So World AIDS Day has come and gone, and I’m sure that all 4 people who read my blog are just dying to know how my event went. And the answer is pretty damn well. At least, the parts that mattered to me went well. But it wasn’t perfect, and I learned a few things about organizing large events in Cape Verde.

First off, in one of the most important ways, it was a huge success: people. Shitloads of people turned out. We had 250 t-shirts to give out and we ran out with many, many more clamouring for more. I am not so naïve as to assume that at least a couple dozen didn’t just take their shirts and go home, but we definitely had well over 200 people. As for runners, not so many: just 19. But asking around, it seems that this is pretty normal. Most people here aren’t into running for competition. It is especially not normal for women to run, and so we had zero female participants. Weak. So two different soccer schools showed up, as well as a basketball school, a Nazarene youth choir, a theatre group, and an old people’s exercise group.

First we gathered at the CEJ in one huge group, to hand out t-shirts and register the runners. I handed out the numbers and took names, while Shon and Iva tried to maintain some order among the eight billion teenagers and little kids running around, and Diva and Aurite handed out the t-shirts. We were supposed to march around town to the praça at 9:30, but that hour came and went, and we were missing one important person: the vareador. It’s pretty normal for people to be late here, especially a person of such local importance, but it still got on my nerves. He showed up over an hour late, having delayed the whole event. But no big deal, onwards. Everyone marched, while I stayed behind to get the runners going. Djoy, the head of the Associação de Atletismo, was also a bit late, and when he came, we discovered that nobody had organized the cars to drive the runners out to the starting line. Fortunately, Paulo was there and he drove a load of us out. So we drove 5 k down a road through the oasis that runs from north of Sal Rei down to Rabil, and we stopped. At this point, it is 11:15 and WELL past the 9:30 or 10:00 start time that I had tried for. So the African sun was blazing in a cloudless sky when we finally took off. Did I mention that I ran the race? Ha ha. Yep.

I knew I was in trouble when immediately everyone else bolted from the starting line, sprinting ahead of me. Normally, this is a stupid thing to do. If you start a 5k sprinting, you’ll die off fast and end up falling behind quickly. Slow and steady, ya know? In high school, I was always in the bottom quarter of the race for the first half mile, but by the last half, I was usually up in the top 10, having passed 100+ people who were all pooped from running a 5:30 mile in the first third. Anyway, my strategy didn’t work this time, because the sun was scorching, the headwind was strong, I was exhausted and hungry, and I was running against 18 black dudes who play soccer every day. But a lot of the guys who took of sprinting died out, as I predicted, and 5 or 6 of them gave up and hopped in the chase car to be driven back to Vila. So in that respect, I didn’t completely lose… Ha, that’s right, 5 sweaty, scorching, stomach cramping, I-want-to-die kilometers later, I finished last, about 100 feet behind the next guy. Nonetheless, I got a lot of cheering and clapping from the finish line crowd, for representing the CEJ in the race and for finishing despite everything. I don’t know what my time was, but it was definitely the worst I’ve run in years. The winner was predictably, a guy named Adilson, who is literally the best runner in the country. He wins every race in Cape Verde, hands down, no contest, as well as international competitions. He is expected to win the ultramarathon this week, too.

All the groups had done little demos of their trade while the race happened, so things were already seemingly winding down when I got back to the finish line. We put together a kid’s race, which was just two quick laps around the praça, maybe a half mile total. These little kids were pretty fast, despite the fact that not one was wearing shoes. Keep in mind that the road is cobblestone. Afterwards, we all went to a restaurant nearby which has a huge kintal (like an atrium: large open space inside a building) for lunch. These nice ladies cooked feijoado for 300 and I stuffed myself. Afterwards, the plan was to return to the praça for a couple more things, followed by some music and a closing ceremony for the trophies (yes, we got trophies and medals). However, after lunch, nobody seemed interested and virtually nobody came back to the praça. Everyone else went home for a nice long siesta. So after hanging around for a while, Iva decided we could just have the music and ceremony at the CEJ later in the week. So the DJ packed up and we all went home for naps, too.

So overall, successful? Hell yeah. The race was fine, if late. The turnout was huge. Everyone wore our t-shirts, and will continue to do so. One thing that was lacking was the stuff from the hospital. Because the doctor is so hard to get a hold of, we never managed to get the condoms from them to hand out. But the head of the Red Cross talked about AIDS and stuff while he was MCing the whole thing, so we managed to keep the message in the event. We took lots of pictures, so I’ll post them when I get them on this computer.

What I learned is to never plan anything that continues after lunch. Also, never assume that people will take care of things: micromanage if necessary. I let a lot of the events just sort of go, with other people managing them. I think this was ok, except for a few circumstances where I wish I had watched closer. Mainly, I think I stepped back from the event a bit too much, and next time, I think I will try to have a closer hand at everything. But enough criticism. It’s done!

Also, someone broke into the CEJ over the weekend and stole the laptop and projector I use for classes. Who steals from a youth center? The laptop is protected by a system password that can't be gotten around or uninstalled. Ha ha.