STRASBOURG, France, Dec 6 - Fifteen Kenyan athletes who were housed by their French manager in conditions a court described as contrary to human dignity'' are to return home, an official said on Tuesday. The manager, Jean Conrath, will appear before a court in February for housing people in conditions contrary to human dignity,’’ a legal source said.
Henri Bronner, the mayor of Vendenheim in the eastern Alsace region where the athletes were based, said they lived in a hovel without a shower and warmed themselves up by boiling water on two electric hobs''. Bronner last month issued an insalubrity order’’ on the two-bedroomed house where the athletes including Evans Cheruyiot - winner of the Paris 20km race in October - were housed.
Bronner said one athlete had travelled to Amsterdam on Tuesday for a connecting flight to Nairobi while seven others will leave Wednesday for Frankfurt in Germany for a flight home.
The others, now housed in a hotel, will leave for home in the coming days according to availability of flights, Bronner said, adding that the athletes will receive aid to help repatriate them.
But what does the athletes themselves say? Maybe this was a lost opportunity?
Doesn’t a large part of the Kenyan population live in Hovels?
They certainly do if the track and field parasites have anything to do with it!
I remember a friend who lined up meets for a group of Keynans for good money after Rome. The goons from the Keynan federation beat them up and took their passports away cause they weren’t going to collect the money instead. The athletes knew that if the money went to the federation they’d never see a penny.
A right bunch of bastards all the way around, described in all sorts of articles on the web.
The vulnerable in all societies are most open to abuse. But it’s not just abuse from external influences. Like in any other country, the Kenyan common folk are susceptible to the evil excesses of their countrymen. It’s not just the “African way” … unfortunately it’s the human condition.
Most Kenyan athletes seek economic and social advancement and that is a powerful motivation for them in their training and racing. When I was in Nairobi, Iten, Ziwa and Eldoret a few years ago I visited the homes (past and present) of several famous Kenyan runners. Noah Ngeny’s mother and sister still live in the family’s traditional compound where the “houses” are mud and dung huts. Noah still trained in the area every day when in Kenya, but he lives in a three-storey brick mansion in a leafy neighbourhood of Eldoret, with his satellite TV dish in the front yard and his milking cow in the back. 
What that does that mean Palmtag? Does it mean its ok to treat people like shit if they are already down and out? Or is that supposed to be a joke?
There certainly appears to be alot of exploitation by western agents of african runers
I think you could use rewrite that article and use words like ‘trafficking’, ‘slavery’ and ‘colonialism’.
My question was not a joke. It was a naive question from an ignorant 17 year old with little experience in north-east African living conditions outside of what could be gleened from History/Discovery Channel and “Endurance” (the Haile Gebresilase SP? movie). From my meeger learnin’s about the North-Africans, it just seemed kind of ironic that the French court mentioned in the above article had ruled that those runners had been housed in conditions “Contrary to human dignity” and if a large portion of the Kenyan population (and countless impovershed people in China and India) and lived in similar conditions they had just made a statement that included about 1/6 of the known world’s population. The reason I asked the question is because I know enough to know that I don’t know too much about North Africa. I could have been wrong with my above thesis. I most probably am wrong, but I’d rather be proven wrong, than remain wrong.
Edit: Or even East Africa.
Or even East Africa