Hypothesis and Observable Implications

If migration theory serves as my scholarly starting block, beginning theories suggest movements that reflect available market size and the resulting connection between supply and demand. While early Kenyan runners appeared in the Olympics by virtue of individualized efforts and underdog success stories, this preliminary model could not be extrapolated to explain the powerhouse that is modern-day Kenyan athletics. Instead, there must be significant cross-national market penetration by players in the business, and furthermore the penetration is probably on the side of the middlemen and first “demanders”—the managers. My first assumption is that these managers can and do recruit from inside Kenya, as most if not all young runners are too poor, disconnected, and lack the credentials to showcase their talent abroad without assistance. If this holds true, we might expect:

1. 
   Managers, the dealers in this network, to possess rational incentives to pick selectively from a pool of runners. Because this pool is large, economically weak, and desperate, managers are able to interchange runners to increase their possibility of finding and signing the next Gold Medalist.
   
2. 
   Runners have a rational incentive to move away from their home communities, initially to seek profit and ultimately to maintain profit and its ensuing lifestyle. Avoidance of social ties and expectations to give back are a strong possibility. Reasons for this avoidance are sometimes a hesitance to give back but more often a desire to navigate more adeptly in a newfound, higher socioeconomic class.
   
3. 
   With a static number of internationally-recognized big-name races (basically the Olympics, World Championships, and a few other races) and a growing demand and supply for niche races, inter-state control of migration will be usurped. Free enterprise has privatized the market for athletes and increased the total number of migrating Kenyan runners. This in turn, due to lucrative opportunities abroad, boosts total supply on the ground in Western Kenya.
   

1. 
   An informal mode of economy that has been transnationalized and therefore formalized in many ways. However, the modus operandi of international athletics will remain informal, especially at the nodes of transnational networks. Consequently:
   

1. 
   Informal trust and socioeconomic expectations are meant to be honored, but fail to hold up to the tests of a slowly-formalizing system. Thus individualized and self-interested rationalism is allowed to predominate amongst agents with very different bargaining positions.
   
2. 
   Regulation is rendered problematic and insufficient in this hybrid formal/informal international labor market for athletes.
   
3. 
   Contracts outweigh verbal agreement in the interstitial hybrid space between informal and formal segments of the international labor market.
   

2. 
   Due to path-dependent and nuanced possibilities for migration, traditional neoclassical economic markets do not prevail. Instead:
   
   1. 
      Micro-level markets take place on the ground at recruitment, but
      
   2. 
      Wages are never assured and income-generation is sporadic at best – recruitment is for a matter of days and not months or years
      
      1. 
         Thus labor migration describes the position of runners more adequately than does labor economics.
         
   3. 
      Supply and demand is not only for singular labor events (as suggest immediately above), it is also features an exceptional market where both supply and demand are relatively elastic and fixed.
      
      1. 
         Therefore there exist possible alternative mechanisms to reach “market equilibrium” in the form of prize money and other forms of payoff.
         
      2. 
         Autonomous actors set these prices either autonomously or influenced by factors outside the immediate market for running labor.
         

1. 
   Who you know and who you could know define an objective outside that of “becoming fast”.
   
2. 
   Credentials are subjective – the skills athletes have do not speak for themselves. Physical and personal skills must be demonstrated for a “laborer” to successfully be “checked out”, presumably by professionals in the international labor market in the Global North.
   
3. 
   Spatial and locational circumstances, especially of runners, are crucial in being discovered and facilitated. Local “space geography” plays a large role in athletics migration.
   

I have chosen my case study to be explicitly about professional athletics in Kenya. Reference will be given to the one other running giant that is Ethiopia, but it will not be scrutinized beyond a cursory level. The focus will be on the networks (with their actors and their nodes) surrounding the international labor market for these runners. The networks span country and continental borders, with the predominant primary resource base in Kenya; Nairobi is the major bureaucratic hub and Eldoret (and its surrounding area) is the “running hub”, so to speak. On the other side of the network is the Global North—namely Europe and the United States, which represent most secondary resources. Important actors are the actual runners, their managers, coaches, race/event organizers, and sponsors. Using the actual players as a case-study is useful, because financial well-being and resource-distribution starts and ends with these people.

