Olana – An Ethiopian runner without a breakthrough

This is an interview conducted by journalist Buster Emil Kirchner, who has run into Olana during his travels in Africa. Olana is a great example of a strong Ethiopian runner, but unfortunately has yet to make her breakthrough. This article takes you through the life of a talented Ethiopian runner who has yet to get her chance to run in Europe and the rest of the world.

When I met Olana, the Ethiopian runner

Olana lives in Ethiopia. He has difficulty supporting his family, and his job as a security guard is far from optimal, but when he laces up his running shoes, he enters a parallel world of dreams and hopes.
It is Wednesday afternoon, the sun is shining, and we are sitting in a circle on the lawn drinking tea and coffee. Some have been lucky enough to grab a plastic chair – others are sitting on the ground. We are in Ethiopia, specifically Waliso, a medium-sized town 115 kilometers south of the enormous capital, Addis Ababa. If I hadn’t found Wako’s organic farming project online, I would never have made it past Waliso. The town itself is uninteresting, and most Ethiopians don’t even know it exists. But here lives Wako, whose grandfather was given a barrel of land a few kilometers outside the town, after having been part of the Ethiopian army, which helped drive out the Italians in the 1940s and made Ethiopia the only African country that has never been colonized. Today, Wako, his wife and one-year-old daughter live on that barrel of land.
And in Wako’s compound there is room for everyone. Friends and family come to visit here every day to turn the world situation around. I enjoy the atmosphere, and the few hours of volunteer work on Wako’s farm are not particularly demanding. The atmosphere is free and uninhibited, and the temperature is not as unbearable as you might think. 25 degrees, light wind and good conversations, that’s just me, and that’s where I meet Olana.

Not like the others

Olana is a cautious man. He is tall, slim and a little awkward as he sits there on the ground, surrounded by friends. I am sitting on a plastic chair. Olana speaks very little English, but still enough that we can carry on a primitive conversation. He is a runner, he tells me. Six times a week he laces up his running shoes and trots off, but before he can say more, he is interrupted by Wako, whose English is at a much higher level: “He is one of the best runners in Ethiopia, and I have helped him a lot.”
With the usual tendency to exaggerate among Wako and his compatriots, I take his words with a grain of salt, but for some reason I still find Wako’s statement credible. Because there is something special about this man. He drinks neither coffee nor tea, and he certainly does not indulge in the mild, narcotic intoxicant, kath, which is chewed diligently by the remaining guests this Wednesday afternoon. No, he is balanced, reserved and humble.
The conversation continues, and Olana talks about his love of running. “It satisfies me and makes me happy,” he says, before, with a little help in English from the friends sitting around, he recounts his best results. While running seems to be his strong point, English is just not his favorite discipline, and Wako is forced to act as an intermediary and translator between me and this 26-year-old running enthusiast.
And that’s pretty much it. Olana talks, Wako translates and I listen. Olana is married, has one child and dreams of success at renowned running events. He works as a security guard in front of the bank, Oromia International Bank. Unfortunately, the job as a security guard is poorly paid, and the approximately 300 kroner a month that Olana earns is not enough to feed the family at home. Fortunately, his parents have given him a small piece of land where he and his wife grow hops, which are used for beer. A picture of a tight economy quickly emerges, and my first thoughts are how and to what extent one can prioritize a serious running career when every day is a struggle to put food on the table? I’m interested in knowing more about that, and since I’ve also gained a good deal of sympathy for this friendly creature, we agree to meet two days later at 9 in the morning. Then Olana will show me her house and her family, he says, before we say goodbye and bump our shoulders against each other in the traditional Ethiopian “handshake.”

Invited inside

It’s 9am on Friday morning when Wako’s phone rings. “It’s Olana, he’s just running a little late,” Wako says. After almost six months in Africa, it’s no surprise to me that the locals have a more relaxed attitude towards time than we do in the West, so I take another sip of my coffee and continue reading my book.
An hour later, Olana shows up. He’s wearing a running kit in the Ethiopian colors; red, yellow, and green. He looks good. His running pants are clean and not nearly as worn as I had imagined, and so is his shirt. He has a hard time hiding his nervousness and is pacing around, almost restless. It’s probably not every day that he has a coffee date with a ‘frenji’, as the white man is called in Ethiopia. Olana carries a photo album under his arm, and I’ve barely greeted him before I’ve put the first picture in his hand. It’s a picture from a running competition, he tells me eagerly in his broken English. I ask if we shouldn’t wait to see the pictures until we get to his house. Olana accepts.
The road to Olana’s house is an experience in itself. Sheep, goats, donkeys and stray dogs wander around on dirt roads with huge potholes, smelly garbage heaps and wooden houses built of large sticks. While the surroundings lead to thoughts of decay and misery, the situation is immediately different with the strong smell of coffee, which becomes more and more intense the closer we get to Olana’s house. I had probably figured out that coffee was on the menu. Ethiopia is the homeland of coffee, and by tradition the coffee beans must be roasted until the coffee turns pitch black.
Olana’s house is built of long, solid wooden poles and consists of two rooms. One room is a large and spacious living room. There are, atypically for Ethiopian homes, quite high ceilings. The other room is the bedroom, which is dedicated to the family’s only bed, and it is not nearly as large. I am not shown the kitchen and toilet, but they are probably two separate buildings nearby. The house is nicer, cleaner and larger than average. Olana must be a proud homeowner.
In addition to Olana’s wife and son, the mother and three sisters have also found their way to the primitive wooden house to meet this white, foreign man from Denmark. Only one of the sisters can string two English words together, but in return I get lots of smiles along the way from the whole gang, who are all humble and welcoming. I am offered a seat and take a seat in the indisputably best chair in the house. Olana sits next to me. The rest of the family sits behind us on stools and mattresses, which is actually quite annoying, because I sit with my back to them and therefore can’t see them. But I accept that it is probably an Ethiopian custom and stay seated.
Olana is eager to show me the family photo book. It contains running pictures of himself, but also pictures of close and not-so-close family members. Looking at the pictures doesn’t require much language skills, which is very fortunate, because Olana’s English is worse than I initially remembered.

