By Scott Latta
UA Media Relations
Emmanuel Bor stepped off the plane at the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in the sweltering Georgia summer heat.
It was the first time in his life he was not in Kenya, but right now he couldn’t afford to think about that. Bor had to find a way to get to Tuscaloosa, Ala., his new home. With no one in Atlanta to talk to and no one to drive him, he approached an airport employee who helped him summon a taxi to the terminal.
Anxiously, Bor asked the cab driver the fare to get from Atlanta to Alabama.
$340, he was told.
Then he checked his pockets. $60.
He walked back into the terminal, and asked for a phone. He would wait there. One of his countrymen was on his way to get him.
Far From Home
Bor’s story is just one of many for Kenyan athletes who immigrate every year to the United States to compete for NCAA track teams. At last report there are over 300 male Kenyan athletes running college track in the United States and almost 300 women. At Alabama, there are six.
Alabama coach Joe Walker, who recruited each Kenyan athlete on the Alabama roster, has been working with Kenyans since 1995, and has been traveling to the eastern African country since 2000, including a five-day trip in December 2006, maintaining the pipeline between the University of Alabama and Kenya’s runners.
An advantage for Alabama, Walker said, is that it is one of the few schools in the U.S. that, instead of waiting on contact from Kenyans, instead goes looking for them.
“You find yourself with an advantage with our history here,” he said. “Very few schools actively recruit the Kenyan athletes; usually it’s the reverse of that ?? it’s the Kenyan athletes trying to find a school.
“What happens with a lot of schools is they’ll get one international athlete, and that will start a connection for that school, that that guy can help others connect back to home. Florida State has a big pipeline to England, so they have a lot of British athletes. We’ve pretty much had one or two Kenyan athletes since the late ’90s. Now we’re up to as many as we’ve had at one time.”
The recruiting system for Kenyan track runners is effectively the reverse of the NCAA recruiting process for most major sports. Whereas a university normally contacts an athlete, obtains film and urges the student to take a visit to the school, Walker is inundated with three to four e-mails per week from Kenyan athletes who may send out as many as 50 e-mails to U.S. schools, hoping to get a shot at an NCAA roster.
A runner can be admitted to a university as a freshman up to age 21. After that date, each year he or she is above 21 counts against his or her NCAA eligibility. Because of the disparities between Kenyan schools and NCAA-affiliated universities, Walker said, when it comes to college admissions for Kenyan runners, academics trumps athletics.
“The same rules govern you overseas as they do here,” he said. “You’re really watching competitions. When I go over there the only difference is I’m looking for the right student first, then I’m seeing what kind of athlete he is. You see so many good athletes that aren’t academically oriented to what we need, so I almost have to start going to certain schools and finding out who can qualify academically and then watch them run.”
??A big guy’
Despite its presence as one of the most popular sports in Kenya, the Kenyan track system is unorganized, with the school system ?? which is British ?? dividing schooling and athletics. If a student wants to play basketball, soccer or run track, he is on his own.
That independence means most runners meet up after school and simply run across the countryside to practice. While primitive, the process can be beneficial if they make it to an American university, Walker said, by giving them more cross country experience than most American runners.
“A lot of the stereotypes you see on TV are there, but it’s also completely different from what most people think it looks like,” he said. “It’s a British school system, so the guys learn English from primary school. But there are only two rubber tracks in the whole country, and we have four or five just in Tuscaloosa. It’s not as structured.”
Kenyan universities are expensive and offer no athletic scholarships, regardless of the level of skill of any athlete. The disorganization of the track system has led directly to the growth in popularity among Kenyan athletes in finding an opportunity overseas, which has led to both the growth of Walker’s inbox, as well as his influence among African athletes.
“You can be the best runner in the country and nobody is stepping forward to pay for your school,” he said. “It’s definitely something that’s becoming wider known. A lot of the younger athletes are starting to realize that there’s a chance I can become a student-athlete in the U.S. A lot of the younger kids still don’t know about the opportunity, so we’re trying to get the word out, because a lot of them think it’s either run professionally or nothing.”
Where Alabama differs from other schools recruiting Kenyan athletes comes in Walker’s treatment of the African recruiting trip. While most coaches will go to Kenya with someone to show them the countryside and the cities, he said, his familiarity with the people and landscape has led to more intimate relationships with the citizens. While he is in Kenya, Walker dwells among the people and stays with friends.
“It’s been a huge adjustment,” he said. “Nairobi [Kenya’s largest city and capital] is crazy, it has no stop lights and huge traffic jams. Time is different over there. If you have one or two objectives for the day, that’s what you’ll get accomplished. You may set out to get to a track at 10 a.m. and you won’t get there until noon.”
Walker’s relationships with Kenyan track coaches have led to a trickle-down recruiting effect. In addition to receiving weekly e-mails from hopeful Kenyan runners, Walker is also in constant communication with the Kenyan coaches with whom he feels comfortable and trusts. The coaches tip him off to graduating high school seniors who primarily are good students and can function in an American university.
On his trips, Walker will go to what is effectively a track audition ?? hundreds of runners assemble to show the gathered recruiters why they should be looked at for a scholarship. Afterwards he meets the athletes and their families.
