Cape Town's Peaks

4:30 a.m. Dark. Spitting rain. Cold. At least colder than I feel like it ought to be in South Africa’s summertime. We are barreling down the coast road from Llandudno, a seaside suburb of Cape Town, to the central market square, in my ex-pat friend’s pick-up truck. We’re cutting it fine to get to the 5 a.m. starting line for the Three Peaks Challenge, a race that defines the South African running sensibility—grueling fun in a gorgeous setting…oh, and if you’re not from here, well you better get familiar with the terrain, because there’s no course map, no actual “course” per se, only checkpoints.

In 1897, so the story goes, with nothing better to do that day, Carl Wilhelm Schneeberger decided to hike up all three peaks, which preside over Cape Town: Devil’s Peak, pointed as a wizard’s hat; Table Mountain, flat and fit for a banquet of the gods; Lion’s Head, the curl of the creature’s mane flowing down its back. In between each peak, he returned to the Old Johannesburg Hotel in Long Street to rest. A friend assisted at the occasion, timing the event for posterity. Possibly more posterity than CWS imagined. In 1927 and again in 1977, two others improved on CWS’s time and in 1997, Don Hartley, who had had an itch to take up the challenge for some 35 years, decided to scratch the itch in an official manner. So was born the Three Peaks Challenge, still run by Don Hartley, now assisted by Gavin Snell.

The challenge is to make our way, via whatever we think is the fastest route, up to the top of each of the three peaks. The object is to scale each peak and return to the Greenmarket Square in between each ascent; a task which sounds benign, until I see the steepness of the roads, and the roads are supposed to be the easy part. For each leg of the race there are checkpoints at the market square, near the base of the main trail up the peak (which may lead to many other possible trails) and on the peak. As we pass through each of the waypoints, our bibs are marked with rune-like scratchings, confirming the integrity of our race.

I am clueless about Cape Town geography. Luckily I have my friend, India as a guide and companion. A devout runner (are there non-devout runners in SA? If so, I haven’t met them), she lives in Cape Town, and did the race the year before, not to mention that the peaks are her running backyard.

At the starting line we’re bundled up against the chill and misting rain. I have on a tank top, a long sleeve shirt and a jacket, not to mention my peaked cap against the hoped-for sunshine. My bare legs would be happier in tights, a clothing choice others have made, but I’m banking on daylight bringing some warmth.

Only 120 runners get into the race each year, 60 new and 60 veterans. Not all veterans are created equal either. Pale blue bibs indicate runners who have earned a permanent number, by completing the challenge 5 times. Orange bibs are the runners at 4 complete, going for the blue.

At 5 a.m. we aren’t the only people on the street. The clubbing crowd is winding down and they stand on the sidewalk, swaying gently, smoking cigarettes and staring at us. The start is collegial, in the way trail races are, at least in my experience, runners happy to be together, simultaneously relaxed and fired, chatting, with the added panache (to my Canadian ears) of the purring South African intonations.

The race starts without hoo-ha, and off we go. Within only a few blocks runners have branched off in different directions, following whatever theory they subscribe to: longer distance and shallower climbs, or shorter distance and steeper climbs. The latter is India’s philosophy, so in no time we’re headed straight up. I can’t tell you exactly what route we followed. I know it involved some trail-stairs past someone’s meticulous, newly planted vegetable garden and barking dog, and then up a steep, gravelly, dirt road to Tafelberg Road, which snakes around the base of the peaks. We can see the blinking headlamps of other runners far off to our left, taking a different route up to the mountain trails.

Light seeps in around us, grey and misty. After the first checkpoint, we start up the official trail, or more accurately, trails, which zigzag up Devil’s Peak. Dashes of red, blue, electric yellow and green spread across the mountainside, as runners fan out to their favoured routes. The mountain curves around us, like a giant coliseum, then nudges up against Table Mountain. Grey-green scrub bushes create the illusion of a soft blanket, pulled up to the mountain’s chin, above which the rock is dark and scrape-y and sharp looking. About three-quarters of the way up, the leaders come flying down the trails around us, with that gaspingly, sure-footed agility the best of the trail runners have. Not I.

The peak is cold and windy. We miscue and end up on a different trail on our way down, the low shrubs scraping along our legs like five o’clock shadow. The damp trails are slick and treacherous. Back through the checkpoint, and down to the market square.

Some people say that down is worse than up. To each her own. Without taking a position on that particular issue, I can say that there is no respite on this course, save the few moments of relative flat along the mountain road, which last less time than it takes to recover from an ascent or descent.

