Kenya's Rift Valley, where everyone runs

Kenya produces some of the world's very best distance runners, but the possibility of winning Olympic gold is not the only incentive for the country's athletes.

On the drive up into the lush hills of Iten, 2,600m (8,530ft) above sea level, we pass groups of children on their way to school.

The odd one is dawdling in a way that would seem familiar anywhere in the world, but most are running - and running fast - with a carrier bag of books swinging from one hand.

One 13-year old boy called Kenneth tells me how he runs back and forth to school every day and even runs back home for lunch.

Each run takes 40 minutes, but he has long, lean legs and says he likes it.

Like a lot of children living in the hills of western Kenya when he grows up, he wants to be an athlete. Why? Because, he tells me, then he could afford to help his family and his whole village.

With heroes like David Rudisha who holds the 800m world record, the children see that athletics can be an escape from poverty, but runners here are so good that the competition is stiff.

The times that would guarantee you a place on the national team of many European countries would leave you as one of many runners-up in Kenya.

But this exceptional pool of talent brings athletes another opportunity.

An hour from the green, peace of Iten I pull over by a line of single storey white-washed building with rusty corrugated iron roofs.

The fence which keeps the cows away is draped with shiny tracksuits - purple, red and black - drying in the sun. This is a training camp for the young people with one aim in mind - to use their running talent, not to go for gold, but to get them a scholarship to an American university.

It is early but they have already been for a 45-minute run into the hills and soon they are putting their damp tracksuits back on before jogging across the road, and ducking through a gap in the fence to get to the track - a bumpy, grassy field, marked out with chalk.

Then they begin their training session sprinting diagonally across the track, then jogging slowly round the edge, then sprinting across once more - again and again.

After 30 minutes they begin their stretches and tell me of their plans.

Nowami wants to be a nurse, Beatrice, a molecular scientist and Susteen a TV news anchor, but they know that what the Americans want them for is their speed.

Provided they train hard enough as well as passing their exams and satisfying the strict criteria for visas, they can go to the US.

The best runners here have very slim, long lower legs, so slim they almost look fragile.

Scientists have found that this does bring an advantage, as does living and training at such a high altitude, but the athletes are not keen on the suggestion that it is down to genetics.

They do not like the implication that this means they do not have to try. And they certainly do try.

In fact one athlete told me that the motivation to run your way out of poverty is so strong, that if Kenya were to become a rich country he believed it would stop producing such fast runners.

I go to another village where three primary schools are holding a competition. They are determined to include all children in the sports day, not just the best, but coaches and even an Olympic Gold medallist - Asbel Kiprop - have come to see who shows promise.

The children are told to line-up by age.

They are very excited. Every single one wants to run.

The seven-year olds go first, flinging off their shoes and then sprinting 70m across the bumpy field.

I do a bit of running myself, or maybe I should call it jogging, so I had come in my running shoes, thinking I might join in.

I was planning to wait to run with the older children, but that was until I saw how fast the seven-year olds went.

So I asked the eight-year olds if I could be in their race. Their enthusiasm results in several false starts, with me already lagging behind because I was a bit slow on the off.

Then I started sprinting as fast as I could, leaping two fresh cowpats and desperately trying to breathe enough of the thin air to keep going.

Within 10 seconds all but one of the 30 children were way in front of me. There was just one smaller one who I thought I might be able to catch up with.

They had warned me the competitive spirit was strong here and it must have rubbed off on me because I have to confess that I do not usually try to beat eight-year olds at games, but found myself using every bit of energy I could find.

I caught up and crossed the line possibly just in front of him, although to be honest I think it was probably a draw.

I can try blaming the fact that I was carrying a microphone and I am not used to the altitude. Alternatively I can just acknowledge they were really fast.

They enjoyed beating me, and did not seem surprised they had done so.

As I left the coach offered me a few words of consolation. "In this field of children today," he said, "I guarantee you there are gold medallists of the future."

No wonder I could not beat them.

By Claudia Hammond

BBC, Iten

BBC © 2012

Idiom of the week

Which is the best musical instrument?

The Big Question: There are 14 or 15 musical instruments in an orchestra, three or four in most rock bands. But which is the king? Richard Morrison launches our debate...

I once asked Anne-Sophie Mutter, the great violinist, what had made her choose the fiddle. “I didn’t,” she replied. “It chose me.” That’s how it is with prodigies. At the age of three or thereabouts they connect with an instrument in a way that seems beyond intuition. It’s as if everything about them—temperament, intelligence, physique, upbringing—catapults them towards mastering a musical tool in astonishingly little time. Typically, an infant prodigy on the violin or piano will go from zero to concerto in two years.

But they are the one-in-a-million kids. What about the rest of us? What draws us to play, or to love hearing, some instruments above all others? Why are 40m children in China learning the piano, a European instrument that has scant connection with Eastern culture? What accounts for the guitar’s dominance in Western popular music? Why do composers express their most melancholy thoughts on cellos?

These questions go beyond music. They touch on the essence of identity, aspiration, expression, history and politics, as well as what Jung called our collective unconscious. And science plays a huge part as well. When we describe a quiet flute as “soothing”, we are really commenting on the sine-wave purity of its vibrations. Similarly, the “rousing” or “joyous” timbre of a trumpet attests to its jagged array of harmonics.

