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Steven Gatkuoth wrote the following in a 12th grade essay:
“I have a plan to get a college education and feel this will allow me to help the rest of my family. Somehow by accomplishing this, it will provide a reason for all the things that have happened in my life. I plan to work very hard and God is on my side helping me every step of the way.”
The topic was International Concern. Steven wrote the essay for Mrs. Corcoran’s English class at Our Savior New American School in Centereach, N.Y. “All the things that have happened in my life” refers to the events that began in his homeland, southern Sudan, and led him to the Lutheran high school in New York and eventually to PC.
Education began early for Steven in the town of Nasser in southern Sudan. From the time he learned to walk, Steven, like all of the other boys in his Nuer tribe, tended cows. Supervised by a tribal leader, Steven helped lead about 30 cows to graze, to drink, and, telling time by the sun, back to their village. He learned how to speak his Nuer language while tending to cattle.
Until he was six years old, Steven led cows through the rich, green pastures of the region. It’s the same land where Christian, non-Arab tribes like the Nuer tribe spend their days herding. Many fish along the tributaries of the Nile. It’s also the same land that northern Sudan has wanted to control for a number of years.
The Muslim, Arabic-speaking people of northern Sudan control the Sudanese government and want control of southern Sudan’s land, cattle, and recently-discovered oil. To that end the Sudanese government has systematically attacked villages in southern Sudan, burning villages, bombing, and leading air raids since the Second Civil War began in 1984. Two million people have been killed in southern Sudan during that time, one of the bloodiest civil wars of the 20th century.
More than 27,000 boys, known as the Lost Boys of Sudan, became displaced or orphaned because they were away tending herds or able to escape into jungles when their villages were under attack. Steven was one of them.
“They would often come in the middle of night while we were asleep. Often they would attack with guns during school,” Steven wrote. “They would barge in firing shots all around. . . One night stands out in my mind when shots were fired and my dad was shot. Since we lived in a remote village, there was no medical care or hospital for him. The very next day, my dad died.”
Knowing that she could not guarantee her children’s safety, Steven’s mother told her children to go to Ethiopia, where many Sudanese fled to escape the war. Steven’s older brother had already fled there. One sister stayed with their mother.
“It is an unusual experience when fathers and mothers push their children to escape,” said Dr. Jerman Disasa, a PC professor from Ethiopia.
“But, they know that if they stayed, they would be dead.”
When he was six, Steven and his sister, twelve years older than he, took their mother’s advice and set out on a walk across the lowlands of southern Sudan to Ethiopia. The two were the only ones they knew in a group of more than 100 refugees. The large group needed one another for protection and encouragement. The children, many of them Lost Boys and some girls who were fortunate enough to escape, tried to play as much as they could to keep their minds off the situation. The adults carried spears to protect them all from wild animals.
“People were afraid,” Steven said. “People were dying on the road because they were distempered. They have nothing to eat, no water, no nothing. Some drank urine when they needed. Some ate wild animals. It was a long trip, long journey.”
The group also fought malaria and insects. Further, with attacks only miles away, Steven and his sister often ran out of fear of getting shot. His sister carried him when he got tired. Five days and 120 miles later, Steven and his sister finally made their way to Gambella, Ethiopia.
While in Ethiopia, Steven learned a new language, Amharic, a common language of Ethiopians. He also learned a new culture. After living in Gambella for five years, Steven received word that his mother had died of illness back home in Nasser.
“It was very hard news to handle,” Steven said.
Afterwards, he went to school in Gambella with an appreciation for education that few people know.
“I didn’t have my father and mother,” Steven said, “but education became my father and my mother.”
While many Ethiopians and refugees played soccer, some, including Steven, preferred basketball.
“I started playing soccer,” he said. “Then I started growing and said, ‘Nah, I can’t play soccer anymore.’”
Steven and the others played full-court pick-up games in the dust outside. They played using a wooden backboard with the rim nailed to it. A net was used only during real games.
Steven even began playing in a league, competing in tournaments as they traveled throughout the region. His coaches often played videos of Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, and Magic Johnson. As much as he grew to like the sport, Steven played mainly because he recognized it as an opportunity for him.
Steven lived with his sister in Ethiopia for eight years, all the while going to school and playing basketball. Then, when he was fourteen, he traveled. He went back home to Nasser for a few months to live with his sister. He also went to Dubai and to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, to visit, continuing to play in basketball tournaments.
