Perspective

Samuel Wanjiru is arguable the greatest young long-distance runner ever. By age 18 he had set the world-record in the half-marathon and has since re-established the world-record twice (for a time the great Haile Gebreselaisse held the record). He has run a half-marathon in 58 minutes and 33 seconds--that's a 4:28 mile more than 13 consecutive times--faster than anyone in history and he did so at 20 years of age. Now 21, he competed in and won a marathon race held last weekend at which the winner was awarded $300,000!!! There has never been more money given to the winner of a single race. His response when asked what he intended to do with the money: buy his mother a tractor. That's right, for his single mother who has done so much for him and owns a few acres of farmland he will help repay this debt and buy her a tractor and hire someone to drive it. I don't know the conversion of $300,000 to the Kenyan currency--I'm not familiar with the metric system or any other foreign language, but that sounds like a lot. There are people in this world that have totally different ideas of what wealth means and the first thing that comes to mind when they think of what wealth can get you. It's interesting to think about.