The 12 ultramarathons that Deo Kato has completed in recent years look modest compared with his current challenge: running from Cape Town to London. The aim of his epic journey is no less ambitious: Kato wants to tell the story of human migration, highlighting parallels between the millions of people forced to leave their homes today in search of a better life and the earliest movement of humans from Africa.
“The Khoisan people in South Africa, for example, are moving based on climate. They migrate to find a better environment that they can live in. So we’re moving for the same reasons that [anthropologists believe] early humans used to move for,” says Kato.
In highlighting the origins of migration he hopes to challenge the racist notion that people should “go back to where they come from”.
“I know that Africa is the origins of humanity and if you tell someone that they should go back to where they come from that means we all basically have to go back to where we come from,” he says.
“My overall objective is basically to work towards ending racism.”
The 36-year-old Ugandan-born London-based runner started his journey on 24 July last year from Cape Town’s Long March to Freedom monument, which commemorates the anti-apartheid struggle. He had hoped to complete the challenge in 381 days – the same number of days that African Americans in Alabama staged the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 – but a number of setbacks has put him behind schedule.
He has already run the equivalent of nearly 180 marathons, accompanied only by a one-man crew following by car, and is now waiting on the Kenyan side of Moyale, a town on the border with Ethiopia. Crossing into a country that is reeling from a two-year civil war is “the biggest challenge” so far on the 9,053-mile route, he says.
“There is no way of going around Ethiopia,” he says. “South Sudan is potentially just as dangerous and the same is true for the surrounding countries.”
During his journey he has spent most nights in small lodges but he has also slept “plenty of nights” in the car. He has faced other challenges. In Tanzania, he was already battling torrential rain and muddy roads when the food he bought off the street made him sick. When he got to the accommodation he was staying in it had no hot water.
But there have also been memorable acts of kindness, such as the time he was running through the desert in northern South Africa and there was nowhere to stay.
“It was a difficult day, our car had broken down, we were stuck in the sand and had been chased by some farmers who were hostile towards us,” Kato remembers.
“Then we met a farmer who offered us a place to stay. When we got there, they had cooked for us, they had the tea ready. It was close to midnight and they had everything set out, even though they had no place for us to sleep. They said, ‘Just come, we will figure things out’. We ended up sleeping in the car. But it was the best day so far.”
Kato is running on average 25 miles a day. He chose the eastern route through Africa because he wanted to go through Uganda to meet his father, who lives there.
Kato was 10 when he moved to London to be reunited with his mother, who was already living in the UK. He travelled to Australia after college for a year of backpacking before moving to New Zealand. Once he returned to London, he started working in fitness before becoming a running coach.
His first experience of racism came shortly after moving to London, when some people changed their seat on the bus after he sat next to them. “Before I moved to London I didn’t know what racism was, and I didn’t understand it because nobody had explained it. In Africa or in Uganda we don’t have those issues.”
After Ethiopia, the next challenge is Sudan, a country facing the world’s largest internal displacement crisis.
“Sudan is in the Sahara,” says Kato. “That’s quite worrying in terms of getting the necessities that I need like water. And being able to enter Sudan at all, because of the conflict. The borders haven’t been closed but for foreigners to gain entry is a no-go at the moment. The situation could change when we arrive at the Sudan border.”
Logistic and bureaucratic hiccups along the route have brought home the barriers that borders present for those fleeing countries.
“Today a lot of people are asking for a united Africa without borders,” he says. “We have a few countries where there are no visas, for example Kenya. It would mean better opportunities for everyone and more inclusivity.”
