Participating in sports was a big part of attending Woodley Primary school, just outside Nairobi, Kenya. Football, or soccer to the North American, was the biggest team sport for the boys, second only to cricket. The girls played grass hockey and netball which is similar to basketball.
To help engender school spirit and to provide for intramural sport, every student was assigned to one of three “Houses” each with their own colour and named after one of three mountains. My house was Mt. Kilimanjaro and we wore yellow. Our principal rival was Mt. Kenya, the red team, which seemed to dominate Mt. Elgon, in blue.
Points were accumulated during the school year for all sorts of sporting contests, even marbles, and great pride was placed on finishing first at the end of the year. A huge board hung in the assembly hall upon which the record of each House was updated weekly, and in this particular year Kilimanjaro was within a few points of Kenya. Who won the trophy would come down to the final sporting event of the year: Sports Day.
As the school year drew near its close the customary sports day was held. This amounted to track and field events for the older boys and girls, with races designed to include the younger kids as well. Choosing just the right team for each House was serious business. The yearly performance of each House member would be carefully reviewed by the House Captain and his closest colleagues. It was imperative to choose the best athletes to compete in each race. The older kids also competed in high jump, long jump and throwing events such as javelin, hammer and shot put.
Everybody had to compete, but the House Captain chose carefully from each age group to match the potential skill of every boy or girl against his or her likely opposition in Elgon and Kenya House. The track and field competitions like relay and hurdles were high-profile and glamorous, the novelty races like the three-legged or sack races were not given much respect. All of them granted important points to the House, glamorous or not.
Running fast has never been my long suit. I always made the school eleven for football (the soccer team), where I developed skills in a defensive role. I was not fast, but neither was I afraid to thwart the advances of a skinny-legged winger or to challenge the ball off the feet of a striker. Similarly I generally batted early in cricket as I had the ability to block and stay in for many overs and slowly chalk up runs. I was considered a solid teammate but rarely a star performer. When my Captain made his selection for the top track and field team I was generally relegated to the novelty races, a choice that I found humiliating. The previous year I had been paired with a boy named Sidebottom in the three legged race. He was half my size, and weight, and we considered ourselves lucky to finish. This year I had great hopes for something better.
When I arrived at school, dressed in my uniform of khaki shorts, white shirt and blue horizontally striped tie on the Monday before the Friday Sports Day, I, along with just about everyone else who attended the school, packed into the assembly hall where the teams for each House were announced. The Captains ceremonially walked up the narrow stairs to the stage and provided the Headmaster with their selection of competitors for each race. The list of names were always submitted at the same time, so there was no chance for any Captain to make changes based upon the choices made by the opposition House.

My classmates at Woodley - I'm second row, first on the left.

