Mentor Polishes a Mirror: Mark Mathabane Gives Runner Boru Guyota the Break he Longed For

By Doug Binder, Special to the Oregonian (June 8, 2010)

Winds gust across the field at the Lincoln High School track, and dark, swollen clouds passing over the West Hills portend rain.

Boru Guyota gazes upon the empty space in front of him. His lungs burn for oxygen, but he does not stop.

"Very good, Boru!" The words of encouragement come fromMark Mathabane, standing next to a rail, holding a stopwatch. "Slow down a little bit."

Guyota, then a Jefferson High School senior whose graduation was a few weeks off, moves around the track by himself, one 200-meter sprint after another.

Guyota is among the most promising track and field athletes in Oregon, but few have seen him race in recent months. He might have stopped competing if not for Mathabane, who turned a chance encounter this winter in North Portland into a mutually gratifying relationship that recalled author Mathabane's upbringing in apartheid South Africa.

"He is my dad," Guyota said. "He takes care of me."

Guyota, who was placed into Jefferson as a freshman when he was 16, turned 20 in January. He was ineligible to compete in high school races this spring, unable to defend his Class 5A 800-meter state title. The summer amateur season gives him an opportunity to test his progress, starting Saturday at the Portland Track Festival at Lewis & Clark College.

After Guyota and Mathabane crossed paths in January, Mathabane inquired about his training and volunteered to help. Guyota, who has run 1:52.56 for 800 meters and 3:58.00 for 1,500, began working exclusively with Mathabane.

Mathabane said he was drawn to the potential, determination and desperate need that he saw.

"It's like a mirror of my own life," he said. "I remember growing up wishing someone had given me a break."

Mathabane's critically acclaimed "Kaffir Boy" details his childhood in the densely populated ghetto of Alexandra in apartheid South Africa. The book is required reading in schools across the U.S., and the story is being developed into a movie. Shooting begins this fall in South Africa.

Mathabane's daughter, Bianca, and oldest son, Nathan, were state champions at Lincoln High School and compete in track at Princeton.

Lacking a road map

In Guyota, Mark Mathabane discovered an immigrant like himself who highly values education and work ethic, but who lacked the road map for turning those traits into success.

When Guyota was 16, he and other family members left southern Ethiopia to reunite with his father in Portland. First, they crossed the border into Kenya and rode on a truck with cattle for several days to Nairobi and a refugee camp. Guyota and his relatives spent nine months there, waiting to be cleared by the United Nations and for a flight out.

When Guyota stepped off a plane in Portland, he met his father, a political dissident, for the first time. They went immediately to an all-you-can-eat buffet and celebrated the reunion.

"The only thing I recognized was chicken," Guyota said. "I ate a lot of chicken."

Guyota and his siblings were evaluated by the Portland school district and placed into classes at Jefferson. He quickly became close friends with Danny Mwanga, a Congolese student and star soccer player now in Major League Soccer. They were in the same English as a Second Language class.

Guyota got a job with Food Works, a community garden project on Sauvie Island, where he applied some of the agricultural know-how he gained from living on his grandfather's farm.

And Guyota gravitated to Jefferson's cross country and track team, which lacked a full-time distance running coach.

At home, money is scarce, though nothing like the squalor he witnessed in the refugee camp.

Guyota said his father has mental health problems and at times doesn't take his medication. His mother died when he was 4. His father's new wife is searching for work.

Day-to-day stresses

Mathabane determined to do what he could to take away some of Guyota's day-to-day stresses. He paid bills and bought groceries. He gave Guyota running shoes, workout clothes and a bicycle to ride to Sauvie Island. He bought recovery drinks and vitamins.

And he encouraged Guyota to look into scholarships available to minority and immigrant students.

Guyota repaid Mathabane's kindness with commitment.

Six weeks after their chance encounter on the street, Guyota ran on March 6 at the Linfield Icebreaker. That began an informal racing season in which Guyota ran unattached. He is running faster than ever, with times that indicate he could become a star at the collegiate level.

"I'm amazed at his biomechanics," Mathabane said. "He has some of the best form I've ever seen."

Mathabane researched the training of former world record holder Sebastian Coe of Great Britain, who was coached by his father, Peter Coe. The workouts lean heavily toward high-intensity track repeats with lots of rest.

Learning fast 

The aim is to learn to run fast. Guyota's natural running form takes over from there.

"Coaching is part science and part inspiration," Mathabane said. "You have to inspire an athlete to believe they can do certain things. Workouts are workouts. Performances that dazzle come from inspiration."

Off the track, Mathabane's influence is perhaps more important. As they drive on Interstate 5 to a meet in Eugene, the scholar in the driver's seat talks and Guyota listens.

"I am so blessed to meet him," Guyota said. "He is telling me these truths and gives me examples. He says, 'Don't give a person a fish, show him how to catch fish.'"

Guyota believes in his training and said he hopes to run in the 2012 Olympic trials. He intends to become a U.S. citizen this summer.

But even aside from running, Guyota's final months of high school have been extraordinary. 

Accruing scholarships
 
Guyota won a Dell Scholarship worth $20,000. He won the University of Oregon diversity scholarship, worth $6,000 if he chooses to go there. He received the Ford Foundation Scholarship, which pays 90 percent of his costs at any college he decides to attend.

He has not decided where he'll attend, though he wants to go to a school where he can run track, maybe the University of Portland.

Four years after landing at PDX unable to speak English, Guyota learned recently that he is one of Jefferson's valedictorians.

"This year is the best year I have ever had in my high school," said Guyota, who is interested in studying medicine. 

He wants to make life easier for his father. He wants to be able to help people like his grandfather, who died in August of malaria.

Guyota missed this year's state track championships, but he has tasted moments of glory at Hayward Field in Eugene. In 2008, he led off Jefferson's winning 4x400 relay team. And last year he won the Class 5A 800, moving from fourth to first over a furious final 160 meters.

"What I was thinking is just to win," Guyota said. "It is the only thing I have in my mind. I don't know or care what my body was going through. Just win the race. Get the medal."

That commitment and hunger caught the eye of Mathabane.

"He's one of the most grateful young men I have ever met," Mathabane said. "He's something special."