Joyce Nduku running during a marathon - HANDOUT
It’s 2014 and Joyce Nduku is turning 60.
Unlike most 60-year-olds cooling off from years of work to recline into sedentary lives, Joyce Nduku is different. She is running.
On this particular day in 2014, she’s in running gear, her running shoes laced tight.
One step after another, keep going, she whispers to herself, for every sweat dripping off her face is for a cause.
She keeps pumping her legs, focused on the race. She knows that running is a mental game; tell your mind to keep going, that you’re able, and the body responds with energy.
There are runners in front of her as well as behind her. She’s the oldest in this marathon, a luminary swimming against the current that sweeps most people her age, and above her age, down the stream of laid-back lives with little physical straining. People in running circles call her Tata Nduku. Tata means grandmother. She is Tata, the marathon granny.
Joyce Nduku isn’t running away from anything; she is running towards something, for someone. She’s running for a boy back in her village who was born with rectal malformation, a birth defect occurring when the anus and rectum don’t develop properly.
A seasoned charity marathon runner, Joyce Nduku made a deal with God days ago that she’d use every coin raised from this marathon to pay for the boy’s surgery.
Her T-shirt pasted onto her sweaty back, beads of sweat rolling down her face, she keeps going. Every bead dripping off her face is for a cause.
It’s 2024 and Joyce Nduku is now 70 years old. In all honesty, she doesn’t look 70. She looks younger, as if 70 exists only on paper, not her.
Maybe her only claim to 70 is the hint of white and grey on her hair, which she keeps trimmed short.
On this day in June, she has invited Qazini into her home in Kitengela, Kajiado county, about 34km south of the capital, Nairobi. She shares the story of her journey as a marathoner. Every journey has a beginning point, and that’s where she starts.
Joyce Nduku running during a marathon - HANDOUT
THE BACKSTORY
In 2004, Joyce Nduku turned 50. It’s a blessing to celebrate such a milestone but for her, the joy came with a problem. Her knees ached, throbbing with all signs of arthritis.
She was then a staff at Kenya Medical Research Institute, Kemri, one of the leading health institutions in Kenya, which meant she understood that most diseases attack people from the age of 50.
“One morning as I prepared to go for fieldwork, I struggled to tie my shoelaces. The pain in my knees had worsened, making such a minor routine task of tying laces arduous. The pain worried me and I wondered, could it be that my lifestyle has contributed to this problem?”
Before then, Nduku had taken care of her health, though she hadn’t been so keen on her lifestyle. For example, she wasn’t deliberate on her diet and physical exercise. She’d moved up and down working in the field for Kemri, and while most consider such movement enough physical exercise for someone her age, Nduku thought otherwise.
It was then that she made a deliberate decision to make lifestyle shifts: to be conscious of her diet and ramp up her physical exercise. The latter, she made up her mind to achieve through running.
“I chose running because it is simple. It doesn’t require a lot of logistics, and anyone can start at any time, from wherever they are,” she said.
“You get your tracksuit or T-shirt and shorts, a pair of running shoes, and schedule some time to jog or engage in brisk walking. It’s not rocket science.”
Joyce Nduku had never run before, unless we count the compulsory running her school teachers enforced many years ago during games time when she was a primary school pupil.
After running solo for two months, she decided to start a running group at Kemri because running is more consistent with a team where members psyche each other up and hold each other accountable.
HIT THE GROUND RUNNING
They hit the ground running, literally, but this wasn’t without occasional jeers from naysayers finding it crass for older women to wear tights and be on the streets.
Joyce Nduku never cared. In life, you get to moments of personal convictions where words of critics, meant to knock the wind out of your sails, wield no power over you. Because you know your why.
It didn’t take long for Nduku to begin reaping the benefits of running. Her memory improved; her mind could now “retrieve, at night, information I had forgotten during the day”. She also felt “younger and energised”. Her newly found hobby, she decided, was here to stay.
Joyce Nduku during the Nairobi City Marathon - HANDOUT
A few weeks into running, Joyce Nduku heard about the Standard Chartered Nairobi Marathon. It was in 2004 and the annual marathon was now in its second edition.
“Why not sign up for it?” Nduku asked herself. “It’s time I take on a challenge.” She registered for the marathon and for the first time in her life, ran a half marathon.
Joyce Nduku was a sight to behold: A 50-year-old woman running with a heavily bandaged knee. The issue with her knee still plagued her, though with treatment and her deliberate exercising, she was well on a recovery lane.
“After the marathon, I walked from KICC in Nairobi’s CBD all the way to my home. Back then, I was living in Nairobi West. In the days that followed, I felt an unexplainable peace with self.”
In 2005, Joyce Nduku ran the Lewa Safari Marathon and proceeded to run it for eight consecutive years. However, when the organisers revised their registration fee northward, making it unmanageable for many Kenyans, Nduku pulled the plug and focused on other marathons.
Nduku’s presence and participation in marathons inspired many. People began celebrating her in running circles. However, her colleague runners couldn’t call her by her name, Joyce Nduku.
As she explained, “In the African culture, younger ones have been taught not to call the older ones by their names. It’s a respect thing. So, they started calling me Tata, which means grandmother. I liked it.”
THE BOY
Think about living with a defect where your rectum wasn’t fully formed. A defect you neither asked for nor deserved; it came attached to your life when you breathed your first. It means you can’t move your bowel like normal people do. You need bowel management programmes; for example, scheduled bowel evacuations. You’ve never relieved yourself the normal way.
