When the NCAA Champion magazine crew arrived at High Point University in the North Carolina town that is the school’s namesake for its cover shoot with Chernet Sisay, the staff realized it had a problem: The campus was flawless. For this story, flaws were needed. These photos were trying to convey a student-athlete’s journey that began by being orphaned by the AIDS crisis in Africa. How could that be done using images taken on a campus that boasts Versailles-caliber fountains, brick walkways and statues of Abraham Lincoln and Mother Teresa sitting next to each other on park benches? While Champion did take advantage of this pristine setting, including some shots from the school’s elegant presidential suite, with its balcony overlooking campus, the art director and photographer were fixated on finding a setting near campus that would better reflect some of Sisay’s early hardships. Mark LaFrance, sports information director at High Point, went beyond the call of duty and chauffeured the crew around the town in search of areas that might fit that need.
At one point, it sounded as if he had nearly ripped the bottom of his car out as he ventured down a path where few Nissan Altimas had likely dared go before. How far afield did they wander? At one point, NCAA Photos photographer Jamie Schwaberow turned to the group and asked: “Do you think that fence is electric?” Through it all, Sisay proved to be a willing subject as he was tugged through and around campus in search of the right shots. The crew spent an evening and an early morning in a lonely field off a two-lane state road where High Point track and cross country coach Mike Esposito holds training sessions. There, Sisay ran behind an SUV. He leapt into the air. He struck less than comfortable poses. Most of all, though, he smiled. Sisay’s journey might have begun in rough terrain. But that beginning is not his whole story, and it does not define him. When creative director Arnel Reynon tried to nudge him toward a more serious look, Sisay’s face rebelled. “I want this to capture who I am,” Sisay told him.
Cow dung held together Sisay’s first home. It gave the one-room house shape and supported a thin metal roof. parents and his younger sister each slept and ate in their own corners of the dwelling. He used a communal bathroom and heated water in a bucket outside when he wanted to take a lukewarm shower. Sisay’s connection to the world beyond Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, was limited to his family’s radio and the occasional bit of television he would watch at friends’ houses, but “the small things for us were very big,” he says. As if he was stuck in a perpetual tunnel, Sisay was able to fixate only on what was directly in front of him – the next meal, the next safe night of sleep, the next outburst from his father. The realm of dreams and aspirations existed somewhere beyond his periscopic view and those dung walls; goals and the future proved too abstract to comprehend. His mother was a “tiny lady with a big spirit,” who oversaw her own grocery stand and was a devout attendee of an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian church.
Sisay didn’t share his mother’s beliefs but accompanied her there because it was their refuge from daily torments and, simply, because he was a son who wanted to make his mother happy. His father eventually landed a job as a security guard for a factory, enabling the family to move into a two-room home when Sisay was 6. Through Sisay’s youth, nearly 4 percent of all adults in Ethiopia carried HIV; the World Health Organization estimates that more than 110,000 Ethiopians lost their lives to AIDS in 2001 alone. Even as a child, Sisay knew the disease lurked everywhere, but still couldn’t believe it could afflict his own family. Then, the woman with the big spirit began toFor months, he watched the person he cared for the most – the one who shielded him when his father raged – slip away. Sisay, at 9 years old, tended to her until the end but was granted no catharsis or tearful goodbye: She spoke her final words weeks before she died.
Anguished, the boy disappeared, returning for only a portion of his mother’s weeklong funeralSisay’s father, also sick, offered no apologies when his son reappeared, only a long,Sisay cared for his father until he died“I’ll never hold anything against him,”“I think most fathers were like that.” Sisay’s younger sister, Bethlehem, then 6, was taken to an orphanage in Addis Ababa, but Sisay was deemed too old and was left in the streets. Initially, he reveled in the newfound freedom fromHe aligned with other friends who had lost or escaped their families, stealing food, working odd jobs and protecting each other in aBut days spent relishing his father’s absence gave way to nights lamenting his mother’s. That cycle persisted for more than a year. Bethlehem was adopted by an American family. They asked that Sisay be placed in the orphanage, which would allow someone to adopt him. his close friends behind on Addis Ababa’s streets for
the slim chance that he would get to see life outside“Everybody wants out,” he says. know how long I would have survived.” From the orphanage, which rested near Addis Ababa’s Bole International Airport, Sisay studied airplanes for hours, watching their wheels lift off the only ground he had ever known. those planes for more than a year. Sisay – by then almost 12 years old – finally stepped onto one with the American family that had come to retrieve him. He was frightened, but the fear wasn’t generated by being thrust thousands of feet into the airWhat scared him most was not that the plane would tumble back to Earth, but that itStunning 100 acres Off Grid Solar Property in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas (no electric bills!) ~ 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, loft ~ approx. 1500 sq. ft. ~ very private and secluded ~ Year-round springs and 3 spring fed ponds (gravity flow spring water right into the house with 1000 gallon holding tank) ~ 30 year established organic gardens (truly amazing fertile soil) ~ 3 bay post and beam carport (1 bay fully enclosed with woodstove
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