The Incredible True Story of Blondy Baruti Read online

  “I am going to work hard in school and play basketball,” I told everyone. “I am going to learn English in a couple of months so that we can all talk together. I will make everyone proud.”

  Terry and Laurie smiled as Patrick explained to them what I had said.

  “Two months?” Terry repeated, his tone betraying both amusement and admiration. “Well, okay.”

  Later on, I pulled out my championship belt and showed it to everyone in the car. I said, “Me champion. Congo champion.” They all cheered for me. It was a great feeling.

  It took us less than an hour to get to the Blitzes’ home in Mesa. It was a nice suburban home, relatively normal by American standards, which meant it seemed like a palace to me. It was located in by far the nicest neighborhood I had ever seen.

  I am going to live here now? I thought to myself. In this house? It was so big!

  I smiled at the wonder of it all, the way people took in strangers and made them part of their family. America was amazing!

  When I first walked into the Blitzes’ house, I was welcomed by two dogs, which I later learned were named Shady and AJ. They ran toward me enthusiastically, and I ran in the other direction and tried to hide behind Patrick. In the Congo, you see, most dogs are not at all friendly toward strangers; I presumed that Shady and AJ were going to attack me. But the Blitzes explained that both dogs were friendly, and pretty soon I found myself patting them both on the head.

  Inside, I was given a quick tour of the house and shown to a bedroom.

  “This is yours, Blondy,” Mrs. Blitz said warmly. “Please think of it as home.”

  I nodded appreciatively. To be perfectly honest, I had no idea what was happening. A week earlier I had been told that I was going to a prep school in the American Northeast and that I would be living on campus. Now, suddenly, I was in Arizona, living with a white American family whom I had never met, but whose generosity and kindness seemed extraordinary.

  “What is going on, ?” I asked when we had a moment alone. “Why am I living here if you are in Texas?”

  Patrick shook his head. “I don’t live in Texas. I will be here, with you.”

  “But Uncle Joseph said you live in Houston.”

  Patrick made a disapproving face. “This is where we will be living now, you and me. Don’t worry about Houston. Don’t worry about that other school. The only thing that matters is that we have a place to stay together. We will take care of each other. I will find a job and support you, one hundred percent.”

  He held out his hand and I took it in mine. “Okay, cousin. Thank you for being in my life.”

  “No problem, Blondy. Remember, we are blood.”

  Where I come from, such a proclamation means everything, and its impact is felt even more dramatically when you are thousands of miles from home, in a strange land, where you don’t speak the language or understand the customs.

  But the truth is, blood is not always thicker than water. Sometimes blood means nothing; it can be the weakest of links. And the most likely to be exploited.

  CHAPTER 11

  * * *

  A lot happened before I came to America, discussions and bartering that took place without my knowledge, and the substance of which I learned in small pieces over the next several months, as the impact on my life—and that of my new family—became apparent.

  It is true I had a cousin who lived in Houston. I knew nothing about him except that he was twenty-six years old and supposedly had been a pretty good basketball player who came to the United States to play ball and get an education. But as I would discover, there was much more to the story.

  Unbeknownst to anyone in my Congolese family, Patrick, I would come to believe, had begun plotting a path to use me for his own benefit as soon as he got wind of the news that I was bound for America to play basketball. Patrick had likely heard about my impending arrival at Golding from a man named Sam Greer, an American scout and agent who sometimes helped young student athletes from Africa secure scholarships to American prep schools by acting as an intermediary. Sam had been one of Dr. Lissa’s contacts in the United States. Sam also knew Patrick through basketball channels, so he may have reached out to Patrick about helping with his cousin’s transition to a new land. I believe Sam and Dr. Lissa merely thought Patrick, as “family,” might be able to help with paperwork and other logistics; they did not expect that he would become so deeply involved in my life, or that he would try to use me for his own benefit.

  Once informed, Patrick took over. He called my mother and my uncle Joseph. He told them a beautifully tailored story in which he was portrayed as a successful businessman in the United States, one who would surely be able to help a young man—a cousin, no less!—new to the country and the culture. A man who would look out for his family. My mother believed Patrick’s promises that he would look out for me in the glorious but complex new world and care for me as if I were his own child. He asked my mother and uncle to turn over guardianship to him (since I was not yet a legal adult), which they had done. But I would soon come to believe that what Patrick was all about was not looking out for his family, but having his family—specifically, me—be his his ticket to a better life.

  My cousin maneuvered almost from the outset. He called Golding Academy and made it clear that he was my official guardian and authorized to represent my interests in all matters. The first order of business, Patrick explained, was that Golding would have to provide travel and living expenses for him so that he could join me at the school. The school refused to honor my cousin’s request. His demands were patently ridiculous, so the school predictably chose not to negotiate with him. In response, my cousin decided that I would not be going to Golding, after all. Instead, he made arrangements for me to fly to Arizona in an attempt to place me in a high school program there.

  How did this happen? Well, he engaged in negotiations with multiple high school coaches, all the while keeping me and my family in the dark. We sat at home in the Congo, wondering what was happening and presuming Patrick knew what he was doing. As I said, my family knew little about Patrick’s life in America beyond what he told them. He was family so they took it at face value. And I was told almost nothing.

