Crash ended cycling hopeful’s dream of a berth in the Olympics

In 2002, Frederick Akula was looking forward to a bright future. That future included a possible triathlon berth in the 2004 Athens Olympics as part of the Kenyan delegation to the games in Greece. After that, if everything went according to plan, he planned to wed the young woman he was seeing and settle down.

Akula had earned his colours on the cycling circuit through years of training and was a respected rider among his peers. Tall, lean and athletic, he could also do laps in the swimming pool in impressive time. Running came naturally to him, making him a triple-threat athlete. By every measure, the future shimmered with athletic glory for the strapping young man.

While it was two years to the Olympics — a long time — Akula wasn’t taking any chances; he wanted to be ready when the team was announced. When he got on his bicycle for a routine ride late one morning in June 2002, there was no indication that his life was about to change dramatically. As he pedalled along a narrow stretch of road near Kiserian Town, two speeding vehicles suddenly appeared ahead, filling both lanes and hooting insanely. Akula doesn’t remember much, just the lights and the sudden impact with metal as he was tossed into the air. It would be five days before he woke up from a coma.

“Everything took a different direction from that point,” says Akula, who suffered a neck injury, broken ribs, and most devastating of all, a paralyzed right arm.  The severity of the accident would take time to sink in as he pondered his future. But at least he could count on the unconditional support of his fiancée; surely, even if everything else went south, she would be there.

But soon his loss inventory registered new entries. His arm wasn’t the only casualty; gone was the Olympics dream, and soon he learnt that he would have to shelve his plans for marriage as well. His fiancée had weighed her options and decided that she wasn’t up to the task of living with a man who had suddenly lost the use of one arm.  Although all might have seemed lost to a lesser person, Akula was determined to live by the saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”, and took all the depressing news in his stride.

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PAINFUL MEMORIES

We are sitting by the swimming pool at the Young Men’s Christian Association on Arboretum Drive in Nairobi on a warm Saturday afternoon. Akula has taken a break from his duties as a swimming instructor. Now in his mid forties, he hardly looks it.

“There is a reason for everything,” Akula says as he props his disabled arm on the table.  “I don’t make excuses for myself just because I lost my arm,” he says.

By the time his dreams came crashing on the tarmac, Akula had outrun a harrowing childhood in Ugenya, Siaya County, experiences that could have easily crushed the resolve of a weaker person. It all started after his father died when Akula was a toddler.  His mother soon fled the family to escape wife inheritance, leaving Akula, his sister and brother in the hands of an uncle. It didn’t take long for the three sibling to realise that they were a burden.

“I never knew a kind word when I was growing up,” Akula recounts, his face cringing at the painful memory. Beatings were a daily occurrence, he says. He rolls up his trousers to reveal angry scars running down his legs, testimony to the punishment he endured at the hands of his uncle and aunt.

He says a scar below his right knee was inflicted by a cousin.

“She used a sharp garden hoe. She wanted to kill me,” he explains.

When he was 15 years old, Akula, his self-esteem at an all-time low, decided he had had enough of life with his uncle and aunt.

“I wished I were dead. Even life on the streets would have been better than living with my relatives,” he says.

He had been told that his mother lived in Kisumu Town, so decided to go and look  for her.

Kisumu was a whole new world, its size amazing and intimidating to a young boy. With no contacts, Akula lived on the streets for more than a year. He had been told that his mother worked as a nanny for an Asian family, so he moved from door to door, looking for her until he found her.

“I recognised her, she recognised me,” Akula says of their reunion. 

He moved in with her and life looked promising after she enrolled at Ngere Boys’ Secondary School in Kisumu County. But her meagre pay was not enough to sustain him in school, so he dropped out in Form Three.

Akula had bottled up his anger and bitterness with life for 17 years and it was just a matter of time before his rage found a vent. At that point, he recalls, he was a powder keg waiting for a matchstick. Adrift and with nothing to look forward to or to lose, he vented his pent-up emotions in street brawls. One day he nearly killed someone in a fight. Soon, he was on the run, wanted by the authorities.

“I moved to Nairobi in 1994. I was scared for my life,” Akula says.

He put up with a friend in Dandora estate and found work at a bottling plant. He started earning an honest living and sent a little money to his mother every month.

GRAND DREAM

One Sunday, about a year later, he decided to attend a church service. The sermon had a major impact on him and he decided to change his lifestyle. Not to long afterwards, he joined the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and  realised that there was promise in sports. During the next seven years, Akula honed his athletic skills. He earned his swimming instructor accreditation and also became one of the best cyclists in Nairobi. His weekends were dedicated to charity races, raising money for various causes.

Athletics, Akula discovered, could provide a ticket to a better, more meaningful life. If he proved that his skills were bankable, who knows, he might even represent the country. Perfecting his skills became Akula’s drive, the Olympics his dream. That dream was in his mind when fate interjected and put paid to his grand dream. “The most fortunate thing is that I was wearing a helmet,” he says. “Otherwise I would have been paralyzed.”

When Akula came to, every single thing in his life was re-ordered: simple activities such as buttoning his shirt or buckling his belt suddenly became difficult tasks. He would have to learn to write with his left hand.

“I pitied myself a lot,” he recalls.

But far much worse was a life without cycling. How would he swim? How would he run without his arm propelling him? Terrifying thoughts passed through Akula’s mind, reminding him of his tenuous future.

“The biggest battle was in my mind,” he offers. “See, the arm is only as heavy as you allow it.”

As with most activities requiring the motor functions of the limbs, balance is key. However, none is more dependent on balance than cycling. Bicycle handlebars are as crucial to propulsion as the pedals. When Akula resumed cycling, it took him a while to learn to negotiate corners and ride at his previous speed. Days of practice and mental fortitude paid off, and he realised he could will his mind to do what his paralyzed arm couldn’t.

Akula says that when he realised that he could still participate in the triathlon, albeit in the Paralympics, he found his freedom. His situation wouldn’t trap him. In early 2015, he accompanied the Kenyan team to the Triathlon African Championships in Troutbeck, Zimbabwe, as a coach.

Akula’s eventful life has created in him deep kinship with children. In addition to his work as a coach, he mans the Kids’ corner at the YMCA. As a result of his life experiences, Akula, who is single, says that showing love to children and giving them positive counsel plays a big role in their self-esteem later in life.  He also serves as a youth counsellor, using his life as an example of triumph.

In the foreseeable future, Akula plans to put up a youth recreational centre on the family land he inherited in Ugenya. 

“I have a passion for young people, seeing them rise and be successful,” he says.

He is currently working with cycling groups to raise awareness on environmental matters. He is also a motivational speaker and a tireless advocate for full representation of people with disability in all areas of life. But the Olympics dream is still alive; that, or a major competition.

In 2020 when the next Olympiad is held in Japan, Akula will be nearly 50. But against the backdrop of his travails and resolve, it is hard to count him out. He says that he is scheduled to see a surgeon at Kenyatta National Hospital for possible surgery that could give life to his long-shrivelled arm.

“That would change a lot of things. People know me for my arm and what I have been able to do in cycling,” Akula reflects. “To be able to use my arm again….”

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The shadows are getting longer as the interview ends. The swimming pool is now almost empty, the sun no longer strong enough to dry the water off the swimmers. Young people pass by and wave to Akula, who smiles back.

“Look forward to life,” Akula offers. “Make good of every page in your life.”

He pulls down his sunglasses, gets on his bike and rides off into the evening light.