A blond girl stops him. "Marko!" she says.
"Hellll-oooo!" he replies, voice arching.
"Can I give you a hug?"
"Okay, just don't push me!" he says in fast, accented English. She moves in gently. Marko embraces her with his left arm, his right hand steadying himself. For two months, Marko has envisioned this January morning: First day of spring semester senior year, a chance to prove that he's still the same old sweet, sarcastic, eager-to-entertain Marko. A few nights ago at a UAA basketball game, girls had hugged him in droves. Three former teammates surrounded him for a picture and posted it on Facebook. Marko had ambled around without his walker, showing off, perhaps too much.
Now Marko says goodbye to the blonde and rolls into an elevator. Before the doors close, an older woman whom Marko doesn't know juts toward the narrowing window and whispers, "We love you." The elevator rings open on the second floor, and Marko pushes to Room 251. He rolls toward the desks, then stops like a car that's halfway through a wrong turn.
Those desks -- the normal desks -- aren't for him anymore. He turns toward the lone handicap table, twists and falls into his seat straight-legged, then glances down at the shiny black shoes covering his new plastic stubs.
Those used to be his feet.
During an August night in 2008, Marko Cheseto walked onto a plane in Nairobi bound for Alaska. His feet were his own. He had only $100 in his pockets. His luggage totaled one bag containing two outfits. He was raised in Ptop, a village of 1,000 in the western Kenyan mountains, elevation 8,000 feet -- a foggy, damp region without running water or electricity or roads, where the Pokot dialect of Swahili was spoken. His father, Dickson, farmed, built houses and herded animals, many of which he sold to help purchase a one-way ticket to Anchorage, where the third oldest of his 11 children would attend college on a cross-country and track scholarship.
Nobody from Marko's village had ever left to go to school in America, never mind Alaska. Running was not the route out of Ptop as it was in so many other poor villages in Kenya's highlands. But running was something he always did well. After he graduated from a Nairobi two-year college in 2006 and was earning a modest living as a teacher, he noticed that runners -- inferior runners, he felt -- were leaving on scholarship for U.S. colleges. America meant money, and those who left were expected to share it to help back home.
So Marko chased a new life in hopes of improving his family's old one. He wanted, in the words of his cousin Nicholas Atudonyang, "to be a role model for the guys in his village." He enrolled in one of the running academies in Eldoret, training twice daily in the 6,000-foot elevation, and had moderate success in local races. That got his name on American recruiters' prospect lists. Michael Friess, the track and cross-country coach at Alaska Anchorage, already had one star Kenyan on his roster, David Kiplagat, and wanted to add more. Friess, a loving hard-ass who's been UAA's head coach for 22 of his 50 years, offered Marko a full scholarship, without even meeting him
At first, his parents didn't want Marko to leave, fearing that they'd have to support him again. But he argued that although his teaching job was fine for him, his father could desperately use extra income to supplement his typical earnings of $200 a year. In Alaska, Marko said, he'd work part time and send home a few hundred dollars a year. His parents acquiesced, selling farm animals and asking members of their extended family to help cover Marko's expenses. So Marko, seated in the rear, a few rows behind another runner bound for UAA, Alfred Kangogo, flew from Nairobi to Amsterdam to Minneapolis to Anchorage. All he'd heard about Alaska was that it was dark 24 hours a day. But when they arrived in the evening, the sun shining, Alfred turned to Marko and said, "Just like home." (...)
But the ease with which Marko and his fellow Kenyans got along with other students belied the fact that getting beyond the surface was difficult. The Kenyans were too busy being unspoken breadwinners to date much. Friess, worried that they were stretched too thin, told them they couldn't begin work at 6 a.m. anymore. They adjusted by working later. They simply carried on, each handling the pressure in his own way. David was driven, eventually graduating with a degree in finance and economics. Alfred was relentless, earning the nickname Bulldog. And Marko tried to be perfect, putting on a positive front even during the occasional month when he didn't earn enough to send any money home. After he paid rent and his school expenses, much of his $450 take-home was spoken for. Usually he was able to save up and wire $100 every few months.
by Seth Wickersham, ESPN | Read more:
Photo: Jose Mandojana for ESPN The Magazine
