy and preparation is key. I had only this week to do the maximum distance runs. I would have to take it down next week. That strategy was ringing in my mind when I finished the Wednesday evening run, with Endomondo giving me a 1.54.42 – 22.52km. I now needed to do a final Friday run – to be a final speed run on the half marathon distance, to stress the body to the limit. I was not looking forward to this, but it had to be done.
Earlier on that Friday, Oby and I had met our UiS assigned supervisor. It was good first meeting, though our first-time supervisor seemed a bit impatient with us, dismissing us hardly forty-minutes into the should-have-been one-hour meeting. However, we understood that this was an intro, and there was no big deal. The second meeting is when we would discover the full temperament of both parties. On the same day we had attended a talk by a faculty member who has spent a year of research at Google’s UK office in London. He painted such a great picture of Google that made us all start dreaming of working there some day, soon.
The evening had the inevitable last fast run, and it surely came. I was facing my last run before the marathon. This run was intended to be a speed run. Whether I would pull it off was now a matter of discovery. I had initially planned to go running on the main roads, but thought the better of it due to the various underpasses and pedestrian crossing that I would have to encounter, which were not conducive for a speed run. I therefore decided, on the last minute, to just run around UiS and the forested hill overlooking UiS. I had my three gadgets set and ready.
I flagged myself off at 5.40pm and started on two circuits around UiS as warm up. I then went to the forest trail that ends on the highway at one end, then did a U-turn and went back through the same trail, then a final section on the UiS circuit. I did another two of these loops and finally stopped my gadgets just past 7.15pm. A pleasant surprise awaited, as I laid these three items down on the reading table, facing the wide windows and the ‘daylight’ outside there. This is a daylight that I was now used to. It would be another two hours of daylight before the dusk would slowly creep in towards ten.
The gadgets read as follows:
Endomondo: 1.44.25 – 22.48km
Runkeeper: 1.44.27 – 22.80km
GOA (good old analogue): 1.44.30 – 23.42km
For consistency, I picked Endomondo as the final metric. If that is the basis, then I had just saved ten minutes over a similar distance hardly two days ago! That was fast! I could feel it on my legs. I was glad that there was no more such fast runs until September, since this was not a sustainable pace for a real full 42 kilometers of run.
I was still tired and weak when I carried my load of clothes past eight to the washing machines downstairs. Though there was a notice that if the machines got spoilt then all the ‘housemates’ would be surcharged equally, we had learnt that those were just mere threats. After all, what could go wrong on a machine that you just pour into the soap dish some powder soap, open the machine door, fill in the drum with your clothes, close the door, start the main switch, pick any setting that you like (who even pays attention to which setting is which?), then you press the start button. The washer then locks the door and starts doing its thing. Just read the duration of wash, to know how long you have to wait and come back when done.
However, I had noted that the settings were the main differentiator on which users were savvy or not. I applied my mathematics in coming up with the time to set on the machine. If I can wash a piece of cloth in two minutes, and rinse it in another two, then each piece of clothing should take an average of five minutes to fully clean. I was therefore using science, rather than mere guesswork, when I set the dial to the 45minutes selector setting for my eight pieces of clothing. I had seen worse – some people would pick a setting that ran for two hours just for two or three garments – surely!! Taking up all that power and machine time, meaning no one else can use them, just for two garments?
I kept monitoring my own laundry. I would later check on the finalization of the cleaning then toss the same bundle into the drier for a similar time. And just like with the washing, I have seen people pick crazy settings to dry their clothes. Anything above two hours of drying is an overkill. Is that the reason why they warned us that they would surcharge all of us? Were they already sure that ‘something’ would happen?
I woke up on Saturday feeling back to normal. My legs were not that tired. I was soon completely back to normal after my breakfast at eleven. I stayed indoors and I can tell you that time flies!! I was still seated by the table in my room, gazing at the daylight at 9.00pm, when I realized that tomorrow would be a Sunday – meaning that all shops would be closed and there would be no chance of getting any provisions. I just hoped that I had enough food items to keep me going. I was not sure, but even if I did not enough, what could I do now? I could not go to Kiwi, which was already closed, and I could not get anything tomorrow.
