10-STRONG OLYMPIC TEAM COMPETING UNDER IOC FLAG
enough food to be able to properly compete.
“I was starving,” says Mabika. “I couldn’t compete that way, I was weak. I just thought, ‘This is my opportunity to stay in this country’ so I ran away.”
She returned, albeit briefly, to get Misenga to come with her and the pair then walked the streets for days, unable to speak the language but trying to track down other Africans in the massive South American metropolis.
A chance encounter with an Angolan brought them into Caritas, a Catholic charity that helps refugees in Brazil, and eventually into contact with Instituto Reacao, a judo school in the city where they are now both based.
“I t was a ve r y ha rd t i me,” s ays Misenga. “I didn’t have a home, money or food. Everything was missing in my life. I was hungry and there was so much suffering. But we decided to stay. I thought, ‘I’m going to find a way, someone will help me’ but I knew I would never go back.”
But despite living in relative poverty in one of Rio’s many favelas, Brazil has very much become home.
Mabika says: “For me, living in Brazil is much better. In Congo, there was war all the time. You had one calm month and then problems started again.
“I want to stay in Rio until I die, I don’t want to go back. I want to stay here and one day have my own family here.”
Misenga is married to a Brazilian woman and has a son. For both judoka, the focus for Rio is twofold. One is to win a medal for the world’s refugees — should that happen the Olympic anthem will play at the medal ceremony — the other is to use the process to be reunited with their families back in Africa.
Misenga says in hope rather than expectation: “I lost all contact with my family in Congo. I don’t know if any of them are still alive. Now if they’re still alive they may see me on TV. They can recognise me, see my name.
“I have family here now but I want to bring my family from Congo to here, buy their flight tickets and have all my family together here.”
His message to his fellow refugees is “don’t give up on your dreams”.
Mabika says: “I never imagined I would get to this point. When I first heard there was a possibility to fight at the Olympics I thought, ‘ How is that possible? I’m a refugee’.
“I would never have thought this was possible. I got back to judo without knowing, now I’m really touched. I’ll represent all the refugees in the Olympics, I want to be their role model. I’m going to fight for them all.”