My Lesson on Finding a Way from a Paralympic Gold Medalist

The city’s serpentine streets intertwined elegantly on the map, illustrating several possibilities to reach the airport. All traffic obstacles, lane closures, blocked roads and detours were concealed. For a moment, I relished the striking resemblance to my life. It was like watching a multitude of transient opportunities gleaming with promise of breakthroughs, quickly dissolve through impediments and failed attempts. The road was defiant but at last I stood before a noble stretch of Dinaric Alps.

From a distance I observed an oscillating exchange of facial expressions and comical hand gestures amidst rows of wooden huts, neatly housing the most ebullient colours of autumn’s produce. He was the only black man at the Saturday morning market but the farmers of Zlatibor received him with febrile excitement, a Balkan village trait symbolic of his earned admiration. As I neared his gaunt stature, a dank mountain breeze carrying the scent of rare Scots Pine needles settled in my throat.

An elderly woman wearing a loosely tied charcoal headscarf and tartan cape insisted he take a paper plate of cheese gibenica, encircled by a few balls of frothy kajmak. They communicated through the heart, a celestial binding embodied by temperate pupils that mocked a need for common language.

My curiosity intensified as I noticed four of the fingers on his left hand amputated, each knuckle clearly pronounced at the stump making a fist... Who was he?

He caught my eyes fixated on his severed hand, and swiftly extended his other arm introducing himself in an avuncular British colonial accent, “...since boyhood I’ve yearned to be the best marathoner in the world but always fell short of my dream. One year after my people, the Luo, punished me in Eldoret, I became a Paralympic gold medalist.”

His name is Stanley Kipruto. It was during a virulent bout of ethnic cleansing near an athletic training camp bordering Uganda, that he successfully escorted Serbia’s marathon record holder, Olivera Jevtic, to safe ground. Upon returning, he was imprisoned and physically tortured, forever reminded of his heroism. Following countless blocked lanes and closed roads, it was a detour that led to his dream.

“Ziveli!” Smiling, he raised his plastic cup of rakija revealing an indomitable spirit as he strode away.