Oddly, this sports case study is structurally and financially actor-centric, as the economics are almost entirely confined to those immediately involved in the running events. Positive (or negative) monetary spillovers of sports engagements into national and local economies are infrequent if they do not have immediate actors as a conduit*. The absence of an attached sports economy involving ticket sales, advertising, merchandising, and involved spectators takes away many possible variables that would otherwise affect global sports migration. For instance, Olympic Games, World Cups, and inter-country invitational basketball events have a wide spread of economic effects in their host location, if you are considering issues of development. Interestingly enough, such events have not been the growth engines they are purported to be*⁵⁹, so in theory studying immediate actors is the most relevant developmental concern.

With such a streamlined and linear labor network, this case study is great for observing position in said networks. Qualitative research should be extremely beneficial in testing individual variables that affect agency, power, and communication. In fact, many other like-structured networks (with their own existing qualitative data) can and will be used as comparison case studies. Two are also in the realm of international sport: (1) the market for Dominican baseball players in the United States and (2) the recruitment of West African athletes for European elite football leagues. Both are pertinent in the structure of their international labor market as well as in the polarity in wealth between “supplier” country and “demander” country. In addition, I have selected two labor networks that reflect a similar “human capital” transfer, so to speak. The case of Indian information technology (IT) workers shows highly-skilled labor traveling to the United States⁶⁰, and the case of Romanian workers migrating to Italy includes semi-skilled workers in its sample⁶¹. Both show a “brain drain” that can extrapolate and compare to a “muscle drain” from Kenya, if you will.

My case study will concentrate especially on the Hussein Athletics Training Camp in Kapsabet, Kenya. Kapsabet is situated fifty kilometers outside of Eldoret, the largest running hub in western Kenya. Many of the very best runners in Olympic history have come from this town, and there is exists a great number and variety of long-distance training camps in the nearby area. There are high-level, corporate-sponsored Nike Camps and community-based self-help running groups—as well as every level in-between these two extremes. The best of the best—those at the Nike Camps*—do achieve fame and fortune, essentially winning a better life for themselves and their families. However, it is a well-documented observation (not by scholars, but by the Kenyan running community that I have observed) that when these runners compete in international races, for European/American managers, and supported by corporations from the Global North, they quickly lose touch with their old community ties and do very little to stay active in their former running communities. Therefore this “first-tier” of runners exists by and for itself—very successful, but never tightly embedding that success in native communities—financially, socially, even politically.

The Hussein Athletics Training Group represents the opposite extreme. The camp was donated by famous marathoner Ibrahim Hussein (an exception as far as famous runners go), is coached by Said Aziz (a native Kenyan who donates his services for no up-front cost), and consists of a huge number of athletes of almost all skill levels. Unlike the sponsored camps, the ties between the group members, the coach, and the community are intense and vigilant. The entire venture would not even survive, were it not for the combined sacrifice of the runners, their families, Coach Aziz, and their friends in the community. Athletes find themselves at the Hussein Camp if they are at the “second tier” or trying to reach that level. Second-tier runners are able to earn their keep by racing in high-level races across Kenya and sometimes earning the opportunity to race abroad for higher race-winnings. Catching the eye of a manager is difficult, reaching a standing agreement with one is still a prime achievement, keeping that agreement for more than a year is unlikely, and earning a viable sponsorship is nearly out of the question. No matter the viability long-term, the HATC continues to persist*.

In conclusion, this case study is indeed exceptional, but it includes economic, social, political, and sport-related variables that are distinct and mostly static—if these drivers change, they are usually easy to spot. Although motivations run the gamut, athletics arose and survives today solely to support the people who partake in the sport. By all accounts (from actors of all types), “psychic income” for the country and its people is inconsequential in questions regarding dependency of the sport⁶². As mentioned in the literature review, Kenyan running is an extension for Kenyan economic welfare as well an extension of the international labor network of the Global North. Finally, the actors in my case study (e.g. commercial runners, managers, event managers, scholar-athletes) are relatively easy to identify and even easier to profile due to their unambiguous de-facto and self-proclaimed status. Clearly-defined actors, overt motivations, and traceable variables should make for successful qualitative testing of my hypotheses.