“Itabidi nivumilie na hali yangu,” I wrote on my blog as I left the room to check out the availability of the kitchen and see if I would be able to use this shared facility at the moment.
I stepped into the kitchen. However, I have progressively noted that either the men do not know how to cook, or they do not know how to make use of time. From my cubicle, just across the kitchen, I could hear the ‘dinner’ sounds from around nine. Unfortunately, such dinner sounds would persist until eleven – just for a simple dish of rice and… what do they eat it with again… rice and beans. Beans that had already been precooked and put in the fridge anyway. That contradiction? Taking two hours to make rice and warm up some beans?
Men, please take some cookery lessons. You never know where your education shall take you. I do not like taking anything more than 15-minutes in that kitchen. Why would you need more time, when you already have hot water from the tap, an electric jug to give you even more instantaneous hot water and an electric cooker to cook up your food upto level 9 of heat? I am taking my next two days to observe what happens in those two long hours, since no ‘normal’ food can be cooked for that long.
And I also noticed that Tina had started to progressively get into the habit and staying forever in the shared kitchen. I even observed her ‘moving in’ to the kitchen with her laptop. When you bring a laptop along, then you are in for a long stay in the kitchen, especially when your own room is just two doors away. But that is what I like about our diversity here. I am also glad that Tina’s arrival also enabled me to start seeing the oven in use, and soon the whiff of burger-meat started being prevalent outside my door. Previously, the menfolk only used, or knew how to use the top cooker plates. None had been bold enough to open the oven compartment and make some use out of it.
However, what I do not like about the whole arrangement of the ‘kitchen takeover’ is that I end up making my dinner at midnight, since that is the likely time that the kitchen is likely to be fully free and the sink would also likely be cleared of dirty utensils. I say ‘likely’ because I have also observed that these dishes have started piling up way past midnight – only to find them washed up the next day. That meant that someone would creep into the kitchen past midnight to do this task. Why can’t whoever-is-so-lazy-to-wash-up-the-utensils-immediately-after-use just shove the pile in the dishwasher, chose any setting, press start and then go to sleep? Instead of making the kitchen unsightly, utensils unavailable and the sink unusable to the ‘late-nighters’ like me?
Lessons in cookery
When I got out of bed at 9.30am on Sunday August 25, I noted that it was unusually hot. Hardly would I have to open the window previously, at all, but for the first time I did open the two large windows immediately when I stepped out of bed. The windows open inwards. That means that when opened, one side moves over the reading table to rest almost at the wall, while the second window lies over the bed to touch the wall on that end. The outside was bright. The outer hot air rushed into the room and filled it almost immediately, albeit with some cool draft. It was definitely a hot day. The first hot day in two weeks.
I would later take breakfast and at some point, towards three, take something that pretended to be lunch, for lack of an alternative. I guess it must have been macaroni or something. It did not have the qualifications for the ‘lunch’ title. At that point we had agreed that we would have an evening walk with my three colleagues at four. We had Tina with us at the same congregation in the kitchen. As usual, she was cooking something ‘strange’, in the oven. What happened to the good old use a pan to cook something understandable?
She had cooking paper laid on the oven tray, the tray that had now been removed and put on the kitchen worktop. She put something that looked like fish fillet of sort, just some meaty slices onto that paper. Three or so of these slices would then be coated with oil and salt, I guess, from my observation afar, and then put into the oven compartment of the cooker. She then set the cooker oven dial to some setting and soon the machine was whizzing. And soon enough we would be ‘smeeeeeling what Tina is cooking’, completely breaking the usual tradition of rice with cabbage or rice with beans, or rice with ….
“Can you make for us some fofo,” Oby would ask as the oven kept whizzing.
“Let me ax you, Which fu-fu you talk about?, You know there be dif-rin fu-fu,” she looked squarely at the four men around the table. She kept her standing position next to the sink, next to the cooker.
“Nigerian fofo, what else, Yam fofo” Mutua tried.
“That’s not fu-fu. Yam go no make fu-fu, I beg. Fu-fu only be made from ko-so-va, I tell you Oh!. Yam fla no make fu-fu. Ko-ko yam no make fu-fu, Oh! Only ko-so-va go make fu-fu. An’ no ko-so-va you go find in No-way I beg, Oh!”
