A huge signpost across the Eldoret—Uganda highway directed traffic to branch off to a murram road that led to the venue of the second edition of the Great Chepsaita Cross Country Run.
Like a river, people flowed endlessly up the hill with motor vehicles and motorcycles hooting desperately in the middle of this river for the multitudes to allow them an inch to pass.
Among the vehicles were police patrol trucks and water trucks that occasionally poured water on the road to suppress the fine dust of red soil that tires and shoes had repeatedly crushed into a light powder.
Atop the hill, helicopters kept landing and taking off. At any given time, at least six helicopters were on the ground. Parking vehicles fully occupied all the parking spaces, track facilities, and empty spaces in schools, health dispensaries, and churches nearby.
“Even if I don’t get to run here today, walking in this terrain has been enough exercise for me,” I heard a man pant and puffed out the words behind me as we walked up the hill from the parking towards the event’s venue.
Since the event’s first edition, which happened last year around the same time, many changes were evident, not just on the picturesque course, which had been expanded, but also on the structures nearby, including a school built by one of the event’s sponsors.
“Faruk Kibet has become a patron to all the schools around this area. I live here, but I can’t count the number of many schools that he went to and gave out a million shillings each to help clear school fees for children who had difficulties before they could sit for their final examinations,” one of the local residents had struck a conversation with me in the middle of the course during the women’s 10K senior race.
By then, Uganda’s Loyce Chekwemoi was already in the lead with two laps of the 2km loop remaining. Not knowing that the leader was a Ugandan, fans were watching the runner in second place keenly as they wondered whether an Ethiopian would get to win a big race in the middle of a remote village in Kenya as Shimeles Mekides Molla followed in hot pursuit. With 500m to go, the home crowds had a short-lived sigh of relief as Chekwemoi…
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