Redakcja Bieganie.pl
Keeping it strictly Kenyan
Sung Woo Kim has decided to go beyond training just like Kenyans and now living the typical Kenyan lifestyle.
South Korean athlete Sung who is currently in Iten Kenya for training is a student at Stamford state University in the United States of America. He came to Kenya with a pack of overwhelming curiosity about the Kenyan athletes. He strongly believes that for him to run better, he has to learn the basic daily Kenyan lifestyle and put it in practice. He mingles with Kenyans not just in training but even in day to day’s activities.
”To be honest, to me this is amazing, how people live here is interesting. At first living this life was a bit scary. You know using the pit- latrine for the first time was not an easy thing. I mean the only thing I knew about it, was from learning in school. I had never used it anywhere, but I’m glad am getting used to almost everything here. In Seoul where I was born I was used to running water but here the story is different. What I know about this place is running water is only found in big Hotels, Guest Houses and restaurants where ordinary Kenyan athletes rarely gets to.” Said Kim.
Apparently Kim likes the Kenyan meals especially chai (Kenyan tea) and Ugali. (Made from corn floor) he doesn’t seem to straggle with any of the Kenyan food and even way of life.
“Daniel and Jeremy have been taking good care of me since I came. They introduce me a new meal every day and I like it a lot, especially Ugali and tea. After training in the morning I like to eat Ugali from the last night. It feels good because it is hard from out-side and soft in-side.”
Kim on his statement admits that Kenyans especially the Kalenjins are very generous and welcoming. He said that he didn’t expected to be welcomed just the way he was when he came to Iten though he said that some police men in plain clothes tried to rip him in the air port while he was coming to Iten.
“When I arrived at the airport, some men came to me in plain clothes claiming that they where police officers and demanded that they should my travel documents and I was like why should I trust you? Show me you’re ID and I will show you my documents. They identified themselves as police and even after showing them my travel documents they still insisted that they wanted a bribe or they would arrest me. I told them that will have to call my Embassy and my lawyer and they disappeared like a mist” echoed Kim
Sung has been training with the Kenyans since he came and he seems to like it.
“Training here is just amazing. There different training groups and you can always chose which groups to join. I used to train alone but here I got company all week and that’s want thing I like about training here. You get motivated by the surrounding”