We would in a moment be ready for the evening walk and extended our invitation that she joins in. She considered briefly, then upon reflection was categorical that she was not joining the ‘boys’ for evening walk. But the reason would manifest later in the walk when I was updated that her Naija bf had visited her in P-10 within the week. She was not chancing it with the quartet of apparent singletons.
Our intention as part of the walk was to find a supermarket called Rema. We had been informed that it was one of the few cost-effective outlets around. We knew that it would be closed on such a Sunday, but we just wanted to know its location so that we can know how to get to it when we want to check it out within the week. The four of us left and started the walk towards ‘the historic hill’. We wanted to get to some tor that stands about 500m from our residence. It is a peak that we can clearly see from our windows while at P-10, and which seemed like the highest point around. From it we hoped to see the rest of Stavanger. We walked that direction and soon realized that the location with this peak had been completely fenced off. We needed to establish an entrance gate of sorts.
We kept going round the fence until we reached some structure that looked like a ladder over the fence, then another ladder steps went down on the other side of the fence. The fence was anyway just about one meter high, and even without the ladder it would still have been possible to just jump over. There was a notice in Norsk, just next to that jump-over ladder. We did not make out anything from the writings.
However, there were some symbols that seemed to indicate that feeding of animals or playing around was not allowed. We debated for some time as to whether we should jump over or not. With Oby insisting that he had seen people on that hilltop from his room, we were surely convinced that the place must be a public place. It was now just a matter of how the people accessed that hilltop, which we could now clearly see even from the edge of the fence, standing some one hundred or so metres away.
“Using logic,” I started, “This ladder is here for a purpose. If it was not intended for use, then it should not have been here.”
“We prezo wacha zako. Hapa si Kenya,” Isaac replied, “You never know, my friend”
“If we managed to turn dials on those washing machines until they worked? Surely, we cannot be defeated by this decision. We shall chance it, let what happens, happen,” I said, as I took the first jump-over the fence.
That is how we found ourselves over the fence and on our way to the pinnacle. There were a few sheep grazing around, otherwise it was desolate. Reaching the peak enabled us have a 360 degree view of the locality. It is while at the peak that we noted that first there had been four of us and now we had three only. Isaac had decided not to jump over. He could not risk a bad eventually. Soon we saw another couple get into the same compound and take a seat somewhere within the grounds.
We later learnt that it was a historical site to educate visitors on the traditions of the natives and their animal rearing practice. We even had three animal pens built in the traditional fashion – with stone surrounding and a roof covered with soil and vegetation. The structures seemed to be quite cool inside, though we did not get access to the inside. A notice at the main entrance of the facility would finally give us the full history of the site, by pictorial interpretation since the narrative was in Norwegian. However, one paragraph in English still affirmed this history that we had already taken in through pictures.
It was while perched on top of the rock that we saw the water, just down there. It seemed so close. That is when the idea of walking to the waterfront was mooted and we started our walk to that direction immediately after our exit from the prehistoric site. By this time Isaac was completely lost. He must have turned back or something, but we were not waiting to find out. We were already having water as our only focus. We just walked using the shortest path theorem to the direction of the water. We finally saw a main road after passing through some residential estate. Across that road was the water. Was it a lake or part of the ocean? The sure bet was that this was part of the Atlantic, after all this is a coastal town. The Runkeeper would surely confirm this as the Atlantic, when it registered a 6km walk after the whole episode was through.
But we had lots of fun before it all come to an end. His adventure to the oceanfront surely ended when Oby sat on the well-manicured stones on the shore. He just sat and marveled. He did not attempt to get up when we talked about exploring the shore some more. First there were four, then three and now the two of us had to walk through the pedestrian walkway and head to the furthest point along the shore. Occasionally, bikers and pedestrians would pass by on either direction, while the highway just adjacent to the walkway remained relatively busy. It was while taking the walk to nowhere that we noticed the three swords.
“Look, there, in the distance,” I drew Mutua’s gaze, “There they are. The three giant swords.”
