Beyond the hills: the journey of Yves Sikubwabo (Part 1)
Written by: Bradley Crawford. Bradley is a freelance writer with a Master's Degree in Global History and Development from the University of Guelph. He is a former member of the Guelph Gryphons football team. 

With a bag full of books strapped to his shoulders, and tattered running shoes on his feet caked in the red dust of Rwandan dirt, Yves Sikubwabo would run 11 kilometres to school every morning, only to run back home in the afternoon.
 
With no other form of transportation, the Guelph Gryphon cross country and track star ran up and down the hills of his native Kigali, Rwanda's capital city, for three years in order to get to high school. 
 
Yves ran past markets, memorials and mud brick houses, past churches, military barracks and the airport. He would pass construction, street peddlers, and poverty. As he ran, each rolling hill would reveal the changing scenery of a developing but still largely impoverished city.   
 
"When I started it would take me 45 minutes to get to school. Three years later, it would take me 34 minutes. I treated it like a race," said the second-year runner. "I didn't like to see some of my schoolmates passing me sitting on a bus."
 
Yves was born in the capital in the spring of 1993, one year before the outbreak of the Rwandan Genocide, which left close to  1 million mostly Rwandan Tutsis dead.
 
He had just had his first birthday when the Hutu militias began hunting Tutsis on the streets of Kigali. Marriage between Hutu and Tutsi was not uncommon in Rwandan society, though identity was passed on paternally. Therefore, despite the fact that Yves' mother was a Hutu; he was a Tutsi like his father. 
 
The biological parents Yves never knew were murdered by their neighbours. Unlike hundreds of thousands of Tutsi children who were targeted by the roaming militias, Yves survived the genocide with the protection of his Hutu aunt, Floriane Nyirambabazi.
 
"She was my mom, my dad, she took care of me," said the track star, elaborating that his aunt also raised "her own daughter and other children. You would always see five or six kids in our house, even if she didn't have enough money to buy food for everyone, she could provide everyone with shelter. She believes that even the little stuff you have can be shared with other people."
 
Widowed by the genocide, Floriane was left to provide for the children on her own. With scarce employment opportunities for women in a poverty stricken country, she would sell bananas at the side of the road to make money. Fortunately, Yves was eventually able to assist his aunt by contributing a small amount of income.
 
In Grade 4, the young Rwandan joined a running club coached by a lawyer named Jean Dmascene who helped his athletes by paying for their primary education fees.

"I couldn't beat any boys on my team," remarked the Gryphon runner, "so I was put on the girl's team." Yves was teased by his young male friends and quit the team in Grade 6 because he always felt embarrassed at practice.
 
However Jean would not let him give up so easily, offering Yves 100 Rwandan Francs (C15¢) for every practice he attended.  With the newfound motivation of using that money to help his aunt, Yves never missed another practice.
 
As Yves prepared to write the national exam to gain admittance to a Junior Secondary School, he felt it was pointless. Even if he aced the test, he would not be able to afford the more expensive Junior Secondary School.  "No one in my family had ever gone to school past Grade 6," said Yves.
 
Thanks to further assistance from Jean Dmascene, Yves would be the first member of his family to continue his education. The running coach paid for half of Yves' school fees and a charitable organization that assisted poor students covered the rest.
  He began practicing twice a day and taking running more seriously. Gradually, he started to get better and began beating the boys who used to tease him. However, it would take a greater challenge than increased practice time for Yves to become the elite distance runner he is today.
 
The young Rwandan had an opportunity to attend a Senior Secondary School for Grades 10 to 12 at a school located 11 kilometres from his home.
 
Unable to afford the bus ride let alone the cost of living in residence, Yves had no choice but to stuff a backpack with his books and uniform, and run 22 kilometres to school and back five days week.
 
Yves used his long distance run over the mountainous landscape as a training regimen. He timed himself each day, pushing himself to be faster than the day before.  After three years, he had knocked one minute off of every kilometer he ran.
 
The young runner began winning each race he entered, obliterating the competition. In 2009, he won Rwanda's national 1500m championship.
 
Then one day in spring of 2010, after successfully defending his 1500m title, Jean Dmascene said to Yves, "There is a World Junior Championship in Canada, we are looking to send the first Rwandan to it. We think you can go."

Yves Sikubwabo had never seen the world beyond the hills of Rwanda. He left his home for the first time in July 2010 to compete in the World Junior Championships for track and field in Moncton, New Brunswick.
 
"All I knew about Canada were the Great Lakes and a capital city called Ottawa," recalled the young Rwandan.
 
At the age of seventeen, Yves entered Kigali Airport with his aunt Floriane Nyirambabazi. He assured his aunt who raised him as a son that he would be okay and would return to Rwanda after the competition.  Without a parent, coach or teammate, he boarded the plane and began his journey to Canada.
 
Speaking Kinyarwanda his whole life, when Yves arrived in New Brunswick he had no knowledge of English, but knew enough French from elementary school to navigate through Moncton.
 