Why Care?

Most noticeable in this study is the possibility for running to increase real income and welfare for poor Kenyan communities. Locating problems, inefficiencies, and exploitation in the business of professional running could optimize this chance for larger incomes. For one, Kenyans and people “acting on their behalf” may mine this comparative advantage—or native resource—more effectively. Secondly, with so few well-paid slots available for so many Kenyan runners, recruitment could and should be streamlined, and data supporting this would be extremely beneficial. Finally, we should understand and debate ways to reinvest money won abroad and repatriated in Kenya. There is no end to the discussion regarding the best way to use prize money that dwarfs yearly income in rural Kenya.

Kenyan running, while exceptional, bears strong resemblance to other sports where third-world athletes migrate north to compete. Dominican baseball and West African soccer are the main examples I will use. However, others such as Indian IT workers also migrate to the US and Europe along with their sought-after skills. It is valuable to begin understanding how gifted but constrained young workers take on other parts of the world. How they interact, how structural and systemic forces affect them, and how they are treated by foreigners is important. Not only for their success, but also for how an entire country sees itself, its citizens, and its prospects for future interaction in the world. Certain pioneers do far more than set examples—they represent entire countries and can set beneficial or dangerous precedents with their positions of national and international prominence.

Limitations

I have chosen to examine local micro-level issues, which have been quite accessible to me in my time on location. However, I choose to hypothesize over macro-level subjects such as global migration and international trade. The number and variety of running-specific actors and professions is interesting but also daunting. However, in my attempt to survey across actor-type, there are certain players (of the international labor market for athletics) from whom I was unable to hear exhaustively. Discussions of corruption and runners’ livelihoods were unlikely in the presence of American and European managers; even event managers and sponsors were unlikely to speak with me about contentious issues regarding Kenyan athletics. Thus much of my information, although assuredly true, is technically speculative. I will try to be as straightforward as possible in discriminating between corroborated facts and word-of-mouth.

Taking video and sound documentation of my interviews and participant observation, while essential to the illustration of my topic, added many limitations to my project. For one, Kenyan citizens become tentative in their answers whenever a camera is involved (as do most citizens of the world). Thus my data is probably skewed with answer biases (1) to please me as the investigator and (2) to preserve subject-at-hand’s reputation. Human subjects shied away from contentious issues and were careful to avoid name-calling or whistle-blowing. The risk of damaging the careers or standing of runners, managers, coaches, and others prevented us from asking certain questions or including certain answers in my data and findings.

Data and Methods

My travel to Kenya is split into two distinct periods of time. In the fall of 2009 I spent one month in the greater Eldoret area carrying out intensive and immersive participant observation. At least one week was spent speaking to coaches, runners, and even managers, process-tracing in order to get to the bottom of key, contentious issues. To get the “full story” about Kenyan running I performed a single-page survey of 50 young Kenyan runners in the town of Kapsabet (three weeks into the stay). In addition, I performed short 20-30 minute interviews of individual runners—most of whom were “second-” or “third-tier” athletes. My third empirical chapter takes information garnered from this preliminary ground-level research and presents it qualitatively. Unconventionally, this research had as its objective to discern the position runners hold in the running business. The qualitative data gleaned from participatory observation, semi-structured interviews, and the survey establish observable implications upon which my existing research question is based.

The core of my thesis research was performed in a second trip to western Kenya in January of 2011. The objective was (1) to relocate and explain the dependency of Kalenjin runners and (2) to pinpoint decision-making factors for main players in the international labor market for athletics. More formalized interviews were scripted, including sections with (a) universal questions for every human subject, (b) individualized questions depending on the type of human actor*, and (3) unstructured questions to build on and allow for new storytelling data. Video and sound bites were recorded for each interview—20 to 25 in number—while footage was taken and kept of subject interaction at all times during the day.

