JCV Talia Coveleski and PCV Leiha Costa pose with a clever sign following the 2010 Kilamanjaro Marathon. Women were allowed to compete in the race, something which would have been impossible 200 years ago.
Marathon. The very word brings images of heroism to the front of the mind: heart over hardship, the victory of endurance over exhaustion, Philipeddes’ nude form in its last instant of life. The brave men & women of the mazungu world descended on Moshii in the infant hours of 2010’s third month, venturing out in the predawn hour to join their East African brethren in running circles around the stone form that sits aloof in the clouds above the African plain.
THE TRAVELER, however, put credence in none of this. The first line of the East Village Hockey League Goodwill Emissary Handbook: Do No Harm. Never actively aid & abet a competitor. A large, glorified athletic competition in the shadow of Tanzania’s most storied landmark? A more vile competition for the game of Sport Hockey can scarcely be imagined! The bastards at KILIMANJARO PREMIUM LAGER[1] would not wring a single mile’s worth of flop-sweat from my brow.
After carefully stowing the bags of the JVC runners I surveyed the grounds. Inflatable beer bottles, a stage piled high with loudspeakers, beer tents and food peddlers utilizing power from portable generators: a scene more Taste of Chicago than Tanzania.
I inquired after t-shirts. The scheme afoot was such that those seeking commemorative garb had two options. One was to trot dozens of miles in oppressive heat, the other was to turn in emptied beer bottles as game tokens
and complete a puzzle featuring Kilimanjaro (both libation and landmark) within a sixty-second timeframe. The rising sun on my back I made for the concession area and secured my first beverages.
Some time later (my notes are somewhat difficult to make out) I had won several promotional t-shirts, which I promptly buried.
The heroics completed for the day, the marathoners finished their race and we collectively set out for the celestial trappings of the Moshii Young Man’s Christian Association.
16 An American reads a Dungeons & Dragons text in Moshii. This fair town sits under the growing influence of a Level 5 Globilzation spell.
The walk through commercial Moshii reinforced the sensation that I was a world removed from Madibira. The misadventures of my late-night arrival notwithstanding, the evidence of Moshii’s innate Western-ness was undeniable. Electricity and concrete stretched as far as the eye could see. English reigned as the local lingua franca and mzungu seemed a picayune designation – Europeans were everywhere.
The full reemergence of technological convenience into my world manifested itself dramatically in the form of the Moshii YMCA. The facility is truly outstanding, boasting an Olympic-sized swimming pool (with diving board), outdoor lounge and full food & bar service courtesy of the attached hoteliers’ college. Lounging poolside in my neck scarf, I indulged in a dip, played a spot of keep away with local youth (international rules) and did fifty under-water pull-ups on the pool wall. My appetite earned, a plate of sweet & sour chicken(!) tided me over as I chatted with poolside guests and paged through an English-language newspaper.
As afternoon gave way to evening I joined a group of young American do-gooders in making for The Glacier, an outdoor bar where we met a local language teacher (Robert) who had made good-natured but ultimately unsuccessful romantic overtures to most of the Yankee women in the city. Ultimately, an expeditious party of Robert, Talia, Paul (a JVC from California), Beth (a JVC from Arizona), Leiha (pictured, above; PCV from Boston) and a Swede gentlemen claiming to be a paleontologist set out restlessly in search of a venue showing the Olympic Gold Medal Ice Hockey[2] Before the night was over, Robert showed us a side of Moshii we’d never otherwise see, including a bar in the basement of an office building that suspicion tells me was once an old-time bank. All of the ‘bartenders’ were behind teller cages and the only furniture to speak of came in the form of scattered beach chairs (many of them broken) unarranged over the venue’s floor.
Absent a “tequila” shot that was decidedly not tequila, the indubitable familiarity of the night’s activities to the reader leave your correspondent with precious little worthy of further report, except for the begrudgingly made editorial comment that I have no choice but to take back some of the things I’ve said about paleontologists over the years. Some of them.
[1] The race sponsor
[2] A sport, similar to polo and/or soccer, that is modeled loosely off Sport Hockey™ and is popular among residents of the global hinterlands (Siberia, Newfoundland, Detroit, et al).
Pingback: Kilabuni Nights – Episode XXI: The Stretch Run | Waltzing Matilda