Eric Mazimpaka spent October running up and down Vancouver Island. He covered 560.5 kilometres with little money and little time to prepare. He slept in a car every night and was fuelled mainly off of candy.
Mazimpaka began the run on September 27 and finished it on October 24, covering roughly 26 kilometres per day.
The run was his most recent attempt to raise both awareness and funds for an upcoming festival to be held in Rwanda, on the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide.
On Mazimpaka’s first day of the run, he ran 20 kilometres from Holberg to Cape Scott, the most cougar-populated area in Canada.
“That night I ate fish with nothing to cook it in; this was a bad idea,” says Mazimpaka. “I wrapped it around a stick over a fire and got fish juices all over me. I was perfect cougar bait, with only a flare gun for protection.”
Apart from large animals, Mazimpaka also had to get used to truckers. He says he started to recognize the same truckers in the same trucks driving past him every day.
“After a few days the truckers started recognizing me too,” says Mazimpaka. “They would honk at me and give me huge smiles, not even knowing the reason why I was running.”
While on his run, Mazimpaka learned a lot about himself. For example, he never felt impatient about running for over eight hours every day. Rather, he used that time by opening his train of thought and appreciating his surroundings.
“I kept envisioning an hourglass with each grain of sand falling through representing an old era,” he says. “Once those grains had all fallen out it would be time to turn it again, time for change.”
Mazimpaka likens that change to what’s happened in Rwanda since the genocide there in 1994. These issues mean a lot to him; in fact, this isn’t the first time he’s run a marathon for positive changes in Africa.
“When I was in high school at Spectrum Secondary, a teacher and I created a club called Stand for Peace,” he says. “Through this club, I ran two fundraising marathons and raised enough money to build a school in Sierra Leone.”
Stand for Peace has now become a credited elective called “global issue studies.” Siyon Studios, Eric’s art company, carries on the same ideals as Stand for Peace.
Siyon Studios is selling Mazimpaka’s original art and clothing and is putting on fundraisers and fashion shows.
The music festival that Mazimpaka was raising awareness for with this run, ThinkOne, will take place in Rwanda in December 2013 and January 2014.