There is really only one trail up Table Mountain, unless you elect to do some serious scrambling. We don’t. The thigh high steps up are challenge enough. The addition of chicken wire covering some of the rock, misted with rain, adds an extra zing to the experience. If you don’t catch your foot on a rock, you can always get it tangled in some chicken wire. There are regular hikers on the trail, too. Girls in thin white sneakers and tight jeans. Mascara and eyeliner. Boys in jeans held up by belts midway down their boxers. Children who look to be 6 years old follow older siblings. Young couples stop for hand-holding breaks, making way for our flow of scientifically clad participants in numbered bibs.

I can’t decide if I’m impressed by the apparent unpreparedness of so many of the hikers, or if it makes me feel diminished somehow. After all, if they can climb up Table Mountain, what’s the big deal in me doing it? Except, I suppose, that I’m going at speed (well, perhaps not speed, but moving determinedly), without breaks; and Table Mountain is number two and three is coming. And in any case, why can’t I own the sturdiness of my accomplishment and the hikers’? What they do and I do are not mutually exclusive. Nor is it even a competition, except inside my mind, which likes to insert itself into the wide-open expanse of a long, long race. But I have India to talk to, and we haven’t seen each other in a while, so my mind doesn’t get as much of an opportunity as it would like to mess with me.

The top of Table Mountain is blowing like crazy. If it were raining, it would be raining sideways. Luckily it’s not. Though not for lack of trying. The air is dense with chill humidity. From below we had seen that there was a tablecloth today—what CapeTownians call the swath of clouds that often hovers atop Table Mountain, draping over the edges like fine linen. Any view is completely obscured by the mist. I put on my gloves and re-don my jacket, which I’d been happy to shed at the bottom of Devil’s Peak. The checkpoint is friendly, despite the less than ideal conditions they’re waiting in for us.

India is crazy for the potatoes with salt and butter they’re serving. I stick to my peanut butter and jam sandwich, cut up into tiny pieces—and yes, I’m that obsessive that I brought my own from New York, from my favourite PB, right down to the particular kind of multigrain bread I like.

The bad weather seems to lift as we head back down Table Mountain. Cape Town is spread out below us, grids of buildings and roads, cozying up right up to the edge of the sea. And by the time we’re heading back up, for a third time, out of the market square, I’ve stripped down to my tank top.

An aside, one lovely benefit of passing through the start/finish twice, is that it’s located at an Inn, with, yes, clean bathrooms. A special treat I avail myself of both times through. Not to mention that I can refill my camelback with water in my gear bag, and load up on more food, if I’m running short. India uses passing through the market square to do a complete change of all her layers of shirts.

The route we take to Lion’s Head passes by the German School, where they are having a huge fair the day of the race. Cars backed up trying to get into the parking lot and double-parked along the streets. Did I mention that the roads are not closed to traffic? One of the many extra little challenges is navigating the ever-increasing traffic as the day blooms into a full-fledged downtown Saturday. There’s nothing quite like trying to sprint through traffic seven hours into a run. And, in my case, deal with the fact that cars aren’t coming from the expected directions—a task that overtaxes my brain late in the race, so that I look like a chicken at every intersection, turning my head back and forth, back and forth, back and forth to verify I’m clear to cross.

Since we are still operating on the shortest, steepest philosophy, the top of Lion’s Head involves chains and ladders. I don’t have a fear of heights. Luckily. And though India tells me a long story about a teenage girl she brought up here on a hike, who fell down the side of the mountain about 30 feet and fractured her arm, I manage to perform the contortionistic mental feat of believing that kind of thing will only happen to other people. Instead, I wonder if the runner behind me has ever had the opportunity to look up another runner’s skirt in an ultra marathon before, even if it’s all very modest and there’s nothing to see. I’m the only woman wearing a skirt (and none of the men are either, which is worth adding, because you never know with the trail racing crowd, I suppose). For me, there’s something about a skirt that creates the right balance between the rugged trails and my maxed out body and psyche. Maybe it’s the reminder than I’m not doing this race to be “one of the boys.” I’m doing it, in some small part, as a statement of what I think femininity looks like.

