On the ground, running
NEW HAVEN -- Running is not a thing in Indonesia. Joining races is a trend built mainly out of a sense of camaraderie. But taking to the streets for a jog is, well, tough logistically.
My running trail in Jakarta was along a flood canal, where I passed piles of fly-infested garbage, dodged motorbikes to cross roads and was greeted by calls of, “Hello, Mister.” On the streets of northern New Haven, which harbors Yale University and East Rock, a park with shaded dirt paths and cat-tail encrusted reservoirs, I passed other runners, a quaint wine bar and Mexican joint with outdoor seating.
This is charming New Haven, a fabulously stratified city that also makes for interesting running. Neighborhoods of bright, porch-ringed houses cluster around Yale’s campus. A layer away and people take up residence on porches. Factories overshadow sidewalks. Police cars seem to be in abundance. A man from Atlanta participating in a workshop I’m taking described Yale as a “fortress.”
“You think there are a lot of police?” said an officer, incredulous, when I asked about the heavy police presence. “There’s not enough.”
Balding and thick, like a bulldog, he told me to keep things out of sight if I parked my car on the street. His partner, who sported bright, baby-pink nail polish and a head of orange braids, cautioned me to lock my downstairs windows to prevent robberies. People had been known to kick in air-conditions units.
A recent study by Brookings found that New Haven is among the top 10 cities in America where the gap between the rich and the poor is widest. The neighborhood to the west of East Rock was probably the poorest in the city — if not that state, said one of the officers.
East Rock is where I met Michael, a black man with a limp who told me he lived under a nearby bridge. I made Michael jump as I passed him on a quiet residential street where he was peaking into garbage bins.
“Sorry to scare you,” I said.
He paused before beginning his appeal for change: “I’m just trying to get some hot soup.”
The approach in search of money, the backstory, are new to me. In Indonesia people in need shake a cup on a bridge or hop on a bus with a ukulele and busk. It’s not that I don’t remember the begging, the evident homelessness, the people sleeping on park benches. But I’m surprised how much the way of selling it has affected me.
I listen, I dole out pocket change, I feel ashamed at the same time this signal of inequality puts me oddly at ease in neighborhoods so homogenous they make me nervous.
Tonight I remembered why I like running. I remembered the times in Jakarta when I'd first arrived that I would run wide-eyed soaking in the life, the cacophony, observing the vast differences and the sameness (the elderly woman on a bench at a national monument who smiled at me the same way someone would have in Ohio).
It’s that freedom, that ability to be in my own head long enough without distraction to brainstorm, to contemplate and to cross into places unexpectedly that challenge my assumptions of the world around me.
