African Makes Perilous Run to the Winner’s Circle

For freshman cross-country runner Teferi Gebre of Cal Poly Pomona, the 1987 season was over almost as soon as it started.

About one week into practice in September, the 20-year-old developed a hip injury while jogging. The strong-willed athlete continued to practice despite the injury, only to develop tendinitis in his ankle.

It was in October when Coach Jim Sackett decided that the best remedy was to redshirt Gebre so he would be healthy for track season in the spring.

The injury has placed a roadblock in Gebre’s running career, but he wasn’t about to let it discourage him.

That’s because Gebre, who won the L.A. City cross-country title as a senior at Belmont High last year, has faced far greater barriers.

Born in Gondar (pop. 60,000) in northeast Ethiopia, Gebre’s problems began after his parents sent him to Addis Ababa, the capital, to live with his uncle, a general in the air force, and attend Arabic school at the age of 11.

Not long after starting school in 1977, the military government was taken over by Soviet-backed forces.

Gebre said that his uncle, Asefa Ayana, was named a communications minister in the new government but about six months later was jailed for alleged crimes against the government and executed, along with other former generals, about a month afterward.

That was about the time the new Ethiopian government sent the 12-year-old Gebre, along with other children, to Moscow for reprogramming in the hope that he would accept Marxism.

Gebre, whose mother had fled to neighboring Sudan to join the Ethiopian Democratic Union resistance effort, was in Moscow for six months until he was sent back to Addis Ababa.

“It was a kind of brainwashing,” Gebre recalled in a thick Ethiopian accent. “They told us what communism was and what we were supposed to do. What I saw is that it wasn’t working. It was like being in prison.

“Our family was in trouble. They took our farm and didn’t leave us with anything. My father had more than 200 cows and we were doing all right. But I didn’t give a damn for the new government. Everything was so different from the way it used to be.”

Gebre and four friends planned secretly to flee the country.

“If we told our parents we knew they wouldn’t let us go. So the only way was to find a guy who knew the way to Sudan.”

He said they were referred to a peasant farmer who helped sneak Ethiopians across the border for about $2,000. It was a steep price but they scraped together the money and flew to Gondar to meet him.

After paying the money, they started what was supposed to be about a three-week walk through the desert and across the border. But after three days of travel they reached the farmer’s house in the desert and were left to fend for themselves.

“He said, ‘I’m sorry, that’s as far as I go,’ and took our money and told us we were on our own now,” Gebre remembered. “He even took our donkey where we had our clothes.”

He said they had nothing to wear except the clothes on their backs and had no idea how to reach Sudan. “So we started walking and just kept going.”

Battling snakes and other African wildlife, they survived mostly by eating dried beans. “On the road to Sudan we killed at least 20 snakes,” he said. “I used to think I would never eat anything but dried beans again.”

As they approached the Sudanese border they passed through a forest region where Gebre said they ate wild fruits and berries and also benefited from winter rainstorms.

By the time they reached the border, he said, “The three-week trip had taken three months and nine days and we walked 12 hours a day and that was at a fast pace.”

When they reached the border, which was separated by the Goang River, they were told by Sudanese border guards that they could not cross because of a new law against refugees and were told to return home.

“It was like a nightmare because if we went back they would hang us for sure,” Gebre said. “So we waited until night when the soldiers were asleep to cross the river. I had never swam before and we were knee-deep in mud and it was raining, but we managed to make it across.”

The five boys, all Christians, had to pass through an Islamic town where he claims “the custom was you could not get married until you killed a Christian.”

Considering the distance they had travelled, though, they were willing to take their chances. “We waited until late at night and no one saw us,” he said.

At a large cotton farm outside of the village, they met the lead farmhand who was sympathetic but told the boys they had only completed the easiest part of their journey.

“He told us, ‘When you get to Docka they have an agreement to send you back (to Ethiopia), but you can get through if you bribe the soldiers there. We told him we didn’t have any money and asked him what we could do. He said we could work on the farm to get enough money to bribe the soldiers.”

