Kenya run update: Over halfway

Posted: Aug 16, 2010 03:21 am EDT

Chris Rhys Howarth who is attempting a 1,100 miles (1,770 km) run across Kenya has arrived in Thika town on Saturday after covering a 100km from Embu. He will be meeting with street children programmes in Thika and Nairobi and also describes in his blog how people live from food waste in a landfill in Nakuru.

Mount Kenya

While Chris was running from Nanyuki to Meru he could see Mount Kenya. He said, “[I] felt strong through a very tough day of hills; was kept going by some incredible views running in the shadow of Mount Kenya.”

Food dump

In Nakuru he visited a landfill site which was maybe three stories high on top of which lives a small community, he said. “I met with some of the community members and talked with them about their way of life - children, men, women, grandmothers. As we were talking a tractor arrived pulling a skip which contained food waste and other rubbish brought up from the town.”

“I watched as the tractor stopped and dumped the contents of the skip onto the landfill, as it did this the community members, from grandmothers to children, went across to the waste and began eating directly from it - whatever they could find.”

“I believe no human being should have to live like this, but this seems to be the only choice currently for the people in that community. Many children who go the streets of Nakuru come from this community as they understandably look for an alternative source of food. Not many things in my life have left me truly distressed and upset but this experience certainly did.”

100 km with a painful knee

When Chris ran the 100km from Meru town to Embu he said it was a bit of a battle the whole way running pretty much on one good leg because of a severe painful right knee. He said he thinks it is a result of three straight days of 70km, 80km then 100km. But he was happy to have completed his longest ever single run. Up to Embu he covered total distance of just over 900km.

He is still ahead of his schedule and from Nairobi it is a 500 km home stretch to Mombasa at the east coast.

Chris Rhys Howarth is attempting a 1,100 miles (1,770 km) run across Kenya. He plans to run through 12 major towns and cities over a period of seven weeks, “through the country's toughest conditions and diverse landscapes,” says Chris on his website, “from the remote mountains and altitude of the Rift Valley and Central Provinces - to the sprawling urban heart of Nairobi - and through the barren, desert roads towards Mombasa.”

Briton Chris Rhys Howarth is an ultra runner and writer. He has run the London marathon and the Beachy Head marathon twice. In 2004, at 22, he entered his first ultra endurance race - the Jungle Marathon, a 200 km run through Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. In 2008 he completed Kenya’s Nairobi marathon and at the end of 2009 he ran Portugal’s Lisbon marathon.

Chris has written plays for London and Newcastle theatres and became a published writer through his contribution to a book on conflict resolution within Israel.

After completing a Masters degree in scriptwriting in 2007 Chris moved on to his most recent work on the ‘Hear Our Voice Kenya’ performing arts project. Through the project he has written and directed both a fictional film and a documentary film exploring the issues and experiences of street children and revealing true stories behind Kenya’s post election violence in 2007/08.

[Biography courtesy of Chris Rhys Howarth’s website]