YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon ””mdash; Tedd Ray Bitsegui Ambassa is sitting comfortably in an oversized leather chair in a hotel room with two reporters, carefully narrating the story of his life.
Bitsegui is 24, going on 25, 6 feet 6 inches tall and muscular, but not intimidating. He’s retained his soft and inviting childlike face, and his big, round eyes have preserved their sense of innocent curiosity.
He’s held it together so far ““ talking about his past, reflecting on the sacrifices his mother made to allow him to pursue his basketball dream.
But when he begins recalling his horrific year in Bosnia-Herzegovina, his composure begins to waver.
“When the police take me, they give me the opportunity to call one call,” he said. “I call my mother and say, “˜Mom ““ bad news ““ the police have caught me here. … Don’t worry, I know that God can help me.’ I begin to cry because all the family pray for me every day.”
He pauses.
“Excuse me.”
Without warning, he suddenly breaks down into tears. He covers his head with his hands to hide from the reporters.
“Oh … oh … oh.”
Thirty seconds later, Cameroon’s former MVP regains his composure.
“It’s not good for me because when you are big like me it’s not good when you cry,” he says as he sobs. “Because you know here we be very strong. … That is bad experience for me, you know.
Because my family is poor, I lost my test, I don’t sign the contract, now my family pray for me, but nothing happened. It’s difficult.”
A life full of problems
Bitsegui is the first son of his mother’s second husband and one of seven children born by Mary Theresa Kono Ateba. Kono’s first husband left when she was 17 to become a pastor. She then married Bitsegui’s father, but the pair eventually divorced because Bitsegui’s father had a polygamous relationship with a woman in the village.
It didn’t help that neither of Bitsegui’s parents had a job. Kono was trying to raise her five children along with two of her brothers. That brought the count to seven, not including Kono, all living in a one-room house. There was no toilet in the house, and each night the family would move the furniture to the wall and create space to lay mattresses down.
Bitsegui was 6 while this was happening, a “very difficult” three years while his mother studied to become a teacher with no monetary compensation.
To make ends meet, Kono would squeeze juice for Bitsegui to take to the street corner and sell. Sometimes he would encounter thieves on his way home who would beat him up and take his money.
Then he would return home to the wrath of his mother, upset at her son for losing the day’s income.
By the time he turned 10, Bitsegui’s mother got a job as a teacher. Now the family was staying in an apartment paid for by the state, and the size of the home doubled from one room to two.
This would have been helpful had Kono not been compelled to call more family members in from the village to live with them. The space had doubled, but so had the number of occupants ““ from eight to 15.
By this time, Bitsegui was growing tall ““ tall enough that people started to take notice. One pleasant day when Bitsegui was 12, one of his mother’s friends delivered two gifts to Bitsegui: a volleyball and a basketball.
Bitsegui preferred basketball, and he played every day on the public court at the university near his home. Coaches began to notice that he had a naturally good shot, and in a matter of weeks, Bitsegui was on a team. By the end of the next year he was 13, 6 feet 5 inches tall and a budding star.
Seeing promise in her son’s talent, Kono gave Bitsegui around $10 ““ or 5,000 “Communauté Financière de l’Afrique” franc, also called the CFA franc. He used the money to buy his first pair of sneakers, and now he could stop affixing sandal bottoms to shoes.
And with the proper equipment, Bitsegui was selected for the senior national team and won the Central African Championship at 15.
And then began a series of sacrifices and missed opportunities for Bitsegui.
Cameroon qualified for the Central Region Championship, thanks in large part to Bitsegui. But the players needed new shoes to play in the tournament, and the country’s basketball federation would not pay for them.
Bitsegui went to his mother again, this time to beg for 20,000 CFA francs ($40). Kono was shocked the federation wouldn’t pay for the shoes, but she gave him her “last 20,000″ on the guarantee that he would win.
Off Bitsegui went to Gabon, where he played a round-robin tournament for the championship. His team went 5-0, guaranteeing they would be champions.
But in their last game against home country Gabon, a basketball official met them in the locker room and advised them to lose on purpose. The officials would slip them their trophy afterward. If the Cameroonian team won, there would surely be an outbreak of violence, and the official figured that a perfect record wasn’t worth losing a life.
So they lost a game instead ““ by nine.
And they were still battered with stones on their way to the bus.
Bitsegui returned to Cameroon with a huge trophy, but not a penny of prize money.
That was missed opportunity No. 1.
Bitsegui continued playing basketball and this time was noticed by a friend of Oliver Noah, one of Cameroon’s first middlemen who, using his connections to the U.S., sold scholarships to private high schools to Cameroonian players. Noah initially tried to help Bitsegui. He took him to a tournament in Douala, Cameroon, and had a scholarship all lined up for Bitsegui in France. Noah even went to the French Embassy with Bitsegui, but the young player was denied a visa.
Noah never followed up with Bitsegui after that.
That was missed opportunity No. 2.
Soon after his encounter with Noah, a friend of Bitsegui’s who played soccer in Bosnia-Herzegovina arrived home to Cameroon. He was looking for some basketball players to take back with him to the Bosnian league when the season resumed. Bitsegui volunteered.
