Run No. 1391; Kampala-Jinja Relay 2010

Hares: Al's Bar and friends
Venue: Kiira Town Council, Source of the Nile, Triangle Hotel and the very hot, dusty road in between
Distance: 82km but it felt like 820km
Date: 31st July, 2010


With a record turn-out, some very creative, colorful team names and t-shirts, the Jinja Relay of 2010 was a great success, a good time was had by all, including the mercenaries.  Kudos to Al's Bar his team for organizing a great event.  We were also glad to welcome a team from the Kigali Hash and Hashers from Nairobbery.  We're going to do something special for you on this trash - never-before done!  We're going to bring you three perspectives on this event.  The "Newbie's Perspective" will be brought to you by Just Darlyne who now has 4 hashes under her belt.  The medium-term perspective will be brought to you by yours truly, Solar Erection and the "Veteran's Perspective" will be brought to you by the loquacious Katanga Bbi.


So, without further ado:


Newbie's Perspective by Just Darlyne:

5.15am! That's how early I had to get up, no one should ever have to get up that early...ever! But I got up because we had to be at the starting point by 6.00am. We made it there by 6.30am and didn't really find that many people there but the few we did find there were already drinking beer. I didn't think anyone drunk beer that early unless they had been doing so the whole night before but here were people disproving me. 

I had no idea what to expect. All I knew was that I was taking part in a relay so I only had the rules of an ordinary relay to guide me. I assumed we have a baton to pass on to the next team member, I assumed whoever got to the finish line first would be the winner, I assumed we would be driving right by our team members till their leg was done and the baton was passed so they could sit in the car and drive with us to the next stop, I assumed this wouldn't take the whole day. Needless to say, my assumptions were wrong. The legs only end when all the runners have reached the finish line and winners are determined by times (which makes sense for a run like this) and there was no baton, sadness just. Apart from that, everything I didn't expect was the most fun I've had in a long time.

At the starting point we got our cool t-shirts and set off to the first finish point and boy did those guys have a long way to run. I felt for our Seed 1 who was hoodwinked with the responsibility just at the starting line as our original Seed 1 had been poached by another team (Boo poachers!) Much of the day continued in this vein and since I was a Seed 8 I didn't get to run till the end of the day. 

It was fun being stuck all day in a car with my friends, getting out at the end of every leg to cheer my team mates on and take pictures of them crossing the finish line against the beautiful backdrop of the less travelled roads we tool to get to Jinja. I can appreciate the beauty now but I'm not too sure the people actually running through it would have agreed at the time. We had a good lunch after which I had a nice nap (don't judge me, I was up insanely early remember?)

Then it was time for my run. Now I'd only been for 3 hashes before this relay the last one being 3 weeks before the relay and I hadn't done any running since then but for some reason my brain thought running 3.5k would be a breeze. Well, every single muscle in my body disagreed. I have never been so tired in all my life, I could barely walk less run and when the Sweeper Van came up behind me I knew that was probably the most embarrassing moment in my sporting career. Let me tell you, there is no motivation to run quite as effective being tail-gated by a Sweeper Van. I finally made it across the finish line and promised myself I'd get fitter.

The day came to an end and the sun set on the last leg of runners as we made our way to the Source of the Nile for the night's last circle. I dragged myself down the steps wondering all the time how I was going to make it back up again. Somehow, I did and on to Hotel Triangle we went where I knocked on some doors trying to find a hasher who would let me use their bathroom to wash some of the day's filth off of me; Shower had, it was time for some much  needed nourishment and the meal that was provided hit exactly the spot.

As we drove back to Kampala, we had a very nice conversation through which I could barely keep my eyes open and as I drifted off to sleep, I was thankful for such a fun filled day albeit probably the longest day in my life yet.

Of course special thanks go to Solar Erection who got me there in the first place.

Medium Perspective by Solar Erection:

As the middle of the road contributor on this blog, this year’s relay was my second, I’m really not sure I add anything to this blog post but maybe as the sole foreigner contributing I do...  My second try at the relay was generally much more enjoyable than the first and I’ll leave it at that.  The day started early and with one of my house-mates, who I had recruited to participate, threatening to hit me in the head with a pan.  I guess I’m more of a morning person than she is. 

We eventually made it to the starting line, handed out t-shirts and the hospital bracelets that marked the paid participants from the flukers.  As we were getting down to go time I was told that one of our seed 1s was poached by another team (I’m looking at you Big Blue W**kers) and the second (we had two teams) was on a boda somewhere between Ntinda and the starting point.  Luckily I was able to persuade another Nabugabo team member to take one (a BIG one, thanks Ryan!) for the team and run seed one and our other seed one got there just in the nick of time. 