“We must get to them,” he affirmed as we kept walking another four hundred metres or so to the three gigantic metallic swords. Those things are huge! Each about 10m tall. It is a monument marking the signing of the peace accord that united the many kingdoms into the single Norwegian kingdom. Even without understanding what the name means, ‘Sverd i fjell’ has some ‘swordness’ in it – in fact that just means ‘sword in rock’ – we were learning, fast! At the same monument we got to read the temperature of the day as 25 degree C. That was blazing! When Europe becomes hotter than Africa, then there is only one word for it – heatwave!!
Back to marathon prep
It was now Monday, August 26. The heat wave was still on. I woke up all sweaty since the night was the hottest in the last 2 weeks that I had been here. I had been tempted to sleep with the wide windows wide open. I only hesitated from doing this due to the fear of what-if-it-rained-at-night. The whole day remained heated. I had my two double windows wide open the whole day. When they are both open, they do resemble two doors up there on the first floor. That is how big and wide they are.
The day was uneventful. My two colleagues who had booked with the police before me finally managed to go to the police station in town to apply for their residents’ permit. I had a similar date the next day. I had already missed out on the bank cards which were due to be picked on that day. I had gone to Hellen’s office at 3.30pm, only to see that notice at the entrance that they worked 8.00 – 12.00 and 12.30 – 15.00. What a wasted walk to Kjolv Egelands Hus for nothing!!
I am now seated next to my reading table facing the wide-open windows. It is now 20.10. I finished my run at 20.00. Ten minutes later and here I was, just seating and resting… writing my story, if anything. The sun was still high in the sky. I could still see it on the left of my seating position. The 3-storey students ‘hus’ just across the road, a stone throw from P-10 had one of its walls full of the yellow tinge of the sunlight. I kept writing and would soon realize that it was now just about 21.00. The yellow shine on the hus across was now dimmed, but the sun was still slowly going west as I craned my neck to my left, just to gaze at its direction out of the window. It was a relief that the heatwave would lessen and maybe there would be some coolness – who knows!
Earlier in the evening, I had left for the run at 6.05pm, I knew that it was my second to last run before the marathon. My last run was to be on Wednesday, then… then the big one on Saturday. I just wanted a relaxed run on this day, without a pressure of any conquests. There would be no speed records today, unlike Friday. I just wanted a run of between 90- and 100-minutes. I decided to run on the hills and forest to the right of UiS, the now usual route. I started with two warmup circuits around UiS for the 4km starter, then went through the forest trail. I was also able to ‘discover’ why I got lost and ended up on the main highway during that August 14 run. The very highway where I was informed by that kind motorist that there was no running track on it.
I realized that I missed the walkway by a whisker. I remember that I had seen the right-side path leaving the main road to my left, just before the roundabout. This diversion seemed to have a fence on its left. It was a wooden fence that ran the length of its boundary along the road. I assumed that the footpath must have been leading to a private compound, and that is why I decided to avoid this footpath and run by the highway instead. This ‘private’ road that I avoided that day was actually the pedestrian walkway that I should have taken in the first place. On this day I managed to get to the that highway by approaching it from ‘the forest’. I put that discovery on my mental note ready to exploit this info sometime in future.
The run in the forest was uneventful. The heatwave seemed to have hit many people, since the trail did not have as many people as previous encounters. Nonetheless, I still met a few people walking their dogs, and an occasional cyclist. It was also the first time that the Endomondo gave me that dreaded “Sorry, the system stopped. Press here to close”. The good news is that this happened just about 300m from my start, and so I just restarted the timer, but knew that it would have a ‘loss’ of 300m. When I finished my run, the three gadgets gave the following as the final verdict:
Endomondo: 1.51.38 – 22.78km
Runkeeper: 1.52.53 – 23.03km
GOA: 1.53.02 – 23.79km
For today, due to the reason that Endo had ‘hanged’ at the start of run, I would stick to Runkeeper for the final official time.
Running into the police
That AJ story on doping aired today, Aug. 28, 2019, could not have come at a worse time. I was just preparing for my maiden marathon in the Arctic circle. I had just checked the list of participants so far, as published on the organizer’s website. 259 runners were on the full marathon. Only one was from dot KE. The same KE that was on the news that their athletes had been found to have been involved in doping to boost their chances of winning major events! Bad timing! Nonetheless, I had nothing to worry about, since I was relying purely on leg-power and not dope-power. I had 6-hours maximum to do the 42km distance, which was surely achievable, even though I intended to do the run in 3hr 30min.
