Imagine if you will that you live in the middle of nowhere then all of a sudden a bunch of foreigners who are dressed really silly come jogging past your field or house. This is something that happen often on our runs since we normally will make our trails in the jungle or more rural areas.
While the dogs are not normally so welcoming of the "invasion" for the most part the people that live and work out there are full of smiles and waves as we go running past.
We worry every now and then that people are going to get upset that we are on their land without permission but thankfully this country is a bit more friendly that the one I come from as far as property rights are concerned. Trespassing in USA is a great way to get shot and obviously this is something that we would prefer to avoid.
In the hundreds of runs that I have been on we have only encountered any sort of anger on the part of the locals twice and when this happens we apologize profusely, explain what our group is all about and if they are still upset we promise to never return.
We don't ever damage any of the areas we are in and the only thing that could be considered a bit "bad" about what we are doing is that in order to mark the trails we use scraps of paper to mark the trail for those that are behind in the pack.
We choose biodegradable paper that is very thin and water soluble. The next time it rains just a little bit, the paper completely dissolves. Still, we do recognize the fact that even though we take every precaution to minimize our environmental impact, we realize that this can be seen as littering by locals and that's not cool.
We appreciate the pristine nature as much as anyone else and want to preserve it as best we can. We have in the past thought about using bread instead of paper and we may transition to that in the near future. Something will eat it but the only problem could be if something, like a local dog for example, were to eat it before the people lagging at the back of the pack even arrive at a checkpoint and then they wouldn't know which way to go.
We encounter giant buffalos, chickens, houses built out of scrap, and it's basically like going back in time when you see the way that a lot of these people live out in the middle of the jungle. Some of the houses have no access to running water and simply have rainwater collection tanks for all their bathing and what not. I presume they boil the water for drinking purposes. I don't really know.
The point of this story is that when we get out to these isolated places, the people who live there generally have very little connection to the outside world, so when they all of a sudden see dozens of mostly foreigners running their direction with silly clothes on, it is probably pretty surprising to them.
I had mentioned in the past that several of these people have actually been so intrigued by what we were doing that they actually joined in with us and when they come back to our starting point, we always offer them some beer. There are 2 people in our Hash Chapter that are still members that we met completely by chance and because we were on their land running around like loons.
You are more than welcome to come and act foolish with us if you want. We do 3 runs a week at the moment and you can find full details at our website here