  So when he called and said, “Blondy will come live with me in Arizona. Everything will be fine,” they trusted that he was operating in my best interest. Blinded by the urge to escape the Congo, without any idea of Patrick’s true nature, I boarded a plane and headed for my new life, one that, at first at least, was not exactly what I anticipated.

  Through later conversations with the Blitzes, I came to believe Patrick had manipulated everyone within his gravitational pull.

  His efforts began a couple months before I arrived. Brandon Blitz, the assistant head coach of basketball at Mesa High School, revealed to his parents during a dinner visit that Mesa had an inside track on getting two young kids from the Congo for the basketball team. Terry later told me that he laughed when Brandon first shared this news. Terry, you see, was a former college and professional athlete who had recently semiretired from his job as a public school teacher; he understood the complexities of the education system in America, and the challenges associated with recruiting international student athletes.

  “Recruiting” is the right word, even though it is technically not allowed in the public school realm. Private schools can recruit athletes, but public schools like Mesa High School have a different mission: to educate the children who reside within the borders of the school district, and to provide extracurricular activities (art, music, athletics) as warranted by the needs and desires of the people who pay taxes within the district. Coaches are strongly discouraged from pursuing students from other districts; practically speaking, transfer is difficult, as the student must establish residency within the new district. But it happens, even if the student’s family never moves. An uncle or guardian can be found, for example. Or a grandparent. Complicated residency arrangements are sometimes made in order to allow a talented, but
almost always impoverished, student athlete to get an education and to play sports at a particular school. Sometimes the motives are noble, sometimes not. Regardless, running afoul of eligibility standards imposed by state and local school districts or athletic associations can have serious consequences for both the school and student athlete. Therefore, the majority of talented international athletes end up at private boarding schools, where the regulations are more permissive. By simply being accepted and enrolling, the student is generally eligible to play interscholastic sports.

  This was the path Dr. Lissa had tried to arrange for me, but the interference of my cousin changed everything.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Terry had told his son. “It’ll probably never happen.”

  But, somehow, through basketball channels, my cousin had gotten to know Shane Burcar, the head basketball coach at Mesa High School. He had told Coach Burcar that he was the legal guardian of two boys from the Congo, which was also his native land, and that he was planning on moving to Arizona and bringing one of the boys with him. That boy, as it turned out, was me. His cousin. But there was a catch: Patrick’s relocation, and the delivery of a 6-foot-8 basketball player, was dependent on someone providing him with a job and a place to live. It looked like he was shopping me to the highest bidder, and that bid would have to include compensation for my guardian.

  Coach Burcar informed Patrick that such an arrangement would not be possible. It was both unethical and likely a violation of the rules governing high school sports and eligibility in the state of Arizona.

  Undeterred, my cousin came to Arizona anyway in early August, a few weeks before I arrived, without telling anyone. He had no place to stay and no job. When he arrived, he called Coach Burcar. Unsure of what to do, Shane dispatched his assistant, Brandon, to meet with Patrick. I believe Coach Burcar was worried about my cousin and wanted to help; I do not think he was motivated by greed or even the desire to have a great basketball team. He was simply put in a difficult position. In that meeting my cousin told Brandon that he had enrolled in classes at a local community college. His deposit, he said, had been paid for by a girlfriend. Patrick immediately asked the school if it would be okay for him to share the room with a younger cousin who was coming to America from the Congo. The school not surprisingly declined his request. But Patrick could be a very smooth and charming man. He made a good first impression, and people generally wanted to help him. Certainly, this was the case with the Blitz family. When Patrick decided to withdraw from school because he would not be allowed to share a room with his cousin, he essentially became homeless. All of this happened very quickly. Coach Burcar arranged for Patrick to stay with a family in town for a few days, but that family had several children and did not have the space or flexibility to take in a grown man with no job or money. But the Blitzes were not similarly restricted. Their children were grown. They had three bedrooms, and only one in use. Most important of all, they had an enormous capacity for compassion.

  Brandon spent some time with Patrick, reported back to his parents that he seemed like a thoughtful and engaging young man who had basically suffered a few unfortunate setbacks but would soon be on his feet. Maybe, he said, they should offer Patrick some support.

  Is it possible that Patrick’s link to Congolese basketball players played a role in their generosity? I really don’t think so; I believe they wanted to help a person in need, and my cousin exploited that characteristic. Brandon brought him to dinner at his parents’ house one night, and Patrick made a strong and dramatic impact with stories of his homeland, and promises to take advantage of any opportunity that came his way. He talked about growing up in the Congo, and how his father had been a powerful man who had been murdered during a violent coup. Patrick had escaped to America, where he sought political asylum. It was a compelling tale, enhanced by the scars Patrick showed them—long, jagged lines supposedly hacked into his skin by machete blades.

  How much of this was true? I don’t know. And it doesn’t matter to me, for I assume Patrick’s real purpose in relating the story was merely to curry sympathy from the family. It worked beautifully. The Blitzes offered Patrick a place in their home, but they were smart enough to attach some conditions to the arrangement. Terry and Laurie had raised three boys, after all, and all of them were self-sufficient. They told Patrick he would have to spend his days looking for a job; they would not charge him rent, but would ask him to contribute a small amount of money to the family’s finances, essentially to help out with meals.