For many of the runners, including Alabama sophomore Augustus Maiyo ?? a native of Kapsabet, Kenya ?? it is the first time they have met an American.
“Before I met Coach Walker I thought he was going to be a big guy,” Maiyo said, “but when he came over he was just like everyone else.”
Getting Adjusted
Bor’s experience at the Atlanta airport, though brief, was a sample of what to expect as a Kenyan athlete in his early days adjusting to life in the United States. Though the athletes speak English, the English spoken by Americans is fast and difficult to understand. The accent is completely different, and there is a good bit of slang that the runners have trouble understanding, Walker said, especially in and around the locker room.
“With most of the guys it takes about a semester before they really understand what we’re saying, so most of them start out quieter and it takes awhile before you start to see their personality,” he said. “I always try my best to explain the differences early on and be understanding that any question they can ask, go ahead because it’s not out of place. It’s a huge culture shock.”
Despite some of the most apparent changes the athletes experience, including diet, traffic, getting to class and adjusting to city life from an agrarian background, the most difficult to adjust to, each said, was the climate.
Kenya is a subtropical climate similar to San Diego, Ca. that rarely gets above 70 degrees or below 50 during the day, regardless of season. In Tuscaloosa, the athletes must prepare for temperatures ranging from triple digits in summer to the 30s and below in winter. The extreme change in climate makes running in the U.S., as opposed to running in Kenya, completely different.
“In Kenya’s climate, it’s not hot. There’s no humidity,” Bor said. “An advantage of being here is that you get exposed to a lot of the elements. Having a meet in Indiana and everywhere else lets you know what you might have in the future and helps prepare you.”
For these athletes, adjusting to the climate and daily routine is minor compared to the big picture of the change each is making. For many Kenyans that come to the United States, it is the first time they have left the country and there is an unknown factor that, in Bor’s case, almost terrified him had it not been for one very welcome revelation.
“I was so scared,” he said. “I thought, ??I don’t know where I’m going.’ I didn’t know anything, going to class, or anything. But when I got here I realized, ??Oh, there are other guys from Kenya.’ It was a big surprise.”
Living so far from family and friends can also prove to be one of the most difficult changes to which they must adjust; many of the athletes go years without seeing their families.
There are multiple ways, however, for the athletes to stay in touch with family. Maiyo ?? who flew back to Kenya over Christmas for a tearful reunion with his family for the first time in two years ?? spoke to Bor’s family for him. When any other athletes travel back home, they often do the same.
The multiple lines of communication back home, Bor said, ease the difficulty of living so far from home in such a foreign culture.
“Everybody was happy for me, getting to come to America,” he said. “I call them sometimes, sometimes I e-mail. Sometimes when somebody is going back they’ll talk to them for us.
“I haven’t seen them, though. When it’s Christmas and you’re alone, you miss your parents.”
Tribal System
Each Kenyan on the Alabama track team speaks three languages: English, Swahili and a tribal language. The Kalenjin tribe, a farming ethnic group of about three million people throughout Kenya, is the parent tribe to each athlete and is known as one of the most prominent tribes for Kenyan athletes.
In addition to identifying as Kalenjin, however, each belongs also to a different sub-tribe. Maiyo and Bor are Nandi. Sophomore Titus Koeh is Kipsigis. Senior Alex Korir is Tugen, and sophomore Abraham Kutingala is Maasai ?? a farming and cattle-herding community that is among the most well-known and primitive of all African tribes.
Peter Kiprono, a former runner at Alabama and current manager, is Keiyo ?? residents of the Rift Valley region of Kenya that is used by local and foreign athletes for high-altitude training.
Each tribe provides a manner through which the athletes identify themselves, Walker said, no different from how many Americans can be identified by which region of the country they are from.
“[The tribal system] is still significant over there,” he said. “In a lot of ways it’s similar to here, what state you’re from. Culturally, it goes back so far that it holds a firm grasp in the culture. It’s how they identify themselves.
“Our guys can always communicate in English and Swahili, but if they’re talking in their tribal language, the others can’t understand what they’re saying,” he said.
Despite committing themselves to living more than 8,000 miles from home, each Kenyan athlete at Alabama has found an intense sense of fraternity through his fellow Africans. Living so far from home has forced each athlete to rely on the others for support, even if it means driving four hours each way from Tuscaloosa to Atlanta, as Kiprono did on that August day of Bor’s arrival, to pick up another.
“Those guys are really, really close because they’re all they know when they get here,” Walker said. “It’s who they can turn to as their countrymen. They’re going to stick pretty close to that group of guys for support.”
The selectivity of the Kenyan recruiting process has ensured that each African athlete on the Alabama roster is, primarily, a good student, and many of their futures are planned around things other than track. Maiyo plans on going to graduate school, then getting his Ph.D.
Bor, who was named SEC Freshman Runner of the Year after winning the SEC championship in the mile (4:01.74) and finishing ninth at the NCAA Championships, wants to one day run in the Olympics, but plans on earning his degree in accounting just in case.
But if, one day, his college career at Alabama leads him to qualify in national competitions and he makes an Olympic team, Bor doesn’t hesitate to smile and quickly indicate the team for which he will run.
“I’ll represent Kenya,” he says.
