It was about an hour's drive up north. I arrived early, and sat on a little bridge outside the rum shop to wait. A crowd of kids (5-10 in age and in number) was there. Of the friendly, conversational variety. I had been chatting to them for a few minutes before I realised that one of them had a little wooden crutch. As a toy, I thought at first. But further investigations revealed that he had a leg missing. One very big shoe on one foot, no foot to put another one on.
People assembled. A lot of European and American, as always American medical students,and some Germans always turn up, I don't know how they find out about it. And a few Grenadians, more than usual this time. And it was a Grenadian who set the course.
Courses aim to provide a spread of terrain. Plantation, tracks, some minor roads, maybe some dry river beds (in season), maybe bits of coast, and always some steep uphill and some steep downhill bits, with loose stones to make them a bit more challenging. A few false trails are always set, so that those who are first shall come last, for at least some of the time, until those who were first and came last are again undertaken by those who came first to replace them, as it were. Some participant walk, some run.
[Since writing the above, and for that matter the below, I have done another hash: 5/6/99. A fiendishly difficult one. One descent and two ascents were so steep that we had to pull ourselves up by a rope that was attached to a helpful tree. Not a real rope: the sort of thick tape you use for tethering sheep: just the thing for 15 people to pull themselves up with at once, though some of the trees that the tethers were, er, tethered to, looked a bit insubstantial. For about 400 meters we were walking along the big stones that are usually the bottom of a river, but this was the dry season. Only just the dry season, because it decided to have a practice deluge on the way, making it extra slippery. At one point it got so dark (partly weather, partly dense foliage of nutmeg trees) that we could barely see the ground, which didn't matter, because you knew you were going to fall over anyway.]
Rules are read out to Virgins: hashing has an arcane and irritating language (on-on; on-back; are you?...) which like any jargon ceases to sound silly when you get used to it, and is actually a safety precaution in case you get lost or fall over, though there isn't a dinky hyphenated phrase for 'Help!' 
Virgins have a hard time of it after their first hash, having to run through an arcade of beer throwers before they receive their Certificate of Loss of Virginity from the local optician.
Seasoned hashers got a nickname. Childish? You bet.
And so we moved off, steeply uphill for a long way, up a minor road with a major view, then turning off a tiny uneven ditch through banana country.
But what was this? I was not alone. A little person was stomping along beside me, one leg, one crutch. Uphill. Incredulously, I asked him if he intended to do the whole hash. Yes, he said, overtaking me on a bend. He said that he had not been able to do the last hash, because the rubber had worn out on his crutch, (i.e the peg that makes contact with the ground), and he had had to wait for a nice lady to bring him a new rubber from the USA.
And so we went on. Instinctively, each of us reached for the other's hand. He had not realised that you had a paper trail to follow, and indeed could not see the dollops of shredded paper for far ahead, because you need an adult's height to do that easily in undergrowth. When we got to circles of paper at a junction of paths, meaning that one alternative direction is right, but you do not know which until you have tried out some wrong ones and come to a cross after four misleading blobs. I ran off to explore (everyone else having overtaken us by then), and Travis (as his name appeared to be at the time) waited apprehensively, not quite sure whether I would return. Of course, we were not far from his home, and he knew the tracks, but I do not think any nine-year-old wants to be left alone in the bush.
He was absolutely amazing. He hopped the downhill bits, only occasionally going flying. (Not as often as I did.) He struggled uphill unless the surface was smooth, which is usually wasn't: I had to provide quite a lot of support. He kept up a conversation all the time, telling me about school, and places he'd been to, and utterly matter-of-factly how he'd lost his leg: as an infant, he'd been in a house fire, during which a spray can beside him had exploded, shattering his baby leg. His left arm had taken quite a bashing too: I had originally thought that his twisted left hand had 'turned' from overuse, twisting to be an interface component between the body and the crutch. But his whole arm (concealed by shirt) had burned to something half its proper diameter, and the wrist's mis-orientation seems to be a macabre 'lucky' co-incidence.
We came to an area where mango trees were dropping the season's first fruit. Travis dropped his crutch, slid into a dry ditch, and picked up a mango for each of us, telling me that we could not eat until we had got the mangoes to a pipe (Engl: tap) and washed them. I was instructed to pocket the fruit: Travis had no way of carrying them.
Eventually, we got to a stretch of smooth minor road, and he decided to take his shoe off to show me his foot. He carefully ascertained first that I knew how to re-do-up shoe laces, and then lay down in the road to remove the shoe. Now I saw why it was such a big shoe: the whole foot was scarred from the burning, and the big toe was splayed out: no 'correct' sized shoe would have fitted, and this one had to be laced up very tightly so that it came anywhere near to gripping the body of the foot. I think the showing of the foot was done to mask the fact that he was getting tired: although he denied this, we had been out for more than an hour. He let my hand go for a few stretches of road, and I saw the fluidity and rapidity of this movements, but the spine is not designed for that kind of movement, and I bet he gets back pain in later life.
We arrived about half an hour behind the others, but Travis, or Jarvis as some locals called out to him as we passed: nobody here is finicky about accuracy of spelling (or pronunciation) of names: I expect his is a nickname anyway ...completed a 90 minute course that makes some active adults tired. Locals did not seem at all surprised to see him being so active, nor in the company of a stranger. I expect they are used to seeing a fiery little chap hurtling away through the bush, his enthusiasm drawing in others to join him. Certainly I was told at the end that he did not need the 'Virgin' initiation: he had done hashes before (though this may have been the first one he completed: he was pretty tired until a drink revived him.)
It turned out that Travis/Jarvis and other kids, who had been able to run the course, had been accompanied by ......, an American Peace Corps worker in his 40's, whose main work during a 2 year stint in Grenada is AIDS counselling. He said he'd had an uphill job persuading T/J's grandmother, with whom T/J lives with eight other kids, that T/J is not disabled, and should be allowed to show the family what he can do.
Later, I told a teacher friend about the hash on the phone. She wondered if the medical school here could come up with the funding to provide an artificial leg, but then reflected that she'd had a one-legged pupil who had dispensed with her (artificial) leg because she (the pupil) was more mobile without it. (Just as my Aunt Pip took out her teeth to eat?)
Anyhow: apply your cliché. I've met one plucky, brave, bright, independent kid, and been enriched by him.