Gebre’s intention was to pass through Docka and go to Gadarif, where he had learned his mother was staying.

“But I never worked on a farm before and after about two weeks I caught malaria and dropped to 67 pounds and was near death,” he said.

It was about then that he met the owner of the farm, who got him medicine to combat the disease. After recovery about three weeks later, the man took them in his Land Rover past Docka to the town where he lived.

Little did Gebre know that his brother, who was attending Texas A & M, had died in an auto accident and his mother had returned to Gondar.

“When we got past Docka we were told my mother had gone back to Ethiopia to be with me and my sister, and my brother had died,” Gebre said. “She was looking for me in Ethiopia and I was looking for her in Sudan.”

Gebre and his friends completed their trip to Gadarif in quest of employment. Once they reached the city, Gebre said he was the only one who found work--in a tea room--because he was the only one who could speak Arabic.

Gebre said he was happy to have a job and glad to be out of Ethiopia but decided with his friends to leave Gadarif a few months later for Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, where he hoped to find a better job and inquire about emigrating to another country.

He had little difficulty finding employment.

“Once again I was the only one who spoke Arabic, so I was the only one who got a job.”

Gebre, who had turned 16, remembers riding his bicycle to work one day when he spotted the American embassy.

“So I tried to get in and the secretary said I needed an appointment. So I got an appointment for the next week. I was excited and asked my friends to go with me, but they thought I was crazy and I just went by myself.”

Speaking with an embassy official through an interpreter, he said he did not receive an optimistic response at first.

“He told me I was underage and he was sorry. I asked him if I could live with his family and he told me he was single. Then I asked him if I could live with his parents and he told me to check back with him every week. In the second week he told me the International Rescue Committee (a group that relocates and sponsors refugees) was going to sponsor me. It was like a second birth for me.”

It was about a month later when the organization contacted him and arranged for him to fly to the United States. “They gave me a choice of living in Los Angeles or New York and I chose Los Angeles because they told me the climate was better.”

A week before he was to leave for the U.S., Gebre was reunited with him mother, who had tracked his path to Khartoum. Before leaving he promised to help her emigrate once he arrived in Los Angeles.

Shortly after arriving in the United States, he found a job as a busboy “but they fired me after two weeks because I couldn’t speak English.”

So Gebre was placed on a welfare program for refugees, which gave him an apartment and food stamps, and soon he enrolled in an English as a second-language class with hopes of attending high school.

“After I was in the class for about one week I noticed Belmont High on the way there and tried to enroll. But they told me I was underage and needed a guardian, so I went back to the IRC and they called Belmont and said they’d be my guardian.”

At age of 17, when most students his age were thinking about graduating, going to school was a dream come true. “I was just happy to go to school there and have the opportunity to get an education.”

Shortly after enrolling at Belmont, he found a job at a liquor store in Inglewood that was owned by an Ethiopian. He said he worked more than 40 hours a week, commuting to work first by bus and later with a car that he bought from an Ethiopian friend.

Between working and attending school, Gebre said he didn’t have a lot of friends at first but didn’t mind. “I just wanted to learn more about America, so I spent most of my time at school.” (Gebre has not had difficulty mastering languages. He is fluent in Arabic, Swahili, Amharic, Tigrinya and English and speaks a little Spanish.)

Gebre hadn’t enrolled at Belmont with the intention of competing as a cross-country runner. But his plans changed when the team’s assistant coach spotted him during lunch one day early in his sophomore year.

“I was eating lunch alone because I didn’t know anyone and the assistant coach came by and told me I looked like I was from Africa, and I told him I was from Ethiopia and he was very excited. He immediately took me to my counselor and enrolled me in cross-country.”

An excellent student with a 3.4 grade-point average, Gebre did not compete much during his sophomore cross-country season because he didn’t attend a driver’s education class, received an F and was ruled ineligible to compete under the Los Angeles Unified School District’s no-fail rule.