  “He was very engaging,” Laurie Blitz later told me. “We wanted to help him. But we didn’t want to encourage him to rely entirely on others. We thought he would be out on his own within a few months.”

  For several weeks, Terry and Laurie drove their new houseguest all over the area to search for work. They would pick up applications, bring them home, and believed Patrick was following up. Whatever his true efforts, he certainly was not successful. In late August, Patrick approached Terry and Laurie with a story about his cousin Blondy. Until that point the Blitzes knew only that Patrick supposedly had connections to one or more boys from the Congo who might be coming to America. They had never heard of me specifically. He explained that I had a visa to leave the country and a scholarship offer from an American prep school. But the school, Patrick said, catered exclusively to students with special needs and therefore was a bad fit for me (this was not true of the school, and was beside the point anyway; Patrick’s decision to reroute me to Arizona I believe was based purely on selfishness). As a result, I had no way to pay for my transportation to the U.S. And the situation in my hometown, Patrick said, was desperate and dangerous.

  “He needs to leave immediately,” my cousin explained. “But he doesn’t have the money. Can you help him out?”

  Terry was so moved by the story and convinced of Patrick’s sincerity that he agreed to help.

  The Blitzes later found out that Golding Academy was in fact going to pay my airfare (because of course that is typically part of the deal when recruiting international student athletes), but had rebuffed Patrick’s attempt to secure room and board for himself as part of the arrangement. Patrick, who by now had been granted guardian status by my family, and thus became the primary line of communication regarding my future in America, responded by telling the school that there was a problem with my visa and I would not be coming to America after all. It seems he wanted to make a better deal for himself. In the end, Terry Blitz gave Patrick $1,800 to pay for my plane ticket to America. (This represented the roughly two-thousand-dollar miracle that Uncle Joseph referred to when he said that my cousin had paid for my plane fare. My uncle, of course, had no idea that Patrick had already set in motion a plan to steer me away from prep school and to another location; I do not even think that Dr. Lissa knew what was happening.) When I found out about this, I felt both guilt and gratitude. That a family in America was willing to help a complete stranger seemed like a miracle; at the same time, the information that prompted their generosity was mostly untrue. The Blitzes never expressed any bitterness, at least not toward me. Terry had been an athlete himself; a baseball scholarship had helped fund his education. He said often that he had enjoyed a good life, and that sports had helped make all of that possible. While $1,800 represented a lot of money to Terry and Laurie, they were willing to make the sacrifice to help someone who might benefit in a similar way. The understanding was that the money was not a gift, but a loan, and that Patrick would pay them back over time after he got a job.

  So that’s how I ended up at Mesa High School, in Mesa, Arizona, living in the home of a wonderful and generous middle-aged couple. Initially, I believed they accepted me and gave me a place to live primarily to help their son’s basketball team, and in so doing help his career. But I was wrong. This was not their primary motivation. Terry and Laurie, I soon found out, were also people of faith who believe in helping those less fortunate.

  On my very first night in Mesa, after we had dinn
er (there was so much food! More food than I had ever seen!), Brandon asked me if I would like to visit my new school. Patrick translated and I replied enthusiastically, “Yeah!” Mesa High School I now recognize as a perfectly nice, large public high school, the kind you can find in almost any comfortable suburb in the southwestern United States. But to me, on that first night, it felt like a castle. It was so big and clean, the classrooms neatly outfitted with all manner of equipment and technology. I could not believe that this was what public education was like in the United States. Where I came from, after all, even the very best private schools had meager resources; the public schools were abysmal.

  We wandered the dark and empty hallways for a while before Brandon showed me the gym. As we walked through the doors and he flipped on the lights. I felt my jaw drop.

  Oh, my goodness! This can’t be real.

  The gym was so big and beautiful, with a glistening hardwood floor that appeared never to have been scuffed by anything other than the highest-quality sneakers. Bleachers stretched from courtside high up into the rafters, from baseline to baseline. How many people could this place seat? A couple thousand, at least. Was it possible they filled the place for high school games? Would I be playing here, in front of so many people? I could barely get my head around the concept. I had grown up playing on dirt courts, or asphalt courts that heaved and cracked under the African heat. Two days earlier I had been in Kinshasa. Now I was here, in the comfort of an American high school. It seemed too good to be true.

  “This is where I will be playing basketball?” I asked my cousin.

  He looked at Brandon, then smiled at me. “Yes, Blondy. Right here.”

  Brandon tossed me a basketball so that I could take a few shots. The ball was slick and shiny, almost brand-new. I can honestly say that I had never played with a ball in such pristine condition. I dribbled a couple times and nearly lost control because it was so slippery. Then I walked closer to the basket, pounded the ball twice, and jumped off two feet. With both hands on the ball I pulled it back behind my head to gain momentum and then threw down a dunk as hard as I could. I let out a yelp of delight that echoed through the empty gym as the ball hit the floor.