The peak affords us 360-degree eyeful of views. I wonder if I’m disoriented, because it seems like the ocean is on every side of us. Looking at a map later, I realize that Cape Town juts out into the ocean, like a mini boot of Italy (without the toe), so in fact, the ocean is on three sides. On our way down the chains and ladders, more heart stopping than the up, we encounter a runner whose leg is cramping and shaking so much, India needs to pull him over the top of the ladder he’s trying to climb. It’s my good fortune that the rest of the trail down Lion’s Head is more benign than Devil’s Peak and Table Mountain (something I failed to notice on the way up, when the end seemed impossibly far), dusty, single track, with some rocks and steps, and sooner than I’m expecting we’re back on the road again, passing the cars jockeying for parking, through the city streets, which are, with each return, growing vaguely more familiar.

As seems to be my penchant, I want to cry when I cross the finish line. And, in this case, I breathe an enormous sigh of relief, too. Unharmed. By grace of the universe. The feeling of finishing, of actually finishing such an effort overwhelms me for just a moment. And I get that Proustian feeling, that feeling that I am a different person in some tiny, indefinable way now, sitting on the front porch of the Inn with my friend, than I was when I sat beside her in the truck at 4:30 a.m. racing toward the starting line on the coast road. So that when someone’s three-year old son starts dancing around our table, I join him for a minute, shimmying on my wobbly-stiff legs, my bare feet dusty and wizened from a glorious, long day in running shoes.

This post will appear in UltraRunning Magazine's April 2012 Adventure issue with photos.

The Show Must Go On

Last week a one-woman play I wrote and performed had a two night run at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Manhattan. It was my first effort at playwriting and acting since I was a teenager, so it was a leap of imagination, to say the least, to even think of undertaking the project. About a week before the show was to go on, I started to get nerve attacks at any odd moment. My director had upped the rehearsal intensity and, as the date got the closer, the full reality of what I was about to do flooded my nerve endings. I was going to go up on stage and be a character I had created. I couldn’t even blame the script on someone else.

I cried at strange times. Out of the blue I would be awash in an electrical nausea circulating just below my skin’s surface. I might have thought I was having a breakdown; that I couldn’t do what I’d set out to do.

Instead, I thought, “I know this. I’ve felt it before.” Before big races. As recently as the Three Peaks Challenge in Cape Town in November. The week before an intense, new effort I’ve cried while running, so overwhelmed am I by whatever the challenge is that I’ve taken on. I’ll think, “I can’t do this.” I’ve arrived at the starting line of marathons, of ultra-marathons and thought to myself, “I don’t know how to run.”

But I’ve learned, over the years, that I can do it, whatever “it” is. That the feeling of losing control, of not being up to the task is just part of the process, part of the creation of the just the right amount of nervous energy to fire me when the time comes.

So when I felt “that” feeling again a couple of weeks ago, as I headed into the play, it was almost like an old friend. Uncomfortable, to be sure, but familiar. This was the feeling of preparedness, the feeling that it was time to go, time to go for it.

Thank you, running. For preparing me for all the challenges in my life.

Ski Like a Girl

I spoke last week with Bobby Murphy, head of the Vail Ski School in Colorado, where they debuted the Ski Girls Rock program, designed by Olympic gold medalist and World Alpine Ski Champion, Lindsey Vonn, over the December holidays.

Lindsey’s Lessons, as Bobby referred to the program, was inspired by Lindsey’s own experience of particularly excelling at skiing as a girl when her ski mates were exclusively girls. Not that Lindsey couldn’t give the boys a run for their money: but, as she knows from experience, sometimes it’s a lot nicer just to take the boy factor out of the equation. Take out the boy-ballyhoo and the boy ego, which may over-fire in the face of girl strength.

Bobby was extra supportive of the program idea, because he’d just witnessed the boy factor vs. girls’ only effect on his eight-year old daughter, Ella. At seven-years old, Ella had retired from soccer. She had played for a few years in a co-ed program and lost interest. As Bobby says, “it was like she wasn’t really there,” when he’d watch her on the soccer field. The boys were more aggressive, stealing passes from her, running around her, and generally ignoring her. When Bobby and his wife moved to Vail, they decided to try Ella in soccer one more time. But this time there was an all-girls soccer program. “It was as if it was a different sport, or she was a different girl,” Bobby says. Now his daughter is eager to practice her moves at home, and she’s excited to get to the soccer field.

As Wendy Hilliard, New York City Director of the Women’s Sports Foundation’s GoGirlGo! Program says, in terms of boys and men, the aim of the WSF’s program is to model girl strength for boys, so that they grow up in an environment where strong girls are valued, and for fathers to see and understand the impact of real access to sports (which may mean sports without boys) on their daughters. Bobby, it turns out, is that father; and he’s already sharing his deeper understanding of his daughter’s needs with other girls, through Lindsey’s Lessons.