He made up for lost time during track season, finishing first in the City in the 800-meter run and third in the 1,600 meters.

As a junior in cross-country, Gebre says, “I won all the dual meets, I won the quarterfinals and semifinals and then I got sick (with the flu) before the finals and I finished fifth in the City. But our team won (the title) so I was happy.”

In track that season, Gebre dropped the 800 meters in favor of the 1,600 and 3,200 meters because “my coach told me I’m a better distance runner.” He finished second in the City in the 1,600 meters to qualify for the state meet but did not qualify for the finals.

As a senior in cross-country, Gebre was undefeated, breaking the course record at Griffith Park (14:04) and winning the City final at Pierce College. “That was one of the greatest feelings I’ve had in my life,” he says.

He also improved in track last season, finishing second in the 1,600 meters and third in the 3,200 meters despite being spiked in the race (“I still even have the scar.”) Then he passed up the 1,600 in favor of the 3,200 at the state meet and finished fourth in 9:08--eighth fastest prep time in the nation last season.

But the biggest thrill for Gebre during his senior year at Belmont happened off the track.

Gebre had been trying for about two years to help his mother, Manahulosh Gola, immigrate to the United States. His fortunes started to turn for the better after he turned 18 and registered for the draft.

“I went back to the IRC and they said they could help me but I would have to pay for air fare and everything else,” he said. “It took more than a year and a half to do that.”

When his mother finally received clearance to immigrate, the timing could not have been better.

“It was about two months before the end of my senior year and I was just about ready to graduate when she came here. When she saw me graduate, she was so excited. It was one of the happiest moments of her life.”

She also enjoyed the thrill of watching her son compete for the first time in the City track finals. “My coach said that’s why I lost,” Gebre said.

But Gebre says having his 55-year-old mother immigrate to the U.S. has filled a void in his life. He says he is as proud of her accomplishments as she has been of his.

“I’ve never seen another female who could do what she’s done,” he said. “She’s always had to be so strong. When she was in Ethiopia, she was with the Ethiopian Democratic Union and she would carry a gun at her side. When she wanted to come here I told her she would have to be by herself a lot, but she’s doing fine now. She’s active. She’s going to school every day and she goes shopping by herself now.”

Her son has come a long way too.

As a senior in high school he was recruited by about 25 colleges, including UCLA, Arizona State, UC Irvine, UC Berkeley and Washington State.

So how did he wind up at Cal Poly Pomona, an NCAA Division II school?

“The UCLA coach seemed to have the most interest in me and I might have gone there, but I got a low score on the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test). I think it was much lower because of not knowing English well.”

If he chose to attend UCLA, Gebre would have had to sit out his freshman year because of the NCAA’s Proposition 48 requirements for Division I athletes. So he opted to attend Pomona, where he could compete as a freshman.

“I had a big desire to go to Cal Poly, anyway,” he said. “I wanted to go to a Division II school and they had a good electrical engineering school. The coach (Jim Sackett) also seemed to have a lot of interest in me.”

Sackett said the fact that a close friend of Gebre from Iran, Sephre Eskamdari, decided to attend Pomona played a big role in his going there. Gebre and Eskamdari share an apartment near campus.

Gebre said he was disappointed that he wasn’t able to compete in cross-country this season but was quick to look at the bright side.

“I think it’s an advantage,” he said. “I’m just getting adapted to school and I’m sure I’ll be very strong for track.”

“We think he will blossom into an outstanding runner,” Sackett said. “We think he has a great deal of potential.”

Sackett also knows that Gebre, through his experiences, has plenty of desire.

“From a maturity standpoint, he has had to find things out the hard way, but he has adjusted very well,” he said.

Gebre is not lacking for confidence, either. He will probably compete in the 1,500 and 5,000 meters and says: “I told the coach I want to break the 5,000 record by my junior year.”

Sackett said that may be a little too much to hope for. But considering the unorthodox path Gebre took to reach Pomona, nobody is about to put anything past him.