Barbara's Reviews > Auma's Long Run

Although it is certainly true that education is a reliable avenue out of poverty, it also comes at a heavy price and requires great resilience as this novel by a new author shows. Auma lives in a small Luo village in Kenya with her parents and her siblings. Since it is the 1980s AIDS and HIV are just starting to make their effects felt. She is an excellent runner and studies hard, dreaming that her athletic talent and her academic performance might earn her a scholarship to secondary school, which will eventually lead to her becoming a doctor. Auma's mother has always depended on her to help with the other children, but she still has free time to spend with her best friend, also a runner. Things change, though, when Auma's father returns home from the city where he has been working. He is tired, keeps losing weight, and stays in bed most of the time, never being able to summon the energy to return to his job. As others in her village die of a disease they never call by its name, false information, gossip, and superstitions swirl around the deceased. When Auma's father dies, many villagers come to honor him, but they consume the family's food stores, and it becomes clear that her mother is also ill. Although Auma has suspected that her father died as the result of AIDS/HIV, she only comes to fully understand the disease during a school lesson. Readers will be inspired by her determination to keep up with her schooling despite the challenges and the odds stacked against her. The author paints a vivid portrait of hunger and poverty and the embarrassment Auma experiences because she is an orphan and lacks the resources of others. Try though she might, it is impossible to care for her mother and siblings, make money for their food, and attend school, and she is constantly torn between what she wants to do and what she needs to do. The secrecy surrounding this disease and some of the so-called cures that led to desperate behavior on the part of some of her neighbors add authenticity to the story. I also liked how Auma resisted being married off to some man in order to solve the family's financial woes and how she somehow sorted things out for her. By the time I finished the book, I was exhausted emotionally as though I had run several marathons when all I had to do was turn a few pages. I was also left with a deep, abiding respect for this young woman whose long run to victory and something better than what others had in mind for her was achieved through schooling. By succeeding in her ambitions, she could certainly give back to others.