When is Enough, Enough?

More than a month has passed since the Olympics closed up shop in Beijing, but if you’re in Kenya you might think the closing ceremony was yesterday. 

The Kenyan government as well as corporations and anybody else that can afford a PA system and some sodas have been honoring the Kenyan Olympians with parades, awards and a variety of “homecoming” ceremonies.

About every other day, the evening news shows another motorcade of 20+ cars parading around some Rift Valley town with some gold medalists in tow.

Kenyan runners have never received this much attention from their homeland…ever.

But abundance of this celebration has prompted some people to question whether we have gone a bit overboard?

Well, have we?

The answer, in my opinion, is yes and no. (For those who are groaning and accusing me of being chicken for not choosing one side, hear me out)

No way- we have the right to celebrate!

Kenyan athletes performed better than they ever have at the Olympics. In track & field, Kenya was ranked as the third best country. Kenya won the men’s marathon gold for the first time in history as well as taking the men’s 800, steeplechase and the women’s 800 and 1500. Silver and bronze medals were also there in plenty.

Quite a performance.

In the very recent past, Kenya has disappointed in the World Championships and the 2004 Olympics so this proved to us that those poor performances were just hiccups in the continuing reign of Kenyan runners.

Also remember that Kenya is still recovering from the terrible violence that threatened its stability earlier this year.

So when the runners came back, Kenyans were all too willing to fete them and congratulate them for lifting the Kenyan flag high on the international stage.

And for a country that has been accused for ignoring it’s athletes and their accomplishments, going overboard in honoring them is better than than neglecting them.

The celebrations are too much – we have problems to deal with!

The violence that I mentioned earlier had the effect of rendering tens of thousands of people homeless in their own country. A new vocabulary has even entered the Kenyan consciousness and that is the word “IDP”, meaning internally displaced person. How euphemistic!

But 9 months after the violence hit Kenya, we still have thousands of families living in white refugee tents. They are unable and unwilling to return to where they were driven from their homes. And ‘driven’ is another euphemism. Gangs of (mostly) young men burned their houses, beat people and even killed hundreds.

The hardest hit areas of this violence were also many of the areas where Kenya’s best runners come from.

So in light of all this, many people were of the opinion that too much time, energy and money were being put into these celebrations while just a few miles away sat these refugees. I guess it can be looked at as a matter of priorities. Resettle a few hundred families and let them continue with their lives, or, hold a big party to recognize the gold medalists for the umpteenth time.

I’m not going any further

If I’m to talk about this issue any more, I’ll have to start a new blog because it delves into issues more political and humanitarian than this Kenyan running blog allows.

But I just wanted to share this dilemma so that you can start to understand the environment that these superstar runners operate in.