He competed in the 1500m at the World Junior Championship, and though he set a personal best time, he was unable to qualify for the finals running against older and more experienced competition.
 
After the race, Yves called his aunt who gave him troubling news; many perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide including his parent's killers had been released from prison threatening to finish what they started. Fearing for his safety and acknowledging that Canada offered the opportunity of a better life, she told him to stay.
 
The young runner spoke to his aunt over the phone three times, pleading with her to change her mind, but she persisted. He called his coach Jean Dmascene as well, who reiterated his aunt's advice.  Finally, Yves accepted their wishes and decided to stay in Canada, where he did not know a single person or fluently speak either language.
 
"I took a bus to Ottawa because it was the only city I knew. I wanted to be in Ottawa because government offices and schools would be there," recalled the runner.
 
When he arrived in the capital, he was astounded by the urban landscape. The young Rwandan had never seen structures like the bridges that straddled the Ottawa River, or the massive 19^th century buildings adorning Parliament Hill.
 
With only $40 to his name, he walked around downtown going from hotel to hotel, only to learn that the average room ranged from $100 to $200 a night.

A hotel concierge directed him to a hostel that was formerly a jail. After staying there for a few days, with no money left and no idea what to do next, Yves overheard something unusual; someone speaking Kinyarwanda.
 
A group of travellers from Burundi were staying in the hostel visiting a Rwandan friend.  The fellow Rwandan noticed Yves and asked him where he was from. After some initial shyness, he responded to her in their native language. She invited him to her house that evening and cooked him a much needed African meal.
 
The next day, she took Yves to a government office so he could claim Refugee Status and then on to a homeless shelter where he would live for the next few months.
 
With little to do, he began jogging every morning and memorizing the streets of Ottawa. He would run past the Château Laurier, Parliament Hill and along the Rideau Canal. One weekend, he entered an open track meet to compete in the half marathon, a race he had never run. Unaware of the number of laps, he still won by a sizeable distance.
 
"As I was running, people were cheering me on saying 'Good job!' but I didn't understand what they meant because I didn't know that English expression. I was thinking 'running isn't my job, I do it for fun'," joked the 20-year-old.
 
After the race, Yves was approached by Mike Woods, a Canadian Junior mile and 3000m record-holder who asked him if he would like to join his running club. While still living in a homeless shelter, he gradually became accustomed to his new life with the help of his teammates.
 
One morning, Nicole Le Saux was reading the paper when she came across an article about a young, homeless Rwandan distance runner. Feeling awful about Yves' situation, she had her daughter contact a friend who happened to be one of Yves' teammates.
 
"I invited him over for dinner on a Sunday night. We liked him so much that before we served dessert, we asked him if he'd like to live with us," said Nicole, an infectious disease physician.
 
"She took me in. She treated me like a mother," remembered Yves.
 
She ensured Yves became fluent in English in two years time so that he could graduate high school at the standard age. Nicole enrolled Yves in Glebe Collegiate Institute's ESL program and practiced English with him every day.
 
As his English improved, so did his dominance on the track and the trail. In Grade 11, Yves finished first in the OFSAA 1500m, 3000m, and Cross Country Championship, and repeated his 1500m and Cross Country titles in Grade 12. Impressively, he also graduated in the spring of 2012 with the rest of his classmates.
 
After being highly recruited, Yves chose to attend the University of Guelph, whose Men's Cross Country team has won the national title for the last seven consecutive years.  A contributing factor to the 20-year-old's decision was the fact that Guelph is just a bus ride away from his Canadian family: Nicole, her husband Jim, and their daughters.
 
Last year as a freshman, the Gryphon runner was the Ontario University Athletics 10k, 1000m, and 1500m silver medallist, Canadian Interuniversity Sport 1500m silver medallist, and won both the OUA and CIS gold medal as a member of Guelph's 4x800m relay. Evidently, he was named the OUA Cross Country Rookie of the Year, OUA Track and Field Rookie of the Year, and the CIS Track and Field Rookie of the Year.  The sophomore will be looking to capture another medal this Saturday when he competes in the OUA Cross Country Championship in Hamilton.
 
"It's amazing what a human can achieve when they have shelter, when they have a roof over their head and don't have to worry about feeding themselves," said Nicole.
 
After his first season, the former refugee is already one of the most decorated runners in the country. Rather than allowing the obstacles in his life to obstruct his path, he has chosen to climb over them and continue running.
 
"I want to compete in the Olympics for Canada because this country has supported me. Most Canadians care about immigrants. You have all the opportunities you want here, Canada is paradise," said Yves.
 
He often speaks to his aunt over Skype, hoping to one day bring her to Ottawa. Sometimes he translates conversations between her and Nicole, both of whom he refers to "Mom".
 
Yves Sikubwabo's story is a testament to not only individual perseverance, but to the impact one act of kindness can make in life. The young runner would not be where he is today without the selfless generosity of others.
 
His journey reminds us to keep running, because we never know what lies beyond the next hill.