Exercise your empathy a little bit and fit in the shoes of the boy’s mother. You carried a pregnancy to term, nine gruelling months. And it all led to a hospital bed, in a maternity ward, where labour pains cut and stung you for hours.
You weep and break sweat as you push a life out of you. But then not long after your baby’s first wails fill your ears, the doctor, sullen, faces you with the news. “Your baby has a defect. Rectal malformation. I’m sorry.” It’s probably the first time you hear of that defect. How first times can change lives for a long time, sometimes for good!
That’s the pain the boy and her family endured for years. Joyce Nduku, on a hospital bed, vowed to God to change that life. If only…
The surgery was successful. Joyce Nduku pulled on her running shoes again, organised a charity run for her 60th birthday, and invited her friends. They raised enough money to pay for a correctional surgery for the boy.
When the boy went in for his surgery, Joyce Nduku’s mind tossed fear up to the surface. What if he dies in there? She asked God to preserve the life of the boy, for if he died on the operation table, the guilt would live with her for the rest of her life. She was the one who’d taken the kid from the village and brought him here.
She hung around the theatre for close to eight hours; pacing corridors, praying, hoping. God granted her request, and the boy now lives a normal life.
Another charity work that Joyce Nduku has been involved in is the construction of the first-ever public children’s cancer hospital in sub-Saharan Africa. The construction is underway in Eldoret at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital. Here’s a fun fact: the work is being entirely funded by marathoners. People like Joyce Nduku who have vowed to run for charity. Every sweat dripping off my face is for a cause.
Joyce Nduku after the Prof Wangari Maathai run - HANDOUT
LIFESTYLE ADVICE
“I’ve worked for many years at Kemri, one of the leading health institutions, and I can tell you: 80 per cent of bed occupancy in hospitals is as a result of lifestyle diseases. Kenyans do one thing so well, yet they do another poorly. They eat a lot of junk yet fail to properly exercise,” Tata said.
“Take the example of a middle-class Kenyan living and working in Upper Hill. You’ll find them behind steering wheels in the morning, stuck in traffic. And I ask, why can’t you use that opportunity to walk or cycle to work, given it’s not so far away? You are not only congesting our roads but also doing a great disservice to your body. Body exercise keeps you fit mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually.”
Joyce Nduku understands that a lifestyle change might cause you the loss of some friends.
“I am aware that choosing to walk to work or cycle, or to be on the streets running, or to shift your diet and change the places you hang out, might cost you some friendships.
“Some friends want to hang out with you the way they used to hang out with you, indulging in activities that pose a danger to your health. If you choose a healthy lifestyle but then encounter such friends, cut them off. I experienced the same when I started running. Some friends thought me a mad woman, wearing tights at my age and running in the streets. But who cares? In my seventies, I am stronger and healthier compared to most of my peers because of a healthy lifestyle.”
In her family, some of her siblings suffer from hypertension, whereas some of her uncles collapsed from heart attacks. None of these diseases have come near Joyce Nduku. She chalks it up to her healthy lifestyle and advises not only her family members but also anyone reading this story to pick up a healthy lifestyle. It’s never too late to start.
“We need to be deliberate on what we eat. Look at our parents and grandparents who lived during times when there wasn’t great advancement is technology. They ate healthy foods like githeri, whole maize flour grinded at posho mills, and fresh vegetables. They lived long, healthy lives. But now? The nation is in the claws of refined foods,” she said.
“One scenario makes me shake my head. During holidays when we visit our relatives upcountry, we shop refined foods for them, thinking we are gifting them and treating them to a great holiday. In return, we carry back to the city healthy foods fresh from their farms. Why are we selling to them the idea that refined foods are superior?”
In truth, when we sell the idea to our relatives and friends upcountry that refined foods are superior to their fresh-from-farm products, we tamper with their healthy eating lifestyles. We introduce a slow serial killer into their systems: refined foods and junk.
Nduku currently lives in Kitengela on the outskirts of Nairobi. Retired, she chose not to employ a house help but instead do everything for herself. She maintains a kitchen garden where she produces her own fresh vegetables. She keeps dogs, rears chickens and grows trees and flowers, which she enjoys watering. She also enjoys domestic tourism, exploring Kenya with a group of her friends.
“Kenya is beautiful. I encourage Kenyans to be domestic tourists; I’ve discovered places I never knew existed. And it’s easy, you research for places then come together with like-minded friends and car-pool.”
In her own words, this is what her daily routine looks like:
“I’m an early riser. By 5.30 in the morning, I am up. I lock my dogs and then go for my morning run. I run six to 10 kilometres a day (an average of 1 hour 20 minutes), six days every week. If it rains before I leave the house, I cancel running, but if rain finds me already running, I keep going,” she said.
“When I get back from my running, I feed the chicken, have breakfast and then tend to my kitchen garden. I normally have an early dinner at 5 o’clock but with snacks in between breakfast and then. Occasionally, I enjoy a glass of good wine.”
Joyce Nduku runs a minimum of two marathons every year. Her dream is to participate in all six major world marathons: Chicago, Boston, New York, Tokyo and Berlin. So far, she’s run the Chicago marathon twice.
She is a mother of two boys, who are now adults working and charting out their journeys.
Her philosophy in life: In your journey, make a difference in someone else’s life.
This story first appeared in qazini.com and is distributed by Bird Story agency
