ABC radio’s African correspondent, Sally Sara, has finished her posting after almost five years and is returning to Adelaide.
During that time, she has reported from more than 20 countries including Sudan, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Zimbabwe.
In her last ‘Africa Letter’ for ‘The World Today’, Sara reported:
“I keep them in a plastic bag in my backpack. They stink a bit but I can’t travel without them.
My running shoes have led me to stories and friendships and moments. I go for a run every time I arrive somewhere new in Africa. It always leads to something. It’s the best way I know to get a feel for the place. I run fast enough to get away from crooks, hustlers and beggars, but slow enough to take it all in.
I’ve run through refugee camps in Sudan, along sweaty roads in Nigeria, and hurdled trolley loads of fish in the back streets of Zanzibar.
I’ve been spat on, sworn at, offered marriage, been grabbed, groped and giggled at.
My legs are whiter than white. I don’t think the locals knew that fluoro tubes could have knees and ankles.
In south Sudan, children start lining the red dirt track more than an hour and a half before I run in the afternoon. They come out just to have a look. I can hear them chattering while I warm up. Some put little sticks on the road just to see what will happen when I tread on them with my running shoes.
Some of the children run with me. The little ones only last a few hundred metres, but the teenage boys like to race and we compete all the way back to the compound.
On the last trip to Sudan, I conked out right in front of the market. A local man said: ‘Madam, what is the matter? Why are you stopping? Do you have malaria?’
‘No’, I said. ‘I’m just tired.’
He laughed.
These people, who have walked hundreds of kilometres through gunfire and hunger, were bemused by a foreigner running to nowhere and back.
I don’t know if running in Sudan is actually such a good idea. It feels almost extravagant to have enough energy at the end of the day to run just for the fun of it.
It feels a bit the same in Zimbabwe, too. When I run along the roads outside Bulawayo, maids and labourers are walking home from their jobs in the suburbs. They look tired.
But, after a few days, a hello turns into a conversation, and it’s a chance to stop and really talk to someone, and that’s what it’s all about.
Sometimes, the silence is nice too.
On some mornings in Abuja in Nigeria, factory workers would run with me. They’d join in while they were walking to work. Nothing was said, and there was no hidden motive. It was just a way to break the monotony.
The soles of their boots slapped on the road as we ran in perfect unison. Then, after a few kilometres, there’d be a nod or a wave of the hand and they’d veer off to the gates of their factory and I’d keep going back to the hotel.
In Johannesburg, there’s not so much spontaneity. Every day, I run inside at the gym, kilometre after kilometre on the treadmill. I wear my headphones and watch MTV. It’s not really safe for me to run on my own outside late in the day.
Today was my last time on the treadmill and my last official day as the ABC’s Africa Correspondent. Tonight, I’ll be on the plane back to Australia.
Tomorrow, I’ll be running in Adelaide. I’ll take my shoes with me. They’re already in the plastic bag in my backpack. But, I don’t think customs will be happy to see them. If I shake my shoes, they sprinkle a few red grains of Sudan in my hand.
The mud of Zimbabwe from last week is still splattered on the sides. The other memories are already with me.
The huffing and puffing to get up the winding, hilly streets of Freetown, dodging the spluttering taxis of Nairobi and racing the dark afternoons when the thunderstorms hurry the sunset in Kampala.
Every run has left me with something. But now, the time is coming to say goodbye to gorgeous, gorgeous Africa.
This is Sally Sara in Johannesburg for ‘The World Today’.”