After that, the race seemed to go on as (far as I can tell) usual, seed 1s kicking up dust and amazing everyone, the usual suspects drinking beer and running from 6:30am until they pass out at 10pm.  Teams bickering about the mercenaries that were poached by other teams, oh, wait, that was me.  Dear City Tyres team, I think it was very nice of you to offer to pay school fees of your Cubans in return for the run but go find your own! 

The weather quickly turned hot and the air dusty but the views from the villages were spectacular.  Team Waragi organized for music that had all the village kids and all the hashers dancing all day. 

One of my lowlights was falling down not once, but twice.  And before you blame it on the beer, no, no I hadn’t been drinking.  But on the plus side, I did learn a new phrase in Luganda – Muzungu agudde – the muzungu has fallen down.  Not that it will ever come in handy but as soon as I took the digger on the maram road in my second leg and I was covered with dirt and blood, the shouts of the people who lined the trail turned from “Muzungu muzungu!!” “well done!” “How ah yoooo?!” and “You ah last!” to “Muzungu agudde” and “bambi...”  But I wasn’t about to give up and get into the sweeper van, hell no!  I was going to finish – I’m likely one of the slow runners that Katanga refers to in his take. 

My absolute favourite part of the Jinja Relay is how, though there is some stiff competition, there is also such camaraderie.  People run down the road to meet and run with their finishing teammates, people cheer for fellow hashers on other teams and it kinda gives me that warm fuzzy feeling, and no, still not the beer talking, just me getting a bit mushy.

Thanks to the Kigali and Nairobbery hashers who came to participate, hope you had a great time in Uganda.  Thanks to the Kigali hasher who stopped to make sure I was ok when I took a tumble.  Thanks to Al’s Bar, Hashmaster, Mpuuta, Chadwick and all the others that put so much time into the organization of this year's relay!

Veteran's Perspective by Katanga Bbi:

How long does it take to become a veteran? a couple of years perphaps, three four or five, maybe. ?, Having run the Kampala-Jinja Relay since its inception in the year 2005 or was it 2006, running the Relay proudly, as one of the Team Waragi. I can uncomfortably say that I am a veteran of the Jinja Relay!! So this hear below is the Veteran’s perspective of the day, during before and after.

It’s tough to have a place to start, perhaps I should start from the very end, when I saw the Hasher known as Knock Knees shoot a marvelous putt on the 8^th Green of this course,  to earn himself a par on this hole on the morning of Sunday 1^st August, Its baffling that after so much running, the previous day, drinking and “jamming” as Federo like s to call it, a Hasher would be able to play 9 holes of golf, but off course Queenie will tell me, stick to Hash Maters please Katanga, this is not a Golf blog, or the very end when we abandoned the Hash master at Triangle Hotel with 40 empty crates of beers and sped off to Kampala, or I could tell you of how Wide Load asked me, Hey Katanga, you Waragi People are not serious, why would you go ahead and brand the truck and the bus you came in that way as if you bought them?, I answered yeah, we bought them for this one day, after that, they no longer will be ours, or I could tell you about Sunset Stripper’s favorite one liner that she recounted over and over, this one involved Vuvuzelas, apparently, there are vuvuzelas of all kind but there is this particular vuvuszela that showed up at the jinja Relay that created an unbelievable large loud . . .no ear shattering sound that Dirty dick asked, ‘Ani a ffuye vuvuzela eyo?”(who has blown that vuvuzela”, and I responded, Alo, waliwo vuvuzela wano omuntu ayina vuvuzela eya manyi enyo, togizanyira kko (there is a very serious here that you should not mess around). (By the way, wide load is the one who blew that vuvuzela)All that and more, just the little things that happened at the Jinja Relay.

The Jinja relay took place on the 31st July 2010, but the chairmen /team captains of the various teams that were involved know very well that the event started well before that, actually, as Chairman of the Waragi team, I could say, preparations started as far back as 2 months ago, when one volunteer and now ex-Waragi member, took the bull by the horns and began mobilizing for our Team Waragi at such a frantic pace that we, who are not used to “being too organized”, and ready  a month in advance, could not handle it, and we asked him and his crew to form another team, which they did to our great relief.

But I did not take notes at the jinja relay, although, solar Erection came by some time and told me that Queenie was telling her that she would be taking notes of the jinja Relay instead of hanging around enjoying themselves, “Question, how is it possible to take notes of people having fun when you too are supposed to be having fun too. I recall the blogs that I have written without any notes are almost as good as those that had notes, anyway, anyway, antyway, anyway On On

1.            Acts of Charity

Weeks to the Jinja relay, Al’s bar indicated that he would like the jinja relay to leave a more meaningful legacy in the minds of the people along the route at least , and so encouraged Teams to think of creative ways to of performing charitable actions along the way to ninja. However, as the day drew closer, Al’s decided to postpone this charity thingie, to a later date as he was swamped by so many things to do at the same time, we actually called off the Charity thing until next year. So, to say the least, I was pleasantly surprised to see that several teams actually performed act s of charity such as the giving away of exercise books, pencils etc to kids that happened to have been around when the Relay was happening, actually there were quiet a number of lucky recipients of these books etc. , I do not know which team in particular was doing hits, but from what I saw, I saw many Kids with big smiles on their faces , clutching several exercises and a pencil or two, there is nothing as relevant as a gift to a child as a book or pencil. Anyway, of course hashers being hashers, I saw some who had gone over board and given out cans of Castle Lager to kids as young as 7 years, the pictures say more, but of course, those are our people, Be bantu baffe as they say. On On.