His parents agreed to pay 500,000 CFA ($1,000) to fly him there, thinking this would be the big break in their son’s career.
Finally, Bitsegui would get paid for playing basketball.
Bitsegui arrived at the gym in Bosnia-Herzegovina for his skills test and made shot after shot, utterly shocking the coach who thought that African players “only rebound, only block.” The coach made his best player defend Bitsegui one-on-one, and when Bitsegui blew past the player and dunked, that was it.
The coach kicked Bitsegui out of the gym, angry that the black man had embarrassed his best player.
Bitsegui went with his soccer friend to try out for a second team. And the same thing happened again.
He made 25 shots in a row, and this time he was asked to play defense on the team’s best player. He stole the ball ““ and got punched in the face.
Impressed by Bitsegui’s talent, his coach pulled the young man into his office to sign a contract for 1,000 euros.
But his soccer friend had made a significant oversight. Bitsegui was still only 17, making him ineligible to sign a professional contract.
These were missed opportunities No. 3 and 4.
And then missed opportunities turned into a series of unfortunate events.
Bitsegui’s soccer-player friend left Bosnia-Herzegovina without telling him. When his mother called months later to say she had money for a plane ticket home, he showed up at the airport only to discover that his visa had expired.
The 17-year-old went to court in handcuffs, a detour just long enough to cause him to miss his flight. After being turned away at the gate, Bitsegui trudged outside the airport and planted himself on the snow-covered ground where he would remain for the next 14 hours.
This time, he called his mother, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell her exactly what happened, fearing that “maybe the heart is broken.”
“That is bad experience for me, you know. Because my family is poor, I lost my test, I don’t sign the contract, now my family pray for me, but it’s nothing happened. It’s difficult.”
Then all the praying paid off.
“I think God send me that man who give me 500 euro.”
At 3 a.m., a man drove by the airport and stopped when he saw the diminished Bitsegui at the side of the road. The basketball player explained his history, the man made a few phone calls, and, lo and behold, Bitsegui had a plane ticket home.
Working for the next generation
Bitsegui is a day older than 25 and sitting in the reporters’ hotel room while his clock is ticking.
Since he returned to Cameroon eight years ago, he’s won three more championships but lost one pivotal game that cost his team 60 million CFA francs ($120,000). He’s been personally deprived of 1.2 million CFA francs ($2,400) in tournament pay by a federation treasurer who decided to remove a “0” from his paycheck. And when he tried leaving the country to play professionally one more time, he returned again after the team president stopped paying his salary.
All the basketball and travel left him no time to graduate from high school. He has played for 12 years now and has less than $1,000 to show for it.
But he still dreams of playing in the United States, and his mother still prays that it will happen.
“At this stage, is there nothing more possible for Tedd?” she asked. “I just want him to realize his future.”
Bitsegui is acutely aware of the slim-to-none chance of ever getting to the United States to play basketball.
Therefore, he has turned his attention to a new set of interrelated goals: help eliminate the injustice in basketball and help his 11-year-old brother achieve what he could not.
“If my life was very difficult, it’s more important for me to work for an easy life for my younger brother,” Bitsegui said. “If in basketball I had more difficulties to be the best player … now is the time for me to do all things for my younger brother.
… And I am sure something is going to happen. If it’s not me, another person will do it.”
Bitsegui’s brother is the youngest player on Firehouse, a junior team coached by Bitsegui and his best friend, Ivan Cyril. The team won the Central Region Championship in August, and it seems that hope for the Bitsegui family rests on its youngest member.
“It makes me feel happy that my brother is having such hopes for me,” Raymond Spira Kono Ateba said. “Sometimes I am playing harder and harder; sometimes when we are training I am giving more.”
But to both Bitsegui and his mother, improving basketball in Cameroon has become about more than saving the family.
Bitsegui has taken to reflecting and writing. He believes the entire country of Cameroon, even the entire continent of Africa, can be changed through sports. He often thinks about how Cameroonian soccer legend Samuel Eto’o came from a poor family and how Eto’o’s success pumped hope into neighborhoods across the country. Nowadays, he dreams more often about building a school and a sports foundation for impoverished kids than he does about playing in the NBA.
He says he’s willing to be a martyr for basketball. And he’s got it all planned out.
“I think it is sport that is going to change Africa,” he said.
“Because African people don’t get your technology, science, but we get the talent. For me, if Africa get infrastructure in sports, something will change in the mentality, and it will help.”
Bitsegui knows that government officials have to respect popular sports stars, and he has seen how the country’s morale fluctuates based on the success of its national teams.
“So if maybe the United States wants to help Africa maybe they should help sport to grow,” Bitsegui concluded.
Then the basketball player fell silent. After four hours of talking without pause, Bitsegui stared down at the floor as he contemplated the final thing he wanted to tell the reporters.
“Africa needs help,” he whispered. And he fell quiet again.
“It’s good if more people come here to see the truth, because when you see our continent and begin to dream about Africa, it’s not good, because the dream is not the truth.”
With reports by Maya Sugarman, Bruin senior staff.