Spring Break
Champion runner never forgets past
Editor in Chief
Issue date: 2/23/07 Section: Sports
Camped out on the clay planes of southern Sudan, 9-year-old Macharia Yuot would dream about a better life that awaited him at a refugee camp across the Ethiopian border. For three years, this fantasy filled him with hope in the face of unspeakable horrors.
From 1991-94, Yuot was one of the 26,000 "lost boys of Sudan," (a name given to them by international aid workers).
The Lost Boys trudged their bare feet through jungle, swamp and desert in search of refuge from the civil war that had engulfed their villages. On the course of the journey, Yuot witnessed scores of young boys die of starvation, gunfire and animal attacks.
For nearly 1,000 miles, Yuot walked.
Today, Yuot's legs continue to perform punishing feats, not for survival but for sport as an All-American cross country runner at Pennsylvania's Widener University.
At the age of 25, Yuot has just closed out his decorated college career by winning November's NCAA division-III cross country championships.
Twenty-four hours later, he placed sixth out of a field of more than 12,000 in the Philadelphia Marathon.
In collegiate races, Yuot was almost always the pacesetter. But as a Lost Boy, Yuot knew never to stray from the middle of the pack. Those who wandered off, Yuot recalled, were shot down by enemy tribesman.
The journey began in 1991 when Arab Muslim tribes of the north pillaged his Christian Dinkan village of Paleek. His parents were forced to part ways with him or risk seeing him enslaved or used as a path-clearer in minefields.
Yuot and a troop of boys - most of them between the ages of six and 10 - were caravanned in a single file line through the vast wasteland of southern Sudan. They walked right through the bowels of a civil war which would take the lives of two million Sudanese from 1983 to 2005.
Yuot parted ways with his parents, brother and two sisters, and says he has not seen them since.
His father Dinkan - seven foot, six inches tall- died in subsequent months of what Yuot was told were "natural causes."
From 1991-94, Yuot was one of the 26,000 "lost boys of Sudan," (a name given to them by international aid workers).
The Lost Boys trudged their bare feet through jungle, swamp and desert in search of refuge from the civil war that had engulfed their villages. On the course of the journey, Yuot witnessed scores of young boys die of starvation, gunfire and animal attacks.
For nearly 1,000 miles, Yuot walked.
Today, Yuot's legs continue to perform punishing feats, not for survival but for sport as an All-American cross country runner at Pennsylvania's Widener University.
At the age of 25, Yuot has just closed out his decorated college career by winning November's NCAA division-III cross country championships.
Twenty-four hours later, he placed sixth out of a field of more than 12,000 in the Philadelphia Marathon.
In collegiate races, Yuot was almost always the pacesetter. But as a Lost Boy, Yuot knew never to stray from the middle of the pack. Those who wandered off, Yuot recalled, were shot down by enemy tribesman.
The journey began in 1991 when Arab Muslim tribes of the north pillaged his Christian Dinkan village of Paleek. His parents were forced to part ways with him or risk seeing him enslaved or used as a path-clearer in minefields.
Yuot and a troop of boys - most of them between the ages of six and 10 - were caravanned in a single file line through the vast wasteland of southern Sudan. They walked right through the bowels of a civil war which would take the lives of two million Sudanese from 1983 to 2005.
Yuot parted ways with his parents, brother and two sisters, and says he has not seen them since.
His father Dinkan - seven foot, six inches tall- died in subsequent months of what Yuot was told were "natural causes."
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