There were variables that could affect the outcome, though. The weather for one. There was fear that the heatwave would be gone by that day, and if anything, we would be having a storm. It was however still so bright and cloudless, some 4-days to the run. That this weather would change into a storm in such a short time? Really? That is a variable that I would deal with on the run day. I was also facing a new route. That was however the adventure of a marathon… just going out there and running, relying on map reading skills, the route being marked, following the crowd… and some luck.
How will I be feeling on that Saturday? Will I be on my best shape? Will I be 100% ready? The other issue to worry about was my right leg – the hinge of the heel – the subtalar joint. It had been aching, mildly, whenever I started a run, then stopped aching. It would then somehow start aching once more after the 15k distance. I hoped that it would not get worse when subjected to a 42k road race. My other fear was whether the organizers would provide water at every 5km and then fruits and soda after the 25km mark as indicated on the runners’ guide. That would be ideal, since a broken promise on this particular one would just put an end my run since I was not planning to carry any water from the starting line.
My leg did not seem to ache much after the Monday run. In fact, when I made that early Tuesday morning trip to Politi, the Police, for the processing of permit, I was having no pain at all. The trip had been uneventful. I got my NOK19.00 ticket at the UiS vending machine and got into bus number X60 around 8.15am. It was just under 30-minutes before I was at ‘Neste stopp Stavanger Politihuset’. I disembarked and walked into the Politi block, the two sensor doors opening to let me in, opening one at a time. There was no one else there to monitor those getting in or ask visitors what they were there for.
I walked downstairs towards the basement guided by the signage above the stairway that indicated ‘Immigration’ to be in that direction. At the basement there were about eight people already seated on the large, relatively comfy, waiting area. The time was just about 8.45am. Soon some name was called and then a door number. This routine would continue until my name was called at exactly 9.00am and was directed to door number 21. This is the time slot that I had indicated on my online booking when I had made this appointment immediately upon my arrival in Norway, almost twenty days ago. This was the earliest timeslot that was available, despite the requirement being that this process should be done within seven days of arrival.
I handed over my passport across the counter glass, and was ready for the first question. My two colleagues who had had this experience hardly 24-hours prior had already told me that this was how the process started.
“What is your residential address, in full?”
“Here it is,” I handed over my tenancy agreement that had this information prominently indicated on the preamble.
The attendant was in civilian clothing, just across the half wall window, running from arm-level to ceiling, with an open slot on the lower edge for passing through documents. She keyed in some items on the computer, then finally, “Let me go and confirm your passport.”
She left. What were they going to confirm? Nonetheless, I had nothing to worry, and so I sat still and waited.
She handed back a 4-page document when she came back, “Read this. This be your conditions for permit.”
She then instructed me to get up and stand at some particular spot, which was well-marked by white ‘footprints’ on the floor. She then asked me to look straight onto the camera. For the first time I noticed the large machine that was in front of my standing position, with its characteristic lens prominent on the top part of the machine. It was about one meter from my standing position. It would soon be remotely operated and it took some pictures. I would then be asked to record fingerprints on the same machine using the fingerprint readers on the desktop of the machine. I finally did a digital sign on the panel provided by the same machine. Once done, that was it. I got back my passport and was asked to come back to the same place on Monday, Sep. 2, 2019 for the permit. A resident permit to allow me to reside legally.
I also finally got my bank card from Hellen. We had waited for over two weeks for these cards. We were barely surviving as we lacked funds that were to be made available upon getting these cards. Our Kenyan debit and credit cards had already been milked dry. The conversion from NOK to KES, through USD mid-currency intermediary was really resulting into serious conversion losses of upto 20% or even more. Now we could finally start spending directly in NOK and spare our Kenyan cards from the hemorrhage. The Tuesday did not have any other major event. Just a rest and continuation of research issues.
