June Blog: Setting Pace With Another

Coming into June this year makes me think in an unrelated  sort of fashion of my work overseas. It is 2 years now since I stopped. And June makes me realise that by some sort of  mischance or whatever you may call it, I remember that for all my years working overseas I always seemed to be away from Ireland for those  magical spring and summer months of May,June and July .

One of those times was a spell in Niger back in the first half of the noughties - when locusts and other factors had caused a major food shortage and subsequent severe malnutrition in that country.  I was working with a humanitarian aid agency who had set up several nutrition programmes in northern Niger bordering the desert.The desert at the edge of the town was like another country, another continent, such was the feeling of vastness emnating from it along with an echoing emptiness. We were supporting a community based programme for children with severe acute malnutrition. They were treated at a health centre once a week and returned weekly for follow up. Meanwhile we  also needed to visit them  in their houses, entailing many forays into villages scattered out in the desert. Walking from house to house in the shimmering, screamingly hot heat became a permanent  quest for even the tiniest sliver of shade. Thank goodness the houses which were round ,bee hived shaped huts were cool inside.

The beehive shaped houses typical of  northern Niger

And also Niger would have been unbearable to work in if it was not for the hospitality of the people. Everywhere we we went we would be offered a small cup of tea or as they called it there , shai.  I  never knew what they put in it   -  there seemed to be  spices such as cinnamon and nutmeg and other tastes that I did not recognise.  But whatever was in it - I have never known tea to refresh as much. Walking  from hut to hut and village to village in the searing heat was made possible by frequent ingestion of this shai.

Another memory I have of this time was when evening was approaching and we would be finishing up our work. Driving back to the town we would  see herds of goats being shepherded along by a lone boy with a staff in his hand - an almost biblical scene . The boy and goats would wend their way through the small villages dotted against desert hill back drops. Every now and then a few goats would decant themselves from the main herd and make their way over to a beehive shaped hut and wait patiently at the entrance. This pattern would be repeated with the herd slowly shrinking as the evening went on.  This daily evening ritual   fascinated me because there was always the eternal question . How did these animals know out of all the hundreds of beehive huts they would pass - which one was their home?

One late afternoon as the searing heat of the day was starting  to blissfully mellow towards evening I was sitting in one of the hundreds of beehive huts dotted around this desert area of Northern Niger. I was following up on one of the children who were registered in the nutrition programme. The hut contained nothing but a small mattress, a 3 legged stool and a chest.  The chest was beautiful, embossed with different types of wood and painted with swirling gold  and other coloured designs.Probably a wedding gift.  The said child was sitting on the  chest swinging his legs against it, drawing out gentle remonstrations from his mother who was  sitting beside me ( children are the same the world over - ergo: child at the back of you on a Ryanair flight swinging his legs into the back of your seat and his mother murmuring mild remonstrations to him - gradually scaling up to a testy " "Stop kicking that lady's seat right now!")  The child's mother  and I were drinking that wonderfully, refreshing tea. We were sitting at the entrance of the hut gazing out at the desert drinking our tea in companiable silence having just finished our extensive chat on the progress of her child . I was struck by the emptiness of what we were looking at -  a sandy, vast expanse of nothingness going on and on.

Looking out onto the desert from the threshold of a house in Niger

And then suddenly out of the emptiness , a goatherd and a herd of goats filing their way home, appeared in the distance across our vision, filling the nothingness. The child's mother and I exchanged a complicit glance and smile . I knew she had also felt an echo of the desolation that had accompanied that emptiness and we were relieved at the appearance of  the goat herd with his goats, pattering by in the distance.

I had that same feeling of relief recently  in May on an early  morning drive to  Carrick on Shannon to do a 5k run in aid of the prevention of suicide charity Pieta House.This charity was set up by a lady called Joan Freeman a practising psychologist who closed down her counselling businessand dedicated her time to finding out how she could help people who were suicidal - what would be beneficial to them and help them get through their dark time. After 3 years of research she opened up Pieta House which quickly became a recognised and respected service for those who were suicidal. Every year during May they arrange an event called From Darkness into Light  .The event is a run  or walk that starts before dawn and by the time it is finished it is dawn. It takes place in towns and villages all over Ireland. It is very evocative as one is running or walking literally from darkness into light. Darkness into Light is very much about hope and hope is something Pieta House endeavours to give each person who comes to them in times of need.And so it was that  I started  out ,driving at 3 am to Carrick on Shannon. It  was like looking out on that empty desert in Niger except that now it was  empty darkness that I was looking at. And then, as I was driving along I looked over towards the east  and felt relieved as  I began to see an almost imperceptible streel of light in the sky  - a something in the nothingness. Later on after a few minutes I noticed a few cars stealing out of driveways or turning out of boreens. There seemed to be an awful lot of them for this time of the morning. Then I realised. They were also going to the Darkness into Light event. When I got to Carrick-on-Shannon I just followed all the cars to know where the venue was. At the sports hall where it was held, loads of people were milling around. The organisers were handing out yellow T shirts and little yellow plastic candles.

The wee yellow candles we all held on the Darkness into Light Run

And so we all lined up in an excited huddle and  began the run. I had not been running that regularly so was a bit nervous. But as we started through the darkened ,quiet streets of Carrick on Shannon and along the paths by the River Shannon with the dawn coming in ahead of us, I felt exhilarated and full of energy. I was going to Spain the next day to do a part of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage/walk. So  today seemed an auspicious start.

Starting off  in Carrick on Shannon in the dark.

I settled into the somewhat hypnotic rhythmn of the run - that almost zen like state  when your body is settling well into a run and all is focused. Reeds on the River Shannon swayed and looked silvery in the greyish hue that was heralding the dawn arriving . Feet pounding, we all ran away from the river and through the still sleeping town as if we were racing the incoming dawn. Shapes lightened into the early morning  and became structures and we started to switch off our wee yellow candles as darkness fell away. And so it was that we came from darkness into light.

On the last half mile we were running uphill. People were blowing and puffing like  steam trains and some stopped running with a breathless shrug and fell back into a walk.  I was struggling and, like a pit pony pulling it's load of coal, hurled myself into the shafts so to speak, for this last hard half mile. Up ahead of me there was a mother with her 2 daughters. I could see the daughters on either side of their mother encouraging her to keep running, to keep going. I fell in behind them and set my pace to theirs. I was about the same age as their mother and felt a kinship with this little group. We all struggled up the hill and then saw ahead of us the finish. Our pace quickened just like the morning was also starting to and we all felt exhilarated as we ran triumphantly towards the end. As we ran we congratulated each other,  all united by that struggle up the hill and also  united by having gone from darkness into light on a May morning in  Carrick on Shannon. And the realisation as we ran towards the milling crowd around the finish line, that the same event was happening in many  towns all over Ireland that morning. 

There is a saying by Henry David Thoreau that " If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away". However sometimes when a you are struggling, when it seems the emptiness never fills, that it is always dark, that there is no hope, that you just cannot climb that final hill - that may be  the time to set your pace with another and let someone help you to see that streel of light imperceptibly beginning to light the darkness.

"The darkest hour is just before the dawn"