Kenyan security guard in Qatar in race of his life

Six days a week, Ongeri leaves work at 5pm and runs 12km at Doha’s Aspire park

Kenyan security guard Michael Douglas Ongeri has a dream — and won’t be daunted by poverty, a 13-hour workday or training in Qatar’s searing heat, far from his family.

Nor will he let the 11 kilometres he has to walk from work to the track then back home slow him down.

“You get used to it,” Ongeri tells AFP matter-of-factly. “I have to do it, it is something which is me, I like running, I have to run.”

While many dream of becoming an international track star, the 22-year-old Kenyan may actually have a chance.

Six days a week, he leaves work around 5pm and heads to Doha’s biggest park, Aspire Park, in the shadow of the city’s Khalifa Stadium that will host the World Athletics Championship in 2019.

In temperatures of over 40 degrees C (104F) and stifling humidity, the Kenyan puts on his training gear and, sweat pouring, runs up to 12 kilometres through Aspire’s green expanses.

If it is close to his payday — 1,400 Qatari riyals a month (Dh1,414; $385, €340) — it is possible Ongeri will go without food as he has no cash left, sleep for five hours in a room he shares with five others and then start all over again.

“He is talented and I think he could achieve his dream as a 1,500-metre/5,000-metre runner,” says former athlete Liz McColgan who with her husband, John Nuttall, founded and runs the Doha Athletics Club (DAC).

Helping hand

The couple help Ongeri train twice a week.

And as a former 10,000-metre world champion, silver medallist at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and winner of the New York and London Marathons whose husband competed in the 1996 Olympics and whose daughter just ran in the 5,000-metre final in Rio, McColgan’s opinion carries weight. “He has a really good running style so I could see him being a better track runner,” says McColgan who has been based in Qatar for the past twoand-a-half years.

“I met Michael when he sent me an email to the DAC website,” says McColgan.

“Madame Liz”, as Ongeri calls McColgan, worries that any hopes he has of competing professionally could be scuppered by his lack of time to train.

“Unfortunately he works ridiculous hours so can only run once a day,” she says. “If he wanted to race internationally you need twice a day.”

Ongeri grew up poor in Kenya’s Nyanza Province and always loved running. But as the oldest son of five siblings, his duty was to his family, not his passion.

He ended up working on the same farm as his father and mother but word of a job in Qatar offered a chance to earn more money and to run as well.

To secure his passage to the Gulf he paid an agent around $1,000 (Dh3,673) — cash he did not have but borrowed from an Italian boss at a shop where he worked in Kenya.

As the temperature finally dips below 40 degrees C, Ongeri has an hour’s running behind him and a three kilometre walk home ahead.

It may be a short distance from Aspire Park to Khalifa Stadium but would represent a lifetime’s ambition if Ongeri one day ends up running there