An aside, I met Wendy, at a meeting with the Consul General of Colombia, Elsa Gladys Cifuentes Aranzazu, and Aurys Espinel, director of Asomujer y Deporte, an organization that works on a range of issues related to empowering women through sports. Colombia is apparently very interested in expanding and deepening the sports programs offered for girls, with the specific goal of girl and women empowerment. How wonderful. I hope at some point to have more to share on that.

In the meantime, back to Vail, CO, where the first Ski Girls Rock lessons went fabulously well. The female instructors are clamouring for the opportunity to teach in the special environment of the program. That is—a small group of girls (four to an instructor maximum) between the ages of 5-15, from low intermediate to the most advanced skill levels, working on skill development and race technique in a low pressure, less-structured environment. There’s not so much standing on the side of the trail and running through race drills, as there is honing their skiing in the midst of having a good time with each other. The social aspect, no surprise, is paramount. And if anyone thinks that the fairer sex can’t chat and excel at the same time…they can think again.

Lindsey’s Lessons are an opportunity for the girls to be girls together, have a good time, and, oh yes, shred some, too. And that sounds just right.

Pedaling for the Women of Rwanda

“Race what you bring” is the inclusively spirited motto for the monthly races run by the Rwandan Cycling Federation. In July, Angelique Mukandekezi showed up at the race on one of the Chinese single speed bikes that are prolific around Rwanda and East Africa. Just to give you perspective, my bike, which is a pretty good bike, weighs, as I recall, since I tend not to fully absorb bike facts, in the neighbourhood of 17 pounds. Angelique’s bike weighed in at around 40 pounds. The race, at Nyamata, drew 84 women participants (in case anyone thinks the women of Rwanda don’t want to cycle, that number should make them think again) and Angelique won the women’s field. True, the field was not exactly packed with top racers, but Angelique’s win drew interest from Jock Boyer at Team Rwanda, who had been paying some attention to the women’s field, wondering if he might find the right woman to add to their ever-strengthening team of men (who were profiled in a New Yorker article by Philip Gourevitch).

Jock brought Angelique in for a test, which basically means that she came to his house in Ruhengeri, where the team is based and trains and got on the Velotron, which essentially calculates the energy wattage output of the person riding. Angelique had the highest watts/kg ratio of any woman tested in Rwanda. And so, in September this year, Angelique became the first woman on the team. In October, Angelique’s first full month of training, the team paid her 30,000 Rwandan francs (approximately $50 USD) to stay out of the field (Angelique normally earns her living as a field worker) and cycle train exclusively. For perspective—the average annual income in Rwanda is $400 USD. Not quite junior bond trader pay, but Angelique is making pretty good money for a 22-year-old woman in Rwanda.

Staying out of the field means that every Monday, Angelique rides about 100 miles from Bougasera, where she lives with her parents, to Ruhengeri. She trains Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then makes the long ride home on Friday.

Inspired by Angelique, 24-year-old Janette Uwimana, who had been hanging around the team on and off, more on around the Tour de Kigali the last couple of years (cycling groupies aren’t only for Lance), upped her effort and has joined, too.

Being a strong woman in Rwanda is not easy. The tiny African country often feels more colonial than African, Kimberly told me. An already very conservative ethos is overlaid with a strong Catholicism. There’s not a lot of music. The women still wear the traditional dress for the most part and are timid and uneducated (as are a majority of the men, too—the uneducated part, not the timid bit). Women work the fields and have babies, while the men, in large part, hang out and drink banana beer, conserving their energy for a round of spousal abuse when their wives finish working.

When Angelique started at the team’s training camp, she wouldn’t look anyone in the eye. Well that’s changing. A few weeks on the bike, getting stronger every day, and Angelique is starting to have fun with the guys, to be part of the team.

A couple of weeks into her training, Angelique encountered her first overt harassment on the bike. About two and a half hours into a rainy training ride, shortly after nailing a tough, technical downhill, Angelique got a flat as they rode into a village. Janette and Kimberly got to work on changing Angelique’s tire (something she will learn in the weeks to come). By the time they had finished the job, there were about 50 people hanging around, mostly young men—not unusual when Kimberly stops, since a white woman, especially on a bike, is quite a strange creature to behold. When the three women hopped on their bikes to head off, a man grabbed Angelique’s back wheel as she was clipping in. Angelique, still fighting her timidity, didn’t know how to react. Fortunately, Kimberly had no such reservations. She screamed at the man to back off (using expletives appropriate to the situation). He backed off.