Both discourse and content analysis pervade the presentation of my findings: a 45 minute documentary. Keeping in mind my research question, answers were scoured for thematic and normative content; replies are enumerated and combined according to a topic dealing with dependency in labor migration. In the style suggested by Hook and Pu⁶³, many different actors are guided to address dependency in Kenyan running using five categories—problem (1) identification, (2) attribution, (3) victimization, (4) evaluation, and (5) prescription. The category of “victimization” was added by Natasha Somji in her thesis at Brown University⁶⁴. In order to illustrate opinions about those runners on precipice between success and failure in their profession, discourse analysis chronicles phrases, words, and rhetoric that permeates through running circles the world around—hopefully all this is juxtaposed visually, audibly, and semantically in the documentary.

This initial chapter is intended to introduce my subject and place the Kenyan running narrative in scholarly context. The second chapter gives a deeper background about Kenyan running: the origins of the sport in East Africa, the subsequent formalization and commercialization of the running business, and the main issues to date in these athletes’ migration to races in the Global North. Also in chapter two will be some comparison case studies—those of baseball in the Dominican Republic and football in West Africa. Attention also will be paid to other varieties of semi-skilled or highly-skilled migrating labor, a well-known case being that of Indian IT workers in Western Europe and the United States.

My third chapter and first empirical chapter takes an anthropological viewpoint of “the Kenyan runner” coming from a rural agricultural background—trying to compete on the world stage with limited knowledge of how to do so. The qualitative data comes from my initial visit to western Kenya.

Finally, the real body of my thesis is a feature length documentary attached to this paper. With narration, diagrams, scenery, candid interaction, and interviews, I believe that this medium best conveys the issues suggested in my theoretical chapter and investigated in chapter three. Most of the analysis in my thesis is demonstrated by the choice and ordering of clips throughout the dominant narrative of the documentary.

This chapter exists to give essential facts, figures, stories, and histories of Kenyan athletics. With more accurate and nuanced knowledge of how international runners are normally handled, the findings of my thesis will be easier to parse through. A list of term definitions will not be sufficient to this end, so part one of chapter two is a brief background of the international athletics market—especially as it concerns the athletes, the main focus of my research question. A second section introduces two other sporting networks comparable to Kenyan Athletics—these are (1) Dominican baseball and the migration of its players to US professional leagues and (2) West African football and the migration of its players to predominantly-European premier leagues. Finally, a third section explains the “tea metaphor”—this metaphor is used in chapter three and more importantly serves as the backdrop for the documentary. After that I will bridge to an empirical chapter, to be followed by the feature film.

Before the 1960’s, Kenyan athletic dominance could never have been foreseen. In 1964 Wilson Kiprugut actually won the first Olympic medal ever for his country, claiming bronze in the men’s 800 meter in Tokyo. The great Kenyan running epoch was officially commenced in 1968 (Mexico City Summer Olympics) when Kiprugut won the silver in the same event, and Kipchoge Keino upset the favorite, American Jim Ryun (first high-school runner ever to break the 4:00 mile), to win gold in the 1500 meter run; he also returned a few days later to win Silver in the 5000 meter run. Within a few years Kalenjin runners were feverishly breaking world records; in an 81 day stretch in 1978, Henry Rono broke four world records (in the 10,000m, 5,000m, 3,000m steeplechase, and 3,000m flat races). At this point in time, the gross amount of manpower and resources that supplied the Kenyan national distance squad was dismal compared to conditions in the present day. Neither the Kenyan government nor the international sporting bodies spent much time, energy, or funding to make athletics financially desirable—world notoriety on the long-distance circuit was the main objective for the first famous Kenyan runners. In addition, Kenyan women failed to show their faces at international competitions, for reasons to be discussed later.