Coffee and runners are the largest export goods

So it’s up to me to start the conversation, and peace be with it. I want to know more about how to practice elite sports in a poor developing country with hunger and political conflicts? What do you eat? How do you train? What are the challenges? Now Olana opens up.
There are, unsurprisingly, plenty of challenges. “The biggest challenge is the financial aspect of having to finance running equipment and transportation to competitions,” says Olana, while his wife, Dester, pours me a small cup of coffee. The running shoes he’s wearing were bought for him by Wako, and the aforementioned, beautiful running set is the only one he owns of its kind. Several of the competitors have three pairs of running shoes; one for track, one for road and one for track. Olana only has one pair of shoes, and I feel a little sorry for him. So it’s uphill. Former running buddies have left Ethiopia and are now competing in Europe for big prize money, and although it’s not homesickness that Olana suffers from, I sense that he’s a little envious of those who are now living the running dream in the affluent West.
And the competition in Ethiopia is tough – extremely tough. The East African country has a long and proud tradition of long-distance running. It is said that long-distance runners, along with coffee, are the country’s biggest exports. The legendary, now retired, Haile Gebreselassie is iconically popular throughout Ethiopia. The long-distance runner, who is considered by many to be the best ever, won two Olympic gold medals in the 10,000-meter distance, the Berlin Marathon four times and set no fewer than 27 world records. Gebreselassie’s achievements speak for themselves, but in this context, one should not forget his compatriot, Kenenisa Bekele, who held the world record in the 3- and 5000-meter distances for more than 10 years. You have to get up early if you want to compete with the best Ethiopian runners.

Where does the motivation for running come from?

Back to the hut in Waliso. I explain to Olana that serious athletes in Denmark focus a lot on their diets, but before I can finish my sentence, Olana has spoken for the rare occasion and mentioned her favorite food and drink: Cornbread, honey, hop juice and lots of water, sounds like the most important things in the diet plan. Not exactly a recommendable diet, but as Olana says, he doesn’t have many other options. It’s not that Olana is ignorant when it comes to a performance-enhancing lifestyle. He says that he always tries to get plenty of sleep and that he runs in the morning, because that’s when he’s fresh in the head and the temperature is bearable..
As I take a sip of my coffee, or ‘buna’ as the locals call it, a caffeine bomb with far too much sugar, I try to put myself in Olana’s shoes. I try to imagine what it must be like to pull on my running shoes (pretty much) every single day while the family struggles to meet the most basic needs? It’s hard for a young, West Jutland man like me to relate to, but I wonder where the motivation comes from? “I’m always motivated to improve my times,” says Olana, anything but resigned. He’s been running since he was a little boy and knows nothing else.
Olana doesn’t say it herself, because her English skills are unfortunately not good enough, but I clearly interpret it as meaning that running represents a space of freedom and not least a hope of being able to make money from her hobby. Money so that he and his family don’t have to worry about getting three meals a day. Money so that Olana can send her three-year-old son, Bekka, to school in a few years. But also money so that Olana can improve the conditions for other runners in the local community:

-If my dream of a professional running career comes true, it will not only benefit me and my family, but also the local community. I will train young running talents, and give them the materials that I myself have lacked in my running career.

Bank visit and blank stare

My coffee cup is being refilled. The mixture of caffeine and sugar goes straight into the bloodstream. The conversation has picked up speed, and Olana and I both laugh out loud when, after several valiant attempts, I fail to explain what a heart rate monitor is. Not even the family sitting behind us, watching our fun, has ever heard of such an object that can be strapped around the upper body and connected to a watch. It will probably be a few years before the heart rate monitor comes to Waliso.
Hopefully, Olana will one day get to know a heart rate monitor. First, though, there is a job as a security guard to take care of, and Olana, cautious, modest and reserved as he is, is not really the prototype of a security guard. It is not his dream job either, he tells me, adding that he will not take on the job because it is the only one he can get. I suggest that we visit the bank and see the place he works, and before long we are out the door and on our way to Oromia International Bank.
Olana insists on paying the approximately one and a half kroner it costs to take a ‘bajaj’ (known as a tuktuk in Asia) to the bank, where he spends most of his waking hours. He is allowed to do so, and not long later we arrive at the bank. Olana greets a colleague. I follow and take a few pictures. Whereas Olana previously proudly showed me her photo album, the visit in front of the bank is almost a contrast. Olana is now silent and blank-eyed. The job as a security guard is clearly not what he lives for. We quickly set course back towards Wako’s compound. This time I pay for the transport.

“If I get the chance”

When we get back to Wako’s compound, I thank Olana for the great hospitality he has shown. It has been such a privilege to have the opportunity to meet him and his family. It may sound like a cliché, but it is incredibly life-affirming to see people who have so little be as outgoing, helpful and smiling as Olana and his family. Before Olana turns her back on me and disappears through the gate, we bump our shoulders and say goodbye. We exchange phone numbers and promise to keep in touch.
However, it doesn’t seem like Olana really believes that the road to better times – both in his running career and in life as a whole – starts with himself. He uses the phrase “if I get the chance” frequently, and it gives the impression that he hopes for help from outside. I promise him to do a fundraiser in Denmark. Maybe people will help, because as Olana, convinced and persistently claims, new running equipment will mean new and better results, and a big step on the road to a brighter future.

If you would like to know more about Olana or help him through better times, please contact journalist Buster Emil Kirchner on tel. 20581606