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English
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by Robert Hartmann
Eldoret, Kenya. They are nine children and youth between the ages of 10 and
19. Their homeland is the south of the Sudan, where, following a civil war
between the Arab north and the primarily Christian south, which broke out in
1983, recent peace talks have led to a so-far happy end, albeit fragile. There
has been a truce since September, and these young people also hope anxiously
for a good future in the end. They hope to finally be able to return to their
parents and siblings. “My mother is dead, but my father is alive,“
said the 16-year-old Abdul, who is considered to be intellectually brilliant.
He has not seen his village for seven years. Seven of them were child soldiers
for longer than a third of their lives. They were between nine and eleven when
they picked up their weapons. At the beginning it was like an adventure
playground. "But then you go into your first battle, and next to you your
friend dies.“ When the topic comes up he often just says, “It was
tough. Too tough.“
For the past eight months, the little group has been living on the
Kazi-Mingi-Farm ("Much Work") of the Kenyan running legend Kipchoge
Keino (Gold medalist 1500 m Mexico City 1968) in the northwest of the East
African country. Under the direction of UNESCO, 3000 Sudanese child soldiers
were taken to safe camps and later out of the country, and Keino did not say no
when they asked if he had a place for them to stay. He gave them a roof over
their heads, he gave them clothing, fed them and sent them to a primary school.
The now call him "Daddy". He is their new father. “For them, it
is a paradise here,“ he says. But he spoke the sentence so that one could
well hear his inner reserve. For there is no Garden of Eve, not even here,
where 150 cows give more milk than the nine from the neighbouring country ever
dreamed of. The last milk they had received in the war zone was from their
mothers. Their daily fare was lumpy cornmeal and beans, with water. It must
seem for them like they were catapulted from the Stone Ages in to the 21st
century.
The world athletics organisation, IAAF, has set up a permanent high-altitude
training camp for young runners on Keinos farm. Africas extremes have been
brought together here through the munificence of the 67 year-old Keino, who is
also a member of the International Olympic Committee since 2000. That was
demonstrated one morning when Abdul suddenly arrived in an
“official“ Sudanese tracksuit. “Official“ means from
the north, which is in power. The national outfit is a present from Abduls
three-year older countryman, Ahmed Ismael, a young Moslem. There are good
chances that he will someday be world champion in the 800m, so great is his
running talent. He is living on the Kazi-Mingi-Farm in preparation for the
Olympic Games in Athens. Ismael and the nine have become close friends here on
neutral ground. “He gave us t-shirts, running shoes, and even a
camera.“ The Kataris are already after Ismael with their Pedro-dollars.
All he would have to do is change nationalities, and he could quickly become a
wealthy man. But he still says, “ I do not want to.“
It is said that the cradle of humanity lies only a few hundred kilometres to
the north, at Lake Turkana. It is a freak of human nature that the most
talented runners come from this area of the world. Four of the Sudanese youth
have caught the fever from their peers, the talented runners from Kenya, Uganda
and Eritrea, who live in the new IAAF hostel just 300 meters away and already
realise that they are stand out from the rest. But the Sudanese youth run the
ca. 8 kilometres from the farm to the doors of the city Eldoret and back almost
daily, just for themselves. They have neither ordinary watches nor stopwatches.
The farm workers say that the quartet returns every time totally exhausted,
gasping for air on the lawn. The oldest one is Jacob. "No," he
answers the question if he knows how long the course is. We give him a
stopwatch, they all clap, and two days later they know that they ran 70
minutes. “We wish,“ Jacob says, “we had some instructions for
our training.“ So far they have set the basis, albeit somewhat monotone,
but have done nothing wrong.
There are no social workers looking after them--that would be a luxury. The
young American couple who were involved in the child soldier programme of the
UNESCO and who were responsible for moving the nine to Eldoret stopped by for a
week. They reported that the boys would not let anyone touch them for a week.
Strangers were enemies. But at some point the American made a great discovery
and yelled over to his wife:
"Taban smiles".
The most recent school reports for the young Sudanese, says Keino, were
“shockingly good.“ Their local schoolmates are 10 and 11 years old.
The nine have learned English and Swahili, the East African trade language,
very quickly. The American couple said that the nine had one great wish:
education, learning, school. In their homeland, for the past 20 years, the
greatest education that 300,000 youth received was third grade.
We are sitting on a turned over log in the middle of the best climate in the
world, 2100 meters above sea level, and at the end of the conversation, and
nostalgic Abdul says simply, “Thank you for the conversation.“
He has already come a long way.