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| The evil slope |
We hit the road. About 2km
away from home, like Humpty Dumpty, I had a great fall. I have no recollection whatsoever
of what caused the fall. All I remember is that as I ran downhill on a steep
slope, I suddenly realised I was so going down after staggering for a few
metres. I always told my husband that if I fell in a public place I’d just
pretend to faint to cover my shame. When you eventually have as ugly a
come-down as I did, theatrics won’t even cross your mind. I felt as if the wind
had been knocked out of me and the pit of my stomach really hurt. Someone tried
to scoop me off the ground, but I didn’t want anyone to touch me as it appeared
to aggravate the pain. Without opening my eyes, I could tell a group of men had
surrounded me and were fussing, fanning my face and pulling my body parts in
all directions, with all good intentions. Bless their golden hearts, but first
aid should be made compulsory in schools. If I had got a fracture I would have
been in trouble because those men really had no idea how to handle an injured
person, from the way it looked.
Needle to say, the jog was
cancelled. I had an ugly gaping wound on my left elbow, which I
had inadvertently used for support when I met the ground. Within a few minutes, my arm had this searing
pain and I thought I would collapse. I don’t remember ever feeling so much physical
pain, maybe a year ago when the anesthetic wore off after the C-section to deliver
my baby. When we got home, my husband cleaned and dressed the wound and I took
a painkiller.
After the pain had somewhat
subsided, I began to think deeply about this misadventure. I never jog by
myself as a precautionary measure. There are stories about unsuspecting joggers
getting attacked, and I felt safer running with my husband. Did you notice the
past tense – felt? A certain
percentage of idiotic African men think a full-figured woman’s body is made for
sin, so walking alone in my tights elicits wolf whistles and lewd comments from
depraved men and I deplore that.
For me, running together as a
couple means we are a team. When my teammate isn’t in sparkling form on a
certain day, I reduce my pace or walk with him. Anything, as long as I am by
his side.
Jogging together is more than
just about fitness and weight-management. It’s also about bonding, an
opportunity to touch base in the fresh air, away from the kids. But evidently,
different strokes for different folks. My husband is occasionally faster than I
am because he doesn’t have hips, boobs and pumpkins to carry. So regardless of
my pace, he just runs ahead of me like a cheetah on steroids. I’m sure sometimes
not many people can tell we are actually running partners because of the
geographical distance between us on the road. There are times when we have to
cross busy roads, and if he’s ahead of me, he just runs across the road. I’ve
had occasions when I just followed him blindly on the assumption that the road
was clear, only to find myself almost getting hit by cars. I called him out on
this before, that we are a team and have to look out for each other, so he can’t
just run and cross roads at the risk of having me follow thinking the road is
clear when it’s not. The most natural thing when you are running with someone is
to want to catch up with your partner and you might overlook checking the
roads. I realise how stupid this sounds. Road regulations stipulate that
pedestrians must check left, right and left again before crossing the road.
They don’t say husbands ought to do that for their wives. To each his own.Yesterday
as I tumbled down, my husband didn’t even see it. I could see him sprint away
as I struggled to find my balance. The one that proclaimed before God and man
he would be there for me “to have and to hold” wasn’t there to catch me when I
fell. He only realised there was a catastrophe after I screamed in agony,
already on the ground.
As they say, pride goes before
a fall. I had to tell him that if he had been by my side, I would not have
fallen. Isn’t that what marriage is all about? Catching your wife when she
falls? I told him it could have well been a thug stabbing me with a knife and
running off and he wouldn’t have been able to defend me. The fall left me
really shaken. It was a nasty one and if I had fallen on sharp objects, like
broken bottles peppering the road, or hit my head hard, I wouldn’t have been
able to come back home to my babies the same.I’m not even being dramatic, I’m
really rattled. Now I can’t even giggle or cough without feeling pain around my
rib cage. It will take me a while to
feel bold enough to run, especially on that particular slope where it happened.
In retrospect, I think I was
unfair to my husband. He has his own reasons for running. It’s not like we sat
down and drafted some ground rules for jogging together and he flouted them.Maybe
he wants to beat the clock, in which case he doesn’t have to be slow because I’m
slow. The fact that I stop when he’s tired or out of form doesn’t mean he has
to reciprocate. Like in all painful
things in life, there are lessons to be learned from this. The first one is
that sometimes there’s absolutely no security in numbers. I should get used to
looking out for Numero Uno, watch my step, look left, right and left again on
busy roads, and take karate lessons in case I have to defend myself against the
perverts that might want to go further than making cat calls. The other lesson
is that there are absolutely beautiful people out there. The security guards
that came to help me out might not have known exactly what to do to help, but
they were there and tried what they could. Then there was a motorist that also
stopped to check what had happened. He said he was sorry about my fall and
added that I shouldn’t give up running. I don’t think I will give up
completely. I will just slow down a bit, and run my own race without trying to
catch up with anyone. I also think it’s better to use the stationary bike or
skipping rope at home. 
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