Great Ethiopian Run, part 2

After we left Kaldi’s, rejoicing that we had gotten our camera back, we hopped on a mini-bus with Dawit (our language instructor) to go towards Meskal Square where the race would begin. As we got closer, we saw more and more people in the green race shirts we all were wearing. You had to be wearing the green race shirt in order to get the medal at the end.

We found a spot to wait in the midst of thousands of people. The atmosphere reminded me of a high school pep rally: people were dressed up, excited, taking pictures of each other, doing all sorts of silly things.

The “race” began finally began and we took off—walking. For nearly the entire race, it would have been difficult to run due to all the people. The “elite” runners were all at the beginning so they could actually run. But the rest of us were there to just enjoy the event. Along the way there were lots of entertaining things to see. For instance, we saw a rock band made up of foreigners playing along the race route and water spraying out of a fire hose to cool people down. At both of these spots, people just stopped walking/running to enjoy the entertainment. We thought of how great an example that was of the contrast between American “time-orientation” and African “event-orientation.” At most any race in America, people want to get the best time possible, even if they are beginning runners. Here, at the Great Ethiopian Run, (with the exception of the elite runners) people were there to just enjoy the event, regardless of how long it took them!
So we did our best to enjoy it as well, finishing the 6.2 miles in just under 2 hours. We had a blast!