Braving the cold early morning weather, a group of athletes meandered across the Nandi hills, located about 350 kilometers northwest of Nairobi, as part of their daily routine to build the stamina required for middle and long-distance races.
Perina Lokure Nakang, a refugee girl from South Sudan, is part of the group in their final preparations for the 2024 Summer Olympics, scheduled to take place in Paris, France, in late July. The 21-year-old was selected as part of the Olympic Refugee Team, where she will compete in the 800-meter race.
The Olympic Refugee Team, which first competed in Rio 2016, brings together refugee athletes from different countries and regions into a single team. Nakang arrived in Kenya in 2010 after fleeing South Sudan with her aunt in search of a safe place from the civil strife in her homeland.
She told Xinhua on June 22 that her life in Kenya began at the Kakuma Refugee Camp, located about 750 kilometers northwest of Nairobi.
Kakuma is the country’s second-largest camp, hosting about 288,000 refugees from nine countries, including South Sudan, Ethiopia, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
While at the camp, Nakang engaged in various sporting activities to pass time in the settlement, located in an arid zone characterized by extremely high temperatures and low rainfall.
“I really enjoyed playing football in the open fields, and I would see my colleagues running, and I thought they were just chasing the winds,” Nakang said. Eventually, one of her friends convinced her to start competing in the races organized in the camp, and she began to score a series of victories.
However, her turning point occurred when Janet Jepkosgei, who won a silver medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics for the 800 meters, spotted her during an athletic competition in 2022. As a result of her excellent performance on the track and field, she won a scholarship to attend Shoe4Africa All4Running Kapchorwa Secondary School in Nandi, whose patron is Janet Jepkosgei.
The school is located in a high-altitude region with many world-class athletic training camps that have produced many Olympic track and field champions.
Nakang said that the facilities at the sports school are much better than the harsh conditions she endured at the refugee camp. “I am in an environment that is ideal for improving my performance in athletics as I continue preparations to compete at the Olympics,” Nakang said.
Her personal best in the 800 meters is 2:12. However, she aims to improve this to 2:07 by the time she competes at Paris 2024. The young South Sudanese refugee competed in the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, in 2023, where she finished eighth.
Janet Jepkosgei, who is Nakang’s coach, said that refugee athletes face numerous challenges compared to their peers because of the mental and financial constraints due to being away from home. According to Jepkosgei, refugee girls are also discouraged from engaging in sports due to cultural barriers. “There is a notion that when girls engage in sports, they will grow muscles and will be unable to have children,” Jepkosgei remarked.
Jepkosgei said that she is a mother after being a world champion athlete and it is an inspiration for more girls to join sport. She revealed that, due to Nakang’s dedication to training, she is expected to be the best-performing refugee athlete at Paris 2024.
