Six Word Saturday

BritPride brims, inside I'm Kenyan.

Given I'm hardly an athlete, I'd forgotten how moving I find the Olympics. And its squared, cubed, I discover when they're held in your country.  There's been the procession of the Olympic torch round the UK, - at the bottom of the road of my childhood home, past the local library and the fishing tackle shop;  through Welwyn Garden City, our smalltown home, past the children's much loved preschool.  When the Torch comes to Sketty, well you know this must be something different.  University of Hertfordshire where I worked till recently, student accommodation fully booked with police officers from around the country on security duty.  A young woman from the children's school in Kenya competing for Britain in the swimming.  The cyclists lining up on The Mall. Driving to work a few weeks ago, and watching a matatu-full of Kenyan athletes, in full team dress, unload outside the British High Commission, and excited, giggling, enter to get their visas.  Somehow it's all more personal this time, it touches me in a different, deeper place.

We've just watched part of the Opening Ceremony, and again I felt that pride at how it had been done. I haven't yet seen the extravaganza, but yes, the NHS for me so deserves its place of honour in our nation's celebration. The parity of ethnicity and gender - that my country has athletes of all races representing it - not the case everywhere. That it was young athletes - the sport's future not its past - who lit the flame. That young people who need their identity strengthened are given this honour, not those with the established weight of success behind them. The flame's honour guard of the 500 workers who helped build the stadium.  They wouldn't have been acknowledged in so many countries. And that each country competing has women athletes on its team, for the first time ever.  As the camera panned in on the Saudi women athletes, well we were all with them.

At BigCorporate I'm one of only two non-Kenyans of thousands of staff. It affects how I see myself.  When I lived in Madagascar, surrounded by tiny, petite, willowy women, that was how I saw myself, till the rude rearrival at Charles De Gaulle airport, when in a stroke I put on two stone and several inches.  And at BigCorporate I'm surrounded by twenty year olds from rural backgrounds, who herded goats on foot, ran tens of miles to primary school and back each day, but thanks to good exam results now work in suits.  They are runners, though for them its nothing special, rather like I'm a driver - it's a means of transport. So for now, in my mind I'm a marathon runner too, I'm a Kenyan who has herded goats, and surrounded by Kenyans who are so conscious of the chasm between success and hopes dashed, I'm out there rooting for them all.

Six Word Saturday is part of a global bloghop hosted by Cate at http://www.showmyface.com/.  Now go there and visit the others!