2.            Timing officials on a boda boda.

 During one of the team Captains meetings prior to the event, Pisser suggested that in order to have a more flexible means of transportation during the Jinja Relay, it would be important to have a Boda Boda Cyclist accompany us all the way to Jinja, I am glad that, I witnessed this wonderful idea in motion when I saw our two  timing officials Chadwick and Al’s Bar, taking off in hot pursuit of the runners on their boda boda.But of course , there are those particular instances, where it is impossible to catch up with the runners for example when we got to the Lunch break moment at Najjembe, some runners had already arrived before the Timing officials, just like they did a year ago, and the year before that. I am tempted to think that at this particular section, the FRBs run faster than any other means of transportation.

3. The disorganization of some teams on the seeds.

This time round, many of the teams that participated in the Relay exhibited a very high level of organization; the minimum standards were so high that it was simply an array of Kampala’s most famous T-shirt designers on display. Of course the Team Waragi T-shirt, designed by none other than Federo,  emerged most creative running T-shirt , (of course am only saying it because am Waragi Team to)., each team had a couple of other T-shirts including a polo T-shirt for example. Unfortunately for some reason, No hopers did not bother to make themselves t-shirts for this occasion, for some reason anyway, What a bore!!. Some other teams did not show up at all, like Stanbic. If it is to do with the sponsorship or something, such teams are invited to seek sponsorship from the Waragi Team in advance, we might be willing to sponsor them or something , but of course on condition that you write  the following words on your T- shirt ”S*****c Bank sponsored by Team Waragi”.

Talking about disorganized teams, there was this team that was fielding participants in an upside down manner. You see, the Jinja Relay is designed in such a Way that Seed one runs the first section, then seed 4 runs the second section, then seed 2 Runs the third section, then seed 3 runs the forth section etc. So basically there was this team that was fielding runners tin a way that was hilarious. Seed one ran the first section (which was meant for seed one – Correct! Then seed two ran the second section, (which was meant for seed 4) –Wrong, then seed 3 ran the third section (Which was meant for seed 2) – wrong again, then seed 4’s turn came, they were beginning to understand that they had made serious errors of judgment. It got to this point where I saw one of the w****rs on this team asking actually seed three asking One of the timing officials, “Eh, madam, when am I supposed to run? Answer- What seed are you- other confused party just shows his bib and shows her, the bib reads “seed 3”. Then the timing official informs him, this is the end of the section for seed threes, who run your Leg or who ran you section, then the other party “You see madam, for us we are a little bit disorganized”.  I proposed that we hold seminars, workshops and conferences next time round, featuring various key note speakers etc, prior to the Jinja Relay, so that such people can be prepared well in advance.

5, Security this time round.

We had ourselves wonderful security arrangements all thorugh out the run, from the beginning to the very end there was a accessible police presence throughout the route and upon reaching jinja, thanks to the organizers of the Jinja Relay and thanks to the Uganda Police for handling issues in such a way to ensure that there was little chaos throughout the run.

6, enough water,

This time, courtesy of the mismanagement team, we managed to secure sponsorship of Mineral water to aid us along the run, Water came from Nile special and Coca-Cola who together gave us a combined total of 140 Cartons of water and each time managed to get 5 cartons, so you could imagine that a team like Kimeza which was fielding 3 Teams got 15 Cartons of mineral water.

7. Each team giving out water at particular check points.

An idea was floated at which each team as required to give out water at particular check points and this was well executed to the best of my knowledge. I remember that at even one point there was a mini fight about two teams wanting to give water out at the same check point, and one of the other teams asking can I please give out water here??

8. Perhaps there were too many vehicles on the route. We shall never know, but somehow, we got ourselves in a situation where we arrived that the Jinja Source of the Nile when it was already dark. In any case, I think that presence of the vehicle do not hinder the overall time mismanagement of the event, especially seeing that people went to greater lengths to park correctly and avoid double parking by parking on one side of the road.