If anything, it is Wednesday that was eventful. This is the day that I was getting the updates from Stavanger marathon. This is when I was reading a detailed map of the route. This is the date I was getting my runner number as 621. This is when I was reading the full list of participants so far – 1371 in total, with 259 going for the full kill – a real deal – the 42k massacre!!. And it was a kill since even the Norwegian name of the full marathon was ‘Helmaraton’. You saw that right ‘Hel’-marathon! A final surprise on the marathoners’ information bulletin was that an ‘extra’ $25 was required for a runner T-shirt. Just when I thought that the Tee was part of the Shs.10,000 registration fee, and now this!?
The final prep
There is no way it would rain on this Wednesday. The day was hot. The heatwave was a real thing. The temperature was uncontrollable by the time it hit two. My two large windows were open to the max. I only had a sleeveless and pair of shorts. I was still sweating. This issue of weather forecast indicating a rain on this day was a hoax. I was set to go for my run around six, maybe even seven on this day, if the heat persisted. However, I decided that five-thirty would be the ideal time, so that I would be done with the run by six-thirty, then study some material that I had a finalize by an imminent deadline.
Then, come four, and just like that, the once crystal-clear sky started being whitened by the clouds. All this was visible from my seat. The sun then started being covered, and its stinging rays started being blocked by the white overhead clouds. Progressively, and speedily, the sky was almost fully covered in clouds by the time it was five. Thunder could soon be heard from a distance and momentarily the sun was fully covered and blocked away. Then just like that, it started raining. It was now five. The rain was heavy! It even started getting cold.
“My run is over,” I murmured. There was no way I was going to run in this rain. It sounded heavy. It looked heavy. It was heavy. I could hardly see the next block due the huge sheets of water that was coming down from the sky. This was supposed to be my last run before ‘the run’. What a way to have this last run cancelled, just like that. I was left with nothing to do, but to keep gazing, and maybe even go for plan B – do nothing!.
I gazed at the power adaptor – the one just at arm’s length. It clearly shows three naked wires. A black tape ties the wired to the white adaptor plug. I remember how this came to be. I had parked in a hurry when planning my travel. I picked what I thought was a spare power adaptor for the HP laptop. The usual power adaptor was in the office. The backup adaptor is something that I rely on when I need a charger cable to use in a hurry. I however remember that sometime ago I did change the power cable on this spare adaptor, to temporarily replace a faulty one on another laptop. I am not sure whether I ever returned the working power cable back to this spare adaptor or retained the faulty one on this backup charger. This interchange was done about two months ago. I just remember this event vividly, but this did occur.
During my travel to NO, I remember using the laptop for many hours when I missed that connecting flight. In fact the laptop went off at some point. I had failed to get any power sockets to use at Amsterdam airport, and my laptop just gave way in the middle of a movie. The laptop has a way of hibernating upon forced shutdown due to lack of charge. It just goes off and stays in the last-state, until powered back.
When I first settled into the new UiS room on that arrival Saturday, after my visit to Kiwi, I did finally settle down at the table and offloaded all items on my luggage. I parked the small cabinet that had one wardrobe on one half, and three lower drawers and a larger cabinet on the second half. I laid the laptop on my table, then fixed one end of the power adaptor to the laptop, and the other end to the power outlet. I powered the laptop and…. and nothing happened. It did not ‘fire’. I thought that the laptop had died for some reason. But why should it? At least it should beep, or continually beep if there was something wrong! I removed both ends of the adaptor, from the laptop and wall socket, then fixed them back to their respective slots a second time. A power-on operation still yielded nothing. Everything was quiet. I was a bit confused. The lights in the room were working alright.
“Wait a minute,” I shouted, “Does the power cable even work?”
I knew that the charger worked. The only thing that I ever remember replacing in the course of operations back home was the power cable that connects the charger and the wall socket. However, I did not have a spare power cable nor did any of my colleagues have a comparable power cable that could fit my charger. Without a working laptop I was roast. Without a laptop I would not survive a weekend where there was nothing to do yet, but do nothing, until we start our orientation and programme. Worse of all, we had already been told that ‘everything’ was closed on Sundays. That meant that I would be stuck with nothing to do, nothing to watch, nothing to listen, nothing to write, nothing to work on – for a whole one day, assuming that I could somehow get a power cable on a Monday. This was a bad situation!