When Angelique caught up to Kimberly she yelled, in her newly acquired English, “Thank you—Kim!” Kimberly had never heard Angelique so much as raise her voice. Later, Kimberly explained to Angelique through the interpreter that Angelique can and should say no anytime anyone touches her bike, as forcefully as she needs. Kimberly might have added, anytime anyone touches her body, but one piece of progress at a time. And perhaps, for Angelique, learning to protect her bike is the best initial step to learning how to protect her body.

In her first week with the team, Kimberly had “the” conversation with Angelique. No getting married and having babies, if she wants to ride with the team. Not never, but not now. Because in Rwanda, the fact that Angelique has made it this long without getting married, and is still childless at 22, is something unusual already. She has already withstood the typical societal claims on her body for longer than many other women.

Janette, too, is coming out of her shell, getting stronger. Against the prevalent cultural grain, or men preferring women with a nice bit of extra, Janette is losing the bit of weight she needs to shed to be stronger on the bike, improving her diet, cutting out the soda and other junk food, claiming personal control over her body, shaping it to her ends, not to what society (aka men) want.

The next task for Angelique and Janette is to develop their competitive instinct. That was supposed to happen in the Rwandan National Championships on October 30^th, where Kimberly was hoping that Angelique and Janette could place first and second, by working together, something they were learning in the last days before the race. Unlike the men, Angelique and Janette don’t understand yet how to be competitors on the bike and friends off the bike. In workouts, whichever of the two is lagging will cycle hard to catch up, but just that. Once they are riding together again, neither tries intentionally to outstrip or push the other. To compete is not in the Rwandan women’s upbringing, something Kimberly hopes to change.

Making that change is going to be hard. Women’s cycling in Rwanda is not exactly top of mind, even for the Rwandan Cycling Federation, which canceled the women’s race at the National Championships at the very last minute. Kimberly publicly complained, “I've been training these girls for the past four weeks, spent over $600 on their training, rode hundreds of miles and they are ready and wanting to race and that's it?” She went on to tell me, “I said, I was disappointed in their decision and said it wasn't right to do that to the girls and if they were going to cancel the race that it should have been done weeks ago.”

Undeterred, Kimberly says, “This is simply a delay.” She and Jock already have plans to put on their own women’s race in the New Year, once they’ve gotten through this hectic period of the African Continental Championships (November 8-11) and then the Tour of Rwanda (November 20-26).

In the meantime, training continues. Progress, being what it is, is never a straight line. One week, about five weeks into Angelique’s training, she seemed to forget how to clip in and out of her pedals, cycling for miles without clipping in, and then, when she finally did, tipping over still clipped in, damaging her bike. I won’t even mention the tire changing struggles. But Kimberly will not give up on Angelique, on Janette, on the future of women cycling in Rwanda, which she sees as inextricably intertwined with the future of women in Rwanda.

Because Team Rwanda, as you’ve guessed by now, is about more than cycling. For the men, “we are trying to train them to be not just good cyclists, but also good men,” Kimberly says. In addition to the practice of discipline, hard work and adherence to a training schedule, learning to read and write English, for example, is part of the training camp curriculum, an invaluable skill for any advancement in Rwanda or elsewhere in Africa (or outside Africa). Now that there are women on the team, there’s an added opportunity for the men to learn to respect their strong women counterparts.

Kimberly’s goal is to develop a field of women cyclists over the next twelve months, so that next year at least one Rwandan woman, if not more, will be competing at the African Continental Cycling Championship, a cycling event notoriously short on women participants.

What’s good for the gander is in spades for the goose. A survey of landscape of studies on the topic done by the Christian Science Monitor shows emphatically that empowering girls and women is one of the surest routes to economic and social development in a country. The fact that women may occupy political positions in government is not necessarily an indication of women’s general condition—certainly not in Rwanda. Women’s value and advancement needs to develop from the bottom up. How we empower women may be through education, it may be by providing them with micro-loans, and it might just be by putting women on a bike and teaching them how to ride strong and fast for all to see and respect.

As Kimberly says, “when we ride through a village, the woman on the side of the road clap and cheer for Angelique and Janette. I like to think that every time they see them on their bikes, they see a possible future that’s different. Maybe it sounds pie-in-the-sky, but I think that we can change the society for women, one bike at a time.”