Eventually, he went to Khartoum in northern Sudan to visit his uncle. He noticed that in Khartoum, the seat of Sudanese government, there was no fighting. While visiting, Steven continued playing in basketball tournaments throughout the region. One day a coach from Our Savior New American School from New York saw Steven playing basketball. The coach talked to him and asked if he would like to go to America to play basketball.
“I was excited because I had the chance to play basketball, which is what I wanted,” he said. “My family was happy too because they want me to get my education.”
Strict regulations prevented Steven from getting a visa in Khartoum. To get one, he had to go to Nairobi, Kenya. After staying in Kenya for a few months, he flew, visa in hand, to Centerreach.
There, the pastor at Our Savior had found a home for Steven. He would stay with Don and Linda DeBolt and their two children, Matthew and Stephanie, on Long Island.
Steven was in a familiar situation: he was in a new place, where he had to learn a new culture and a new language. He learned English at the school and from living with the Debolts. He sat with the family every Sunday at church and even began calling the DeBolts “mom” and “dad.”
“He always fit in,” Linda DeBolt said.
Steven often did extra chores around the house to earn money to send to his sister in Nasser.
Like he did in Ethiopia and Khartoum, Steven traveled a good deal playing in basketball tournaments. Our Savior plays schools from all over the nation. Steven was often away days at a time traveling to and from Florida, Ohio, and as far away as California.
A trip the team took to Tennessee provided another unexpected opportunity for Steven. Our Savior was one of a host of schools playing in the National Association of Christian Athletes tournament in Dayton, Tenn. PC basketball coaches Ronnie Fisher and Justin Smith drove up to watch a few of the games. Three players more than seven feet tall on the “team from New York,” according to Fisher, caught their eye. They had never heard of Steven before.
“After checking with the coaching staff, we were told that Steven was a good student and an excellent kid,” Fisher said.
PC’s coaching staff visited Steven and his American family in New York. At the time, Albany University, Pittsburgh, and St. John’s were also recruiting Steven. PC’s coaches developed a relationship with Steven and the DeBolts and invited them to Clinton. Once he visited PC, Steven and his family decided he should come here.
“They were worried about Steven’s spiritual walk and his well-being,” Fisher said. “They wanted him to choose a school with a caring community and members of a basketball team that were solid from a character standpoint. They wanted Steven to attend a school where he would be taken care of and get a great education. A scholarship to Presbyterian College was certainly an answered prayer for Steven.”
Steven red-shirted his freshman year and learned about life in Division I and ways he can improve. Although the team lost most of their games the first season in D-I, he feels confident that the upcoming years will be better.
“Other schools have more experience. It’s our first year in Division I,” Steven said. “(Teams in the) ACC and others know how (to win) because they’ve been there. Everybody’s been learning from this year.”
On campus he “fits right in,” as Mrs. DeBolt said he did in New York. When he walks across campus, students he doesn’t know holler his name. Many even invite him to come home to visit their families over breaks. Students get notes for the days he misses class because of basketball, and professors offer extra help to him when necessary. Disasa says that professors and students often ask how Steven is doing.
Since Steven came to campus less than six months ago, Disasa has already noticed a difference in Steven’s physical appearance, his ability to converse with others, and his attitude.
“I’m upbeat about his contribution not only to basketball, but to society here and in other areas at PC,” Disasa said. “It’s not just basketball. It’s much larger than basketball.”
Fisher agrees.
“Along the way, we will learn much more from Steven than we are able to teach,” he said. “Steven’s impact in the PC community will reach much further than his seven foot wingspan on the basketball court.”
Steven says he appreciates the opportunity he’s been given at PC. He says he’s “still excited” about being here. All the same, he often thinks about the events in his life that led him to walk from his homeland.
“The situation is still hard and people are still dying. I miss home and miss my family. Thinking about kids my age because they are still struggling, not going to school, just hungry—they have no food to eat. That’s kind of hard for me too ‘cause I want them to do well. Now, I get breakfast, dinner, and lunch so I think I’m pretty good. I have no problems about food. And I got an education too. And they didn’t get that.”
“I feel comfortable because even if I’m back home right now, I don’t think I (would be) where I am right now,” Steven said. “The important thing is (my) education.
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