That is when the engineering in me kicked in. I took a risk and cut off the power plug. My inkling was that the power plug with the fuse was the faulty part – just instinct. Logically, the fault could be anywhere on the half meter length cable. If the fault is on the cable then you are in a worse situation, where one wrong cut and you are stuck with having to cut yet another piece, as you keep testing the cable. I did not have an electric meter to measure the continuity of the wires. I was just relying on pure adrenalin. I used my shaving scissors and cut out the plug. Having now removed the plug that I thought was faulty, I was left with three hanging wires, which I now had to fit into the socket. I stripped the wires bare and pushed them onto the slots of the white travel socket converter. That was the only way to fit the wires on the two-round pins of the European type sockets on the wall. These wall sockets do not even have switches. You push the plug into the socket and it ‘fires’ immediately – naked wire or not.
That is exactly what happened. After carefully pushing the white converter onto the wall socket, holding it by the side to avoid direct contact with live wires, I did get an ‘Eureka’ moment, when the laptop started working upon being switching on. The laptop resumed operations and was soon loudly resuming the movie scene from where it had frozen over four hours ago. While I had a Bluetooth connectivity to headphones at Schiphol to prevent such loud volume from getting to the surrounding, the current room setting did not have such precaution. I just let the volume to make noise as I logged into the system to finally control the volume. It did not matter though. I was just glad to be back to connectivity, albeit with live dangerously exposed wires at arms-length on my reading table. The black electricians tape was the final addition, one day later, to improve on safety. I would survive with this improvisation until I got back to Kenya in November. What a long way to be stuck in nakedness... of the wires?
I was still smiling at how this black tape on the plug came to be, when all of a sudden the rain stopped. Just like that. If anything, I saw some semblance of sunshine on my left side, looking out the window. The time was just about six. There was no time to ponder over decisions. I was finally going for my last run. I was just glad that this opportunity came when it did. I quickly changed into the running kit and was soon out of the building to the starting line just outside P-10.
For the first time the Vivx phone that hosts Endomondo gave a ‘no GPS’ message. I did not know that the cloud cover was that bad. On the other hand, the Doogee which was usually the worst in GPS reception was at 100% signal level. This was a contradiction, but this did not deter me. I started the three gadget, including my wrist watch, and started the run.
My plan was to do a one-hour relaxed run just around UiS. That would be about six times around, with each circuit being 2km. I had hardly gone for 1km before the weather changed. The brightness of the struggling sunshine was soon completely overpowered by the dark clouds and the distant thunder started prevailing. I finished running the first round when the drizzle had just started. I would survive a drizzle. Nothing to worry. I kept going for the second round. I was hardly two minutes away from P-10 on this second circuit when the heavy rain started.
The rain was heavy and cold. I lost visibility for a few moments. I however kept going. I was now in it and there was no turning back. I remember the conversation that I had with my Kenyan colleagues as to why we were struggling with the rain in our first week. We were being forced to attend all appointments despite the rains. However, human activities should not be dictated by the rain. People should control the rains. The rains should not control the people. That is the mantra that people in Norway had embraced. There was no bad weather, just bad dressing.
I kept going with full realization that I was obeying the rallying call. But truth be told, I was actually looking forward to a run in the rain. I was yet to experience how it felt to run in the rain over here. The real run scheduled for Saturday could as well be in the rain, if the weather forecast was to be trusted. It would be good to experience in advance how it would feel on the D-day. This is how it felt – the rain was cold, the tarmac was a bit slippery, the running shoes got soaked wet, the running gear was all wet and soon stuck to the body, keeping the body permanently cold. The two phones had to be put in the pocket. I was not even sure whether they were safe in the pocket or whether they would be damaged by the water. It rained for two of the circuits, that was about 20-minutes of heavy rain. I kept going.
Finally, that cold run would come to an end. The verdict was as follows:
Endomondo: 1.05.30 – No distance recorded, not even zero
Runkeeper: 1.05.47 – 14.21km
GOA: 1.05.48 – 14.56km
So, it rained today, and…
Come-on, say it, and…
Well, I liked it! There it is – I have said it! I liked running in the rain!
The week would slowly and surely head towards Saturday. It was a surprise that there was hot sun on Thursday and then a cold rainy day on Friday. This see-saw of weather was surely playing mind games on us. By the same reasoning therefore, I could easily declare that the Saturday marathon would be a shiny one.
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