Conditions changed drastically after 1980. Ibrahim Hussein ushered in the age of amazing Kenyan marathoners by prevailing at the Boston Marathon three times (1988, 1992, 1993—Kenyans have reigned supreme in Boston every since); he also managed to win a handy purse and a rare sponsorship at the same time. In the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Pauline Konga became the first Kenyan woman to medal (Silver Medal, 5000m), henceforth proving that Kenyan females possessed aptitude in long-distance running as well. Catherine Ndereba has since been unofficially recognized as the greatest women’s marathoner of all time (4-time Boston champion); Lornah Kiplagat joins her as maybe the greatest women’s road racer ever (world records in road 5K, 10 mile, 20K, and 21K/half marathon). Before the 1990’s, many Kenyan athletes’ training was sponsored by in-country parastatals, such as Kenyan Police (Keino), the Kenyan Postal Services, the Kenya Ports Authority, the Kenya Prisons Service (Ndereba), and the Kenyan Armed Forces. Now, an elite middle- or long-distance athlete may, if given a race of considerable exposure, earn a hefty one-year’s salary in one triumphant day.

Athletes from the Rift Valley earn money from many different sources, namely from corporate sponsorships (usually from apparel/shoe companies—especially Nike, Adidas, Puma, Reebok, and Aasics), race prizes (for top-finish performances and course/event records), home-country rewards, and race entry incentives offered by acquisitive race managers. These financial bonuses are the predominant reason that the Kalenjin enter running as a profession, although pursuit of fame could be a small contributing factor. Once an athlete gains an international name and to some degree becomes financially self-sufficient, he or she is able to reinvest into an already-impressive comparative advantage in athletics. First on the docket comes regular high-tech training shoes, running kits, and training facilities. Many racing studs enhance their professional mobility, traveling to or living in areas that present unique fitness variables in terrain, altitude, track surfacing, or training partners. In order to best insure success, runners hope to hire a coach of reasonable stature, and in order to locate the best money-making opportunities, the most successful athletes hire one or two managers. Both managers and coaches gravitate to Western Province in order to satisfy this need, so this area around Eldoret is really seen as a running hub, and consequently, the center of the economic activity resulting from the wealth of its athletes.

As will be thoroughly discussed later, the Kenyan runners who have “made it” in their sport or event choose to channel their money in a wide variety of ways. Some revenue usually goes to supporting the family, some to entrepreneurial investment, some to rare luxuries (big-screen TV’s, automobiles, full-time house help, and chic clothing from Nairobi), and some to assist fellow up-and-coming athletes. One of the most accepted and prevailing modes of giving back to Kenya’s athletics workshop is by either starting or funding a running camp. Athletics camps are scattered all over the Rift Valley and especially on the escarpment that runs the western border of the province. They come in many different flavors, from casual training groups that agree on a common meeting point each morning to full room-and-board running complexes. Some are established, funded, and managed by personnel on behalf of a sponsor company, such as the Nike Camp in Ngong Hills (the nearest camp to Nairobi). Many are supervised by managers who bring their athletes to a common apartment complex or hostel—Gabriela Rosa (working with his son Federico), maybe the most well-known athletics manager in the world, oversees a slew of camps across the country, especially in Kapsabet, Iten, Eldoret, and Kaptagat.

These four towns (Eldoret is a huge city) and their surrounding rural districts have been home to almost every successful Kenyan distance runner, so Rosa’s placement is strategic. His company Rosa & Associates has the financial capability to supply new runners with rental accommodation, a per diem, and even training gear. In fact, Nike gives Rosa a certain number of sponsorships to hand out annually—to runners of his choosing. He employs his own coaches to oversee each camp while he feeds them instructions from a specialty camp in his native Italy. Other examples of camps would be the hybrid running clinics started by Peter Rono and Lornah Kiplagat: these camps assist younger men and women in Kenya to train for fast times while simultaneously readying themselves to apply to universities in Europe and the United States. Finally, some famous athletes give back to Kenya by constructing their own camps, inviting promising runners, and then entrusting the coaching, upkeep, and promotion of said camps to able Kenyan personnel. This has been the case for Moses Kiptanui (4-time World Championship medalist in the 3,000m steeplechase, silver medalist at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics 3,000m steeplechase) and Ibrahim Hussein (3-time Boston Marathon Champion), in Eldoret and Kapsabet, respectively. For many reasons, confirmed and elucidated during my preliminary research, I have decided to spend much of my time for my empirical chapter in the Hussein Camp in Kapsabet.