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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

John Blanchette: Running is a gift for man who fled civil war

First he had fled his home, and then his uncle’s home – fearing for his very being and the prospect of becoming a grim statistic, another of the more than 300,000 people who had died in Burundi’s hateful civil war.

So Come Nzibarega ran. And, yes, he was still a statistic, but a breathing one – part of the half-million Burundi refugees scattered to neighboring parts of Africa: Tanzania, the Congo, Rwanda, Uganda. He had made his way even farther, to Ethiopia – an urban refugee on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, where he was safe. But safety is not security.

“I believe you’re created with a purpose that you are to fulfill here on Earth,” Nzibarega said, “and I could see myself dying with all I have inside of me. It is a horrible life. There were no opportunities for me to release my potential, to help the community and be who I was created to be.”

He couldn’t even begin to know who that was or where it could take him.

Surely the wonder of the answer will dash briefly through his head again as he lines up on Sunday morning with 40-odd-thousand of his new best friends in downtown Spokane.

His city. His community.

Now 27, this will be Nzibarega’s third Bloomsday and he still thinks it “looks like the Olympics.” And, of course, it does up front with all the elite runners from Kenya and Ethiopia and Morocco – and, sure, the United States. To start with them is an honor, and he runs as if to validate it – he’s finished just outside the top 50 the past two years.

But you get the feeling he’d be just as fulfilled jogging with some fellow blue bibs.

“It makes me excited to see that the sport I’m doing is a channel of unity, love and somehow a reconciliation,” he said. “That’s the most important thing about our sport: bringing people together and enjoying life. Everybody claps for everybody. There’s no fighting.”

Fighting is something he grew up with in Burundi, the conflict between Hutu and Tutsi tribes long-standing and bloody. Though the election of President Pierre Nkurunziza and ceasefire agreements stabilized relations, United Nations peacekeepers were still on the scene in 2006 – and in their employ was a recent University of Burundi graduate named Come Nzibarega, whose mastery of five languages made him helpful as an interpreter and information gatherer.

It also made him a target of Hutu rebels, and one day after he returned home from a run he was kidnapped. For a week he endured interrogations and beatings, and while he clung to hope and faith, he knew that there was every likelihood his life was ending.

“Those guys,” he said, “have no mercy.”

He was rescued in an attack on the rebel base by government and U.N. forces. But returning home was impossible, and a move to the north to live with an uncle proved no safer. And so he fled to Ethiopia, and there the weeks became months, the months became a year, then two, then five, as he waited for clearance to enter the United States.

It was purposeless, mind-numbing living. It was a revelation.

“The richest places in the world are refugee camps,” Nzibarega insisted. “There you will find books that will never be written, songs that will never be sung. Amazing things are trapped inside the lives of those people there.”

In the meantime, he ran. He had started in high school, inspired by the gold medal triumph of countryman Venuste Niyongabo in the 1996 Olympics. He became captain of the university running team. In Ethiopia, he found himself in “a country of runners” and, even as his own existence seemed void of hope, shared the streets and trails with the biggest names – Kenenisa Bekele and even Haile Gebrselassie.

“His house is on a mountain, a mansion,” Nzibarega said. “At 5 in the morning, you see him running through the trees.”

And then, in 2011, after countless interviews, he learned he would be brought to Spokane through the auspices of World Relief, where he made such an impression he was eventually hired as a caseworker.

Now he smoothes the transition for émigrés from all points on the globe with both frank and gentle counsel – a voice they can trust, as he’s experienced all they have, and more.

“I feel like my hands are touching the whole world,” he said.

And his running shoes are on solid ground. He trains under the eye of North Central High School coach Jon Knight, sharing miles and workouts with former NC runner Andrew Kimpel.

“Running is a gift – it gives me courage and resilience, and it asks you not to blame other people for your failures,” he said. “My destiny doesn’t depend on somebody else, but on the choices I make every day.”

But on Bloomsday, the community of it all is a gift, too.