The Kenya program includes many elements of their traditional culture, from music to food to traditional dress and sailing. Of course, runners know Kenya for its dominance in distance running over the past two decades. Kenyan runners have won many medals at Olympic races and in major world marathons, year after year after year.
But the runners at the Festival were not just the usual fast Kenyan runners. As noted in a different thread, Henry Wanyoike was a promising runner in Kenya as a student. If you’re a top runner in Kenya, that means you are really, really good. But he had a stroke when he was just 21. He went to sleep with normal vision, and woke up the next morning with just 5 percent of his sight left. He soon became completely blind. A charity clinic taught him to knit sweaters so that he could do something productive with his life.
But that didn’t last long. He wanted to get back to running. He found some running guides, but they lived 40-50 miles away, and they weren’t fast enough. He would have to pull them ahead at the end of races, because the guides would get fatigued. He turned to his childhood friend, Joseph Kibunja, and asked him to be his running guide. Joseph was a soccer player but had never trained formally for running before. So he began serious run training when he was 26.
They turned out to be an excellent team. They run with a short rope or band with loops at both ends, for each runner to hold onto. Joseph signals when they have to turn and when there are bumps or potholes in the road. He also tells Henry where other runners are.
Henry entered the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney and won the gold medal in the 5000 meter race. He has won the impaired vision/blind category at the Boston, NY and London marathons. His times beat 99 percent of all the runners (sighted or blind) at the New York City Marathon. They set the world record in the marathon among blind runners, with a time of 2:31:31. Anyone who is even remotely familiar with marathons knows that is a very fast time. Think about how scary it would be to run just 100 meters with your eyes closed.
The two childhood friends promote education for orphans and underprivileged children in Kenya. They also speak at schools to encourage disabled children to live fulfilling lives.
Henry and Joseph speak each day at the Festival. They also participate in a fun run each morning, just before the Festival opens for the day. They run at a casual pace, so that everyone can keep up. I ran with them and a small group on Sunday morning. Great experience. (I rode a CaBi bike to and from the Festival, so it was kind of connected to bike riding.)
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