Sons Of The Wind

So Kenyan women are seldom encouraged in sport. Time and again wonderfully talented 14-year-olds have gotten pregnant, married, quit school and given up running. There has never been a female Kenyan Olympic medalist.

Down through the generations, as the raiding life killed off slow runners and made fathers of the swift, the tribes must have distilled their talent. The genes that shape football tackles or sumo wrestlers would have been winnowed away. Always the culture exalted endurance. And so the Kalenjin men became not explosively muscular, but lean and tireless.

Then the British came in and couldn't tolerate all the cattle raiding to which this tirelessness was devoted. So they substituted sport. "They jailed the raiders and put them to work leveling and marking out running tracks," says John Manners, a former Peace Corps teacher in Kenya who has made an extensive study of Kalenjin runners and whose help in preparing this article was invaluable. "Because the Kalenjin, and especially the Nandi, were such frequent offenders, they got a disproportionate number of tracks in their districts and the biggest push to participate."

In the 1920s, British officials began to organize local track meets, putting up blankets and cooking pots as prizes. The Nandi flocked in to race, as much for the competition between younger and older warriors as for the worldly goods. Later, army and police recruiters came to these meets and importuned the victors as they crossed the finish line. Young Kalenjin men entered the ranks in great numbers and found in service careers a way to continue running. Two thirds of Kenya's champions first achieved international renown while in uniform.

The first modern hero was Kiptalem Keter, an 800-meter runner in the 1950s who was a corporal in the tribal police. As a child, Boit was transfixed by the sight of Keter. "He had a long mustache, and he never lost" Boit says. "He was always in front. He refused to let anyone else even lead." The effect on Boit was transparent. He usually ran exactly the same way.

Boit invites you to make a short side trip from Kilibwoni to the wedding of steeplechaser Joshua Kipkemboi. The party has gathered in corn stubble at sunset, and there is much passing of a celebratory gourd of pungent mursik, or curdled milk. The bride's smile and gown are incandescent. Kipkemboi, who will finish second to Kariuki in the '90 Commonwealth Games steeplechase, stands impassive, smooth-faced, and you think of the day in 1981 when Boit married Lillian Maina, a Kalenjin of the Kipsigis tribe.

She had gone to United States International University in San Diego. He was working on his Ph.D. at the University of Oregon in Eugene. When word of their engagement got back to Kenya, Boit's family conveyed a dowry of five cows to Maina's parents.

Maina came down the aisle of Eugene's Central Presbyterian Church in white silk and pearls. Boit stood at her side like a polished spear. When the preacher got to the vows, and Boit began to speak, it was in the dry-reed voice of the Nandi blood oath.

The hair stood up on the back of the guests' necks. The preacher stiffened, the church evaporated and the gathering was transported to hills covered with blazing green tea and thatch-roofed huts. These are not men who falter in ceremony.

Drive carefully says the sign outside Eldoret, BLOODLESS ROAD LOOKS GOOD. Eldoret, not far from where Keino now runs a farm and orphanage, is a fine place to spend the night. Kibor says his secondary school is about 60 miles north, in Chesoi, and his grandmother's house a bit farther on, but it is better to go in daylight.