You can help that change happen. Add your voice to Kimberly’s work. Send Team Rwanda (choose Kimberly as the contact person) this note: “I support women’s cycling in Africa and hope that Team Rwanda will develop a serious women’s team!”

Just Quit & Just Do It

To find our way in life sometimes we have to just quit, and other times we have to just do it. In Kimberly Coats’ case, she did both.

In 2008, at 42 years old, possessed of a high paying dream job as business development manager for Sysco, schmoozing the top chefs in Vegas, and generally possessed of all else we are supposed to want to “possess” in a quintessentially successful American life, a house, a car, a husband and such like, Kimberly realized that what she had was not what she wanted. She made of list of things that were important to her: She wanted to travel. She wanted to do something that helped people, to give back to the world in a meaningful way. And she wanted to incorporate her love of cycling into that mix of travel and purpose.

Around the same time, Kimberly read Positive Spin, an article in the September 2008 issue of Outside Magazine about Project Rwanda, a non-profit “committed to furthering the economic development of Rwanda through initiatives based on the bicycle as a tool and symbol of hope.” One of Project Rwanda’s main initiatives was designing and distributing at low cost special cargo bikes for the transport of coffee (one of Rwanda’s key crops). The so-called coffee bikes significantly decreased the transport time to processing plants, so that the coffee berries were that much fresher and the resulting product that much higher quality.

The article released the proverbial bee into Kimberly’s bonnet (or cycling helmet, in her case). Six months later, in April 2009, she was on a plane to Rwanda for a three-month volunteer stint with the project. Volunteering turned into paid work and Kimberly got involved not only in the coffee bike work, but also with one of Project Rwanda’s other initiatives, a national cycling team, Team Rwanda (which was the subject of a long article by Philip Gourevitch in The New Yorker). When Kimberly’s contract with Project Rwanda finished, she increased her involvement with the cyclists and eventually switched full-time to working with the team, which is now its own entity.

The team operates on a shoestring budget. Kimberly earns in a year now, what she used to earn in a month. She doesn’t have health care, and she can’t count on having water or electricity every day. Her clothing occupies half a shelf. And she and her husband are divorced. As she says, “There’s that old cliché that if you follow your heart and passion, then the money will come. Well, I’m doing that, and I guess I have a roof over my head and no debts.” Though she adds, “I’m way behind on retirement.”

I believe that what that shopworn cliché really means, is that money’s importance is diminished in the face of passion. To wake each day with a clear sense of purpose, with a drive separate and deeper than making money, changes our views of what “enough money” means. There is, after all, no absolute benchmark of what “the money will come” looks like.

When I speak with her, Kimberly sounds happy, except that word is too pale by far to describe the fullness she describes. How she sounds is in love, not with someone or something, but with everything. She is traveling. She is doing something that she believes is changing life for the better in Rwanda. And she is cycling up a storm, training with the men, and now the women, on the team, and in the best shape of her life, at 45.

Speaking with Kimberly, I was reminded of a documentary I saw recently about Bill Cunningham, a long-time fashion photographer for the New York Times, known for his candid street photos of celebrities and ordinaries alike. At 82 years old, though he marinates daily in haute couture circles, surrounded by the beautiful, the rich and the powerful, Cunningham himself lives an ascetic life. He has little money. He duct tapes his rain poncho when it starts to show wear, and he has not much use for food, except as fuel. He has never had a romantic relationship. Yet, as portrayed in the film, so steeped is he in his love for his work, that in a world of legendary bitchiness and snobbery, he maintains a DNA-deep kindness, of an authenticity rarely achieved. Cunningham made me want to try harder, to love more. So does Kimberly.

When Kimberly comes back to the US for visits, her friends and family offer her jobs and alternatives. They suggest it’s time to finish up with her “African adventure.” On the side, some ask her what her secret is, how she did “it.” Kimberly says, “The secret of how I did it is…I quit.” No secret. It’s not headline news that we are attached to the stuff and style of our lives. Nor is it news that when we find the will to voluntarily let go of our supposed needs, that many are happier for it. We make space for love.

And yet…we hang on for dear life, convinced that the next career move with a fat pay raise, the next acquisition of…some…thing…will be the one that assuages all of our desires. And then…it doesn’t.

I’m not ready to give up my nice life and run off to Africa, or start duct taping $5 rain ponchos; but it makes me think: What can I do more of? What can I do with less of? I aspire, not to stuff or style, but more love.