As I sit at my desk to write this, there is no electricity in my suburb. According to the report from the power utility, there has been cable theft at a nearby power station. The explanation arrives in the language of infrastructure and municipal updates, but to me it feels strangely familiar, like the moment I discovered a fallen tree blocking the road while running at five in the morning.
The night had been wet and windy. When I stepped outside, the air felt heavy, the sky thick with clouds that seemed swollen with rain, like a peach ready to burst. Three kilometres from home, a large droplet struck the side of my face. At first, I assumed it had fallen from a tree or perhaps from a bird overhead. Before I could look up, the rain arrived in full and sudden.
My day begins at five o’clock. The alarm rings in my studio, an arrangement that has proven useful because it forces me to leave the bedroom to silence it. Once I am up, there is no temptation to return to bed. I brush my teeth, whisper thank you for the day and drink a glass of water. Then I read.
Most mornings I begin with the media and marketing section of the Financial Mail, partly out of curiosity and partly because I am trying to understand how cultural institutions function as businesses. I read a few pieces from The New Yorker online. On mornings without electricity, I return to print. That particular morning I continued reading Born in Chains by Clinton Chauke.
Running follows the reading. People often describe running as a form of meditation. For me, it is something even further. When I sit for meditation in the evening, shoulders straight, hands resting on my thighs, my mind wanders restlessly. Thoughts arrive without invitation. Questions appear, then dissolve, then return again.
Running is different. When I run, I do not think. My eyes remain open, yet my mind feels strangely empty. I do not dwell on people, animals, work, or future plans. I notice the cars only enough to ensure they remain safely distant from my body. The rest of the world becomes indistinct. Running places me somewhere between the earth my feet strike and another world I have not yet found words to describe.
The benefits people speak about—weight loss, good health, a stronger body—arrive almost accidentally. They are real, but they are not the reason I run.
That morning the rain intensified until the road itself disappeared beneath shallow streams of water. My shoes filled quickly. I realised I was experiencing the second heaviest rain I had ever felt on my skin. The first belonged to childhood. It happened in Matsieng, the village where I grew up in Lesotho. One afternoon, my cousins and I were sent to fetch water from a nearby village. There was always a problem with water in ours. The pipe that supplied salty groundwater stood in the middle of a wetland and could not always be reached. The neighbouring village, much smaller than ours, had a reliable pump.
Their supply was excellent. The residents were less welcoming. Each time we arrived with our containers, the women complained that we would eventually bring the same shortages to their village. Their concern was understandable, but it did not make the journey easier. Once, a woman threatened to poison the tank if we continued coming.
Two kilometres from the pump, a woman from our own village shouted for us to turn back. She stood in the rain with a twenty-litre bucket balanced on her head. Her voice carried the unmistakable authority of an African mother. The storm was so heavy we could barely see beyond a few metres. The sky had turned completely grey. My grandmother was away that day. Even now, we have never spoken about the incident, perhaps because we both know she would never have allowed us to walk through such weather.
The second rain—the one I ran through years later in the city, brought that memory back with surprising clarity. For nearly an hour, I ran beneath the downpour, my cap pulled low over my eyes. Just like the rain from childhood, it came without thunder or lightning. Only water, falling steadily against my body.
The most boring form of running, in my opinion, is running on flat ground. I have never run on a treadmill. A perfectly even road feels strangely artificial. Speed can make it interesting. Running at three minutes per kilometre demands a kind of urgency, as though one has misplaced something important and is searching the roadside for it. But hills are better.
Living in a hilly suburb is a gift I rarely acknowledge properly. I have always believed I could live without an ocean nearby, but not without mountains. Hills and mountains create rhythm in running—the climb, the descent, the return. Running uphill feels almost ceremonial. Some of my most vivid memories involve running through Table Mountain from the direction of Gardens, Cape Town, or passing beneath the slopes of Lion’s Head while cyclists struggle upward beside me. These moments feel strangely joyful, as if the landscape itself participates in the effort.
Back in Matsieng, the rain eventually forced us to abandon our journey for water. We walked home arm in arm, our empty containers swinging at our sides. One of my younger cousins began to cry when the older insisted the storm might be the end of the world. The evangelists who visited our village had often warned that the world would end suddenly. That afternoon, it seemed entirely possible.
When I run today, I sometimes return to that feeling—the sensation of being small beneath something vast. Running gives me a kind of clarity that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. It is the only activity I know that can produce a sense of exhilaration without any intoxicating substance. It also solves practical problems. By the time I return home, my body is awake, my mind clear, and the day has begun. Work unfolds almost automatically. Tasks complete themselves with less resistance.
Running organises time. But perhaps the deeper reason I run has little to do with discipline or health. There is a moment during every run when I feel connected to something larger than my own thoughts—a form of intelligence far greater than my own. It is not something I can reach through sitting still. It appears only when my body is in motion.
I do not run for a six-pack stomach, nor for the promise of living to one hundred. Those ambitions seem unimportant once the road begins to rise and the body settles into its rhythm.
I run because the early baby sun sometimes appears suddenly above the horizon, pale and yellow, touching my face as if greeting me. And in that moment, the world feels both enormous and perfectly calm.
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