In any case, does that necessarily convey joy, or a call to action? How you interpret any sound depends on its context and your knowledge. In Mahler’s symphonies and song cycles a trumpet fanfare often signifies death, grief or tragedy—but only if you know that for Mahler (whose miserable childhood was spent near an army barracks) a bugle-call was a reminder of the eight siblings who died in his youth.

What complicates matters further is the sheer variety of instruments. We began creating them ridiculously early (the earliest extant flute is 67,000 years old) and have never stopped. Recently I’ve been to concerts featuring virtuoso on both a six-stringed electric violin and the hang, a Swiss-invented steel drum of beguiling sensuality. Neither existed 20 years ago.

Take a look, if you have the strength, at the 12,000 entries in the “New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments” (1985). Then consider that the next edition will have 20,000. The standard symphony orchestra, parading a mere 14 or 15 varieties of instrument, begins to look as limited as a supermarket cheese counter.

Most of the 20,000 instruments are local riffs on universal archetypes. Almost every culture has its version of the flute, drum, guitar/lute and fiddle family. There are wide variations in the way they are tuned, constructed or played. But the biggest differences come in the social functions they fulfil. Many instruments, particularly in Eastern cultures, have religious roles. Others are associated with an elite craft, passed down from master to pupil like a trade secret.

Sometimes the same instrument can fulfil totally different roles in different cultures or ages. In Western art music, the violin is the instrument that the greatest composers—Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky—often entrusted with their deepest thoughts. But in the folk cultures of America, Ireland and eastern Europe, it is a wild invitation to a knees-up.

Similarly, in many countries—particularly under totalitarian regimes—the oom-pah of massed brass instruments is a sinister sound, linked to military might and political oppression. But in Britain the cornets and euphoniums of brass bands are aural badges of pride for the embattled working class: the instruments on which miners and mill-workers let off steam, almost literally, after their 14-hour shifts. Though the mines and mills have gone, those associations linger.

What’s fascinating today is how the popularity of certain instruments mirrors the cultural differences between West and East. In the United States and western Europe, guitar is the instrument of choice for most youngsters, and there are obvious reasons for that. Its most famous exponents enjoy iconic status as entertainers, balladeers, individualists, rebels or folk-heroes as well as (or, in some cases, instead of) being good musicians. The guitar is a good traveller across musical styles in a way that, for instance, the oboe isn’t. It’s an easy instrument to learn—at least, if you need just three chords to satisfy your musical urges. And you can buy a reasonable guitar for one-tenth of the cost of a reasonable violin.

Yet in the Far East the violin and piano are the instruments most likely to be thrust at a toddler by any self-respecting tiger-mother. Why? Precisely because neither can be truly mastered without putting in hours of disciplined, repetitive practice each day for years—a discipline that seems beyond the channel-flicking attention-spans of most Western children now. But isn’t there also something very symbolic about this? By striving to become the world’s foremost exponents of Western instruments, aren’t these Asians saying something significant about their general ambitions for themselves and their nations?

Ultimately, nominating the best musical instrument is like nominating the best position for sex. There’s no “best”. It all depends on who’s performing and how inspired they are. I was once moved to tears by a tuba—played by an autistic teenager who communicated more through this tangle of silver piping than he could ever achieve with words. In his poem “Snow”, Louis MacNeice mused that the world is “crazier and more of it than we think, incorrigibly plural”. Nothing demonstrates that better than the array of 20,000 instruments that humanity has found reasons to invent. We should cherish them all. Yes, even a world without bagpipes would be a poorer place.

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, May/June 2012

Another idiom explained:

Being an optimist 'may protect against heart problems'

Being cheerful may protect against heart problems, say US experts. Happy, optimistic people have a lower risk of heart disease and stroke, a Harvard School of Public Health review of more than 200 studies - reported in Psychological Bulletin - suggests. While such people may be generally healthier, scientists think a sense of well-being may lower risk factors such as high blood pressure and cholesterol. Stress and depression have already been linked to heart disease. The researcher from the Harvard School of Public Health trawled medical trial databases to find studies that had recorded psychological well-being and cardiovascular health. This revealed that factors such as optimism, life satisfaction, and happiness appeared to be linked associated with a reduced risk of heart and circulatory diseases, regardless of a person's age, socio-economic status, smoking status or body weight. Disease risk was 50% lower among the most optimistic individuals. 

'Not proof'

Dr Julia Boehm and colleagues stress that their work only suggests a link and is not proof that well-being buffers against heart disease. And not only is it difficult to objectively measure well-being, other heart risk factors like cholesterol and diabetes are more important when it comes to reducing disease. The people in the study who were more optimistic also engaged in healthier behaviours such as getting more exercise and eating a balanced diet, which will have some influence. But even when they controlled for these factors and others, like sleep quality, the link between optimism and better heart health remained. Although they looked at 200 studies, the researchers say this number is still not enough to draw firm conclusions and recommend more research. Much of the past work on mood and heart disease has looked at stress and anxiety rather than happiness. Maureen Talbot, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: "The association between heart disease and mental health is very complex and still not fully understood. "Although this study didn't look at the effects of stress, it does confirm what we already know which is psychological well-being is an important part of a healthy lifestyle, just like staying active and eating healthily. "It also highlights the need for healthcare professionals to provide a holistic approach to care, taking into account the state of someone's mental health and monitoring its effect on their physical health."
BBC © 2012