The noisy hall fell silent as the Headmaster stepped forward to read out the names, the Captains stood beside him smiling, giving nods and winks to their “chosen” ones. I heard the names of my friends read out: Tim the hundred yard dash, Rod one of my best friends but in a different House would anchor the relay and so it went until finally my name was read out: Gordon Wilson, the egg and spoon race. Egg and spoon race! How humiliating! This was going to be worse than last year.
I pouted about the selection all day. Through English history, geography of the British Colonies, even through Bible studies where Mrs Knowles used a felt board to stick up cut out coloured characters representing the various biblical characters in her stories. How would David have felt if instead of being cast against Goliath, he was relegated to run the egg and spoon race!
I knew enough not to protest with the selection made; there was nothing to be done to change the Captain’s selection. He was an older boy, a prefect, who thought a great deal of himself. If I challenged him I knew that it would only make matters worse for me.
That evening I rolled the potato around my bowl of my dad’s chicken curry, barely participating in the ritual family conversation over dinner.
“Why so glum, Gord?” Dad asked breaking his naan and dipping.
“You’ve barely touched your food,” my Mother’s concerned voice chimed in.
“He was chosen to run the egg and spoon race!” my sister Susan chortled, her laughter infectious enough to inspire my older sister Heather and my parents who all laughed along. My face turned hotter than the curry.
I think my mum could see that I was legitimately upset, and so tempered the mood. “If that’s what you have been chosen to do then you have to be the best at it.”
“Did I ever tell you that I once had to run the egg and spoon race?” Dad always had a way of letting me know that he’d been there done that, and usually he had, but I thought this a bit too convenient although his advice stuck. “The key is not to drop your egg. Don’t try to out run them; just try to finish without dropping your egg.”
I thought about their advice, and it made sense, don’t drop the egg and be the best. The egg and spoon race required me to run one hundred yards with a boiled egg on a soup spoon with one hand tied behind my back. If the egg fell off the spoon, I was required to stop and pick it up without the aid of my feet and of course my tied hand. Any who have tried to pick up an egg with a spoon will know that it is not easy. I resolved that night that I would spend the three evenings I had left before the race practicing.
After dinner I went to the kitchen and asked our cook Opala, a Luo from Maseno who had became a part of the family, if he would hard boil me a dozen eggs so that I would have plenty to practice with the next evening after school and every other evening until Sports Day.
Every evening after school I went outside and under the shadow of a huge avocado tree, I practiced running with the hardboiled egg. At first, it fell off almost immediately, but the more it fell off, the more I was determined to master the art of egg and spoon running. After a while I was able to set a gait that kept my right hand steady and the egg perfectly balanced. Slowly I tried to increase my pace, until I found the perfect combination of gait and pace that kept the egg glued to the spoon. By the night before the big day and I finally felt good about my chances.
Friday was a beautiful sunny day. The sports fields were green, the grass fresh from the last of the long rains. Whitewash lines had been run to outline the lanes for the track, and the sport fields were dotted with yellow, red and blue flags representing the colours of the three Houses competing.
Chairs had been set up along the top of the bank for attending parents to watch the proceedings. I hoped mine would be amongst them, but their attendance was not certain due to heavy work commitments.
All of the students, proudly wearing yellow, red or blue T-shirts were seated by House on the field, while officious teachers with clip-boards and shrill silver whistles to blow hastily walked or jogged amongst us making sure that we knew exactly when our race was to take place and where we had to line up.
The egg and spoon race had been scheduled for late in the afternoon, and the day had gone very well for my House, Mt. Kilimanjaro. Four points were awarded for a first, two for a second, and one for a third place finish, and because there generally were six participants, two from each House per race, it was possible to score six points in a race with a first and second showing. In past years Mt. Kenya, the red house, would have been well ahead by the afternoon, but such was not the case this Sports Day. Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya were virtually tied.
I spent the morning cheering on my House mates, our screams blending with the shrill ululating cries of the Muslim women who prepared for a wedding that was to take place beyond the fence that separated the school ground from their village. The women finally dressed in purple, pink, orange and gold prepared the wedding feast over open fires, and the smell of their spiced food wafted in the air around us.
Our lunch was a sliced cucumber and butter sandwich with a thin broth soup, provided by the parent volunteers, and by mid afternoon in the hot sun, I was glad that I had offered half my sandwich to Penny Law who had done brilliantly in her races in the morning. Truth be told, that’s not why I made the offer, she was smart, pretty and a good athlete, and I was sure that she had let me catch her during a game of kiss-chase a few recesses before. In any event, by the time Mrs Lawson blew her silver whistle in my ear announcing my egg and spoon race, I was happy not to have a full stomach.
During the morning events I had kept as close eye on the rows of chairs on the bank, as I had on the scoreboard which still showed Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya in a dead heat. I hoped that one of my parents might have attended, but I saw no sign of them until I was standing at the starting line, hand tied behind my back, my boiled egg sitting firmly in the bowl of my spoon.
That’s when I saw them: my mother, dressed in a flower print cotton dress, her curly blond hair blowing in the light breeze, sat next to my father who stood, jacket hooked over his shoulder on the thumb of one hand the other in his pocket. Suddenly, inexplicably, I wished they hadn’t come.
The principle, a handsome, athletic man, was poised to start the race. I was lined up with one of my House mates and four competitors, two from each of the rival Houses. The principle leaned forward and I heard him call “on your mark, get set…” then he fired the starter’s pistol. BANG! The six of us were off!
At the twenty yard mark, I was running last, but then the tall skinny kid wearing Elgon blue dropped his egg and by the forty yard mark I was a close fifth. In my peripheral vision I saw two more eggs fall off spoons, and by the sixty yard mark I was third behind one red and one yellow shirt, my House mate. Then my House mate dropped his egg and at the eighty yard mark I was running second, but the kid in Mt. Kenya red had a good lead and was headed to the finishing tape when he made a fatal error, he looked back to see where I was, and in that split second his egg left his spoon. He scrambled to try to pick it up, but I was passed him feeling the finishing tape hug my chest. I had won!
I turned to see that my running mate had recovered his egg and was running past Kenya red, to come second. We had taken a maximum of six points, and our House Mt. Kilimanjaro was ahead on points! We were mobbed by the other kids in our House, and the Captain gave me a slap on the back, “I knew you could do it Wilson, that’s why I chose you!” Of course, it had to be his choice that had made the difference; I just smiled at him happy to have helped the team.
I looked up to the row of chairs, and my mother and father were both clapping, big smiles on their faces. Later on the car ride home, I saw my father’s eyes in the rear view mirror as he spoke words I still remember today.
“In life, Gord, you don’t have to be the fastest, nor the fittest, just be the most consistent. Don’t let the egg fall off the spoon.”

1. Myst DeVana Says:
   March 14th, 2010 at 2:05 pm

   Put me right into the scene and left me thinking – two of my favorite attributes for a great tale. The tone reminds me of James Herriot and methinks this story and some compatriots should have a binding put ’round them.