Finding Refuge: Part 3 of 3

Tombe Kose walked into ‘heaven’ on earth. Striding across the crisp Kentucky bluegrass of Yankee Stadium on a seasonably warm December day, Kose glanced up at the sky.

There was something more than a football game in that moment for Kose. It was a long-awaited return to New York City, to the city that provided first glimpses of a new life to him 11 years prior.

His first experience in the city was a brief, terrifying one, as his family stepped into the unknown after traveling to the United States from a refugee camp in Kenya.

Kose, a fullback on the Syracuse football team, was there this time to play in the Pinstripe Bowl. The bowl was a crowning achievement for the rising senior.

‘It feels like a true blessing, honestly,’ Kose said. ‘The Pinstripe Bowl, it was a great experience. Walking into Yankee Stadium felt like heaven.’

Reaching that point took hard work from an SU team that hadn’t reached a bowl game since 2004. And no one worked harder to get there than Kose. The 22-year-old has seen more in his short life than most see in a lifetime — from his early youth in his war-torn country of Sudan to a refugee camp in Kenya to his upbringing in California and trying to learn English.

Kose was 7 or 8 years old when his family was forced to flee its home and its country. He was only 10 years old when they moved again — this time to the United States. Yet through all of the war, the uprooting and the unknown, he persevered.

‘Put it this way: I don’t envy him,’ said Tyrone Wheatley, SU’s running backs coach. ‘I don’t want to go through it. But he’s out of it, he’s through it.

‘And you can just tell that there’s something special about him.’

***

War of the most vicious nature took over in Sudan starting in the mid-1980s at the start of the Second Sudanese Civil War. It was a resumption of the First Sudanese Civil War, which took place from 1955-72.

A 1998 BBC News article cites the death toll as nearly 2 million — including 20 percent of the southern Sudanese population. Kose and his family were from Juba, near the country’s southern tip.

For the first seven or eight years of Kose’s life, he lived in the midst of one of the longest-running conflicts in Africa.

‘The memories I left in Sudan were ones that somebody wouldn’t want to remember,’ Kose said. ‘It was a lot of violence. A lot of adversity.’

The civil strife in Sudan focuses around the southern part of the country’s fight for independence from the north, said Martin Shanguhyia, an assistant professor of history in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. But there are also different factions of ethnic groups in the south that fight each other.

Kose and his family managed to escape Juba. They went southeast to Kenya, where they moved into a refugee camp.

‘It was tough to leave because war was basically forcing you out of your country,’ he said. ‘When somebody usually tells you to get up and leave against your own will, it’s pretty difficult.’

Life in the refugee camp was, at best, a life without war. Refugees are restricted and live a tough life because they aren’t free, said Shanguhyia, who is from western Kenya.

Kose and his family lived in the refugee camp in hopes of gaining a sponsor family that would bring them to the United States. He was captivated by stories of life in America. His uncle used to encourage the young Kose’s imagination with tales of the easy lives of those across the Atlantic.

He told Kose about buttons Americans had in their houses that bring food instantly when pressed. Whether that was meant to be a reference to a vending machine or a microwave, the stories enticed Kose.

‘It sounded pretty good,’ he said. ‘It sounded like we were heading toward a better life.’

***

The better life Kose fantasized about came to fruition when his family was sponsored to come to the United States. But it wasn’t as easy as pushing a button.

He and his family flew into John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, landing in a winter wonderland that left Kose in a state of trepidation and confusion.

‘We were kind of terrified to actually exit the plane because I had never seen snow before,’ he said. ‘My parents were all, ‘What is this?”

New York was just a layover, and the family soon flew out to San Diego, where an uncle lived. San Diego was Kose’s new life.

‘I learned to love San Diego,’ Kose said. ‘Called it my home away from home.’

Kose credits his first teacher in American schooling — who he called Ms. King — for smoothing the transition to the United States. Other than Kose’s father, who spoke some English, he and the rest of his family spoke primarily Arabic.