 

9. Too many slower runners who did not want to get swept. Perhaps there were too many slower runners who did not want to get swept caught up in the Jinja Relay, meaning that the entire jinja Relay was running at or close to the pace of the slowest runners who did not want to get swept in all the seeds  . . .Makes sense  doesn’t it? Perhaps next time we should get some slower runners who are holding up the Relay to be forcefully swept or something. So that the Relay can have some bit of pace. This and probably the duration of the lunch stop at Najembe could have been a contributing factor. By the way, the lunch break at Najembe is something notes worthy

10. Lunch

There is a team that showed up with a boat some two year ago at the Jinja relay, probably anticipating to cross some sections of the route with this vehicle or something, anyway, this time round they did not bring the boat with them, but I noted that they spend considerable time planning for the lunch break, I stole a glance at these team mates having their lunch and I t felt as though we were looking at one of the plates that Hajati at Nakasero market prepares for her daily customers. Talk about everything, it was there, a piece of chicken, lots of rice, beef, beans ., peas , ground nut sauce, carrots , cabbages, the whole nine yards wee there piled mountain high on their plates. I was asking myself of course the most obvious question “How are these w*****rs going to run after this has began settling in their stomachs. Our team just settled for a Chicken and cheese sandwich, which was quite enough by any standards. No fanfare, but in a way, the teams that created the fanfare environment somehow costs us a few valuable minutes, we will never never know.

11. I have never seen anyone drinking beer this early in the morning. Actually, if they are drinking beer this early in the morning, they must have spent the whole night drinking. This was a statement from some innocent virgin who is seeing the Jinja Relay for the first time. The continuation of the statement is . . . if they were drinking beer in the morning so early, how they managed to drink beer the whole day and also run at the same time. Answer; welcome to the hash, you need to go to things like say, the Africa Interhash in Addis or the World Inter hash. You will be surprised at the amount of things that they can do beer with. On On.

12. During Conman’s Tenure as hash Master 2011, he proposed to build a road at that section in Mabira forest where for the second time in a row, a car – actually, the vehicle that Kachabali was travelling in got stuck. Con man proposed to construct a beautiful road with a bridge at that exact point so that we never get stuck there again. He has already lined up the engineers and the tendering process has started. So the only minor thing to sort out is to do the needful and get him in that office. Of course Conman will require your contribution for this road, so do not forget your check books behind and make the payments in his own names to speed things up. On On.

13. I will skip this one and go to the next one as the information contained herein is for persons above 80 who come accompanied with both parents.

14. Perhaps we could start the run at six am in the morning or something. It was very dangerous to be running at terrific speeds thorough the crowded Jinja Town at 8:00 pm in the night.

15. I thought the jinja relay was 82 Kilometers, however, rumors have it that Al’s bar in the process of marking the route discovered that after using GPS loaded equipment, the “Odometer” of various motor vehicle (by the way, I learn’t that word odometer from Chili sauce quite recently, On on Chili sauce), anyway, Al’s bar thinks that the distance could actually be higher than previously quoted, but watch this space, very soon new are going to give you the real real real distance up to the last millimeter.

16. There was a circle which  I missed as I was on an errand to collect the keys of the rooms that we had booked at paradise and Triangle Hotel, but from what I saw, many could not wait for the circle to close as they were too tire too hungry or both.

17. The Dance. The dance after Dinner was great, till morning we went for those with ‘Stamina”, the dinner was another matter altogether, some people eaten, others did not eat, but of course you and me know that those things happen a lot at the Hash. Defaulter pulled out some rather amazing dancing strokes right from the Brazilian carnival!! Mukyala was there doing her thing with Land lord, you cannot even begin to described how much fun the two were having. Mukodo went and changed here evening ware twice, At first she had this very ho dress, then she went and got herself into this even hotter dress, I heard that wide Load had this incredible shoe, everyone talked about it, I did not see it but it was hot, some two good friends of mine later almost had a cat fight after the dance at Sombrelos night club after the music had ended, I do not know how true this is, but as you know, what happens a the Hash remains at the hash.

18. Beers. There were several beers available and a soda bottle for the hashers who had a ribbon or wrist band. Those who did not were turned away, flukers were minimized, the beers were flowing endlessly . . . A night to remember, with Hot pants grabbing our beloved UG. Waragi Bottle and giving it away to hashes r shot by shot. . . just like that . . . how annoying, he attempted to do the same thing with Conman’s had fought for and had earned bottle of Johnny Walker, and Conman could not have any of this nonsense.

And that my friend was that, I am tempted to add on a little bit of the hottest gossip about the Jinja Relay, but let me chill it for the moment. There is always next time. On On- Katanga BBI – by the way, there is a link of photos that you can use to see the jinja relay through the eyes of Nichole and our very own natty Dread, who took some beautiful pictures. On On. Nipples will post her link soon if you ask her nicely.

In conclusion, the three of us are looking forward to next year, when we'll try to be drunker, yet faster and maybe Darlyne will even have a hash name by then.  For full results click here.  If you took photos at the relay, please post your links in comments so everyone can see!