Outside of the words ‘hi’ and ‘bye,’ Kose said he didn’t know anything. But he watched the hand motions of people as they spoke certain words, and his after-school sessions with Ms. King sped up the process.

And then there were sports. The universal language of soccer proved to be a catalyst for assimilation.

‘I played soccer since I could walk, basically,’ Kose said. ‘I learned that athletics, there was no absolute language barrier, because if you could play, you could play. And everybody basically saw you as a teammate, a family member.’

Kose continued to play soccer throughout his childhood in the United States. He was a defender, and he played with aggression. He had almost an American football mentality on the soccer field.

Both Kose’s father and uncle played semiprofessional soccer in Africa. But as Kose grew up, the limits in the physicality of soccer eventually drove him from the game.

‘It’s amazing because I noticed how I was playing soccer,’ Kose said. ‘I noticed my aggression on the soccer field. I was just like I want to play a sport where I can hit somebody — and get away with it.’

***

It’s fitting that Kose first got into football by watching the San Diego Chargers teams of the early 2000s. The 2000 Chargers won just one game.

Kose’s football career was a long shot as well. But entering high school at the age of 14, Kose quit playing soccer because he wanted to play football.

Like his transition to the United States, there would be some adjustment. The decision to stop playing soccer came at the dismay of his father.

‘He was upset with me for a while,’ Kose said, ‘because he thought I was giving up something I was really good at.’

Kose didn’t play much his freshman year and said at times there was some regret in the decision. But in his junior and senior years, he earned his spot as an offensive guard for Crawford High School.

Though Crawford’s enrollment is about 1,300, said Crawford Athletic Director Scott Page, the football team’s numbers are tiny. That’s because the high school has a high population of immigrants from all over the world.

Kose was an exception. Then-Crawford head coach Tracy McNair said in Kose’s senior year, the team had only about 25 players. Everybody played both ways, and a player like Kose played offensive line simply because he was one of the biggest on the team.

Playing for such a small school — and playing out of position — Kose received little interest from small colleges out of high school. But with the transition from offensive line to fullback imminent, Kose decided to attend San Diego Mesa College.

Mesa head coach Henry Browne said Kose received his first carry as a fullback in a game against Mount San Jacinto College. Mesa had the ball on the 2-yard line, and Kose got a ‘quick hitter.’ But the handoff wasn’t pure, and Kose never got a grasp on the ball. A Mount San Jacinto player ran it back 99 yards for a touchdown.

‘Resiliency,’ Browne said in a phone interview. ‘He came back and for a time, I think there was one game where he had three carries for three touchdowns.’

Former Mesa quarterback Kyle Christian came to Mesa during Kose’s sophomore year. He said the fullback was one of the first people to welcome him to the team. They both shared a common goal — to become a Division I football player.

He worked so hard at his new position that he made the all-conference team as a sophomore. He showed so much toughness on the field that in one game, when his facemask broke after a play, he ran off the field, got a new helmet and came right back on, Christian said.

Kose now had a new goal, one that could never have been imagined back in war-torn Juba.

‘When he was on the field, a lot of defensive players feared him,’ Christian said. ‘When we watched film, we’d see different players take on fullbacks. When we played them, they never would do that.’

***

When Kose found Syracuse football, he found a program that he said, in many ways, reminded him of himself.

‘I chose Syracuse because I’ve been an underdog all my life,’ Kose said. ‘And when (Doug) Marrone told me he needed me to be a part of what would turn Syracuse around, I jumped on the opportunity right away.’

Kose was a backup fullback on last year’s Orange team and figures to be the same this season. He’s entering Syracuse’s spring game Saturday and his senior season as a BCS conference football player.

That’s only 12 years after coming to America and leaving a continent full of war. Eight years after he first started playing football. Four years after he first started playing fullback.

‘Coach Marrone (and) just a lot of the coaching staff welcomes you with open arms and makes you feel like you’re at home away from home,’ Kose said. ‘But you know, I feel like it’s a true blessing.’

mcooperj@syr.edu

Published on April 12, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Mark: mcooperj@syr.edu | @mark_cooperjr