Hard slog to freedom

By Justin Robertson
TWO years ago Iseyas Hailu was trapped in a detainee camp in war-torn Ethiopia.
In October, he will race in the 10-kilometre dash as part of the St George Melbourne Marathon festival.
Last year he took part in the 21km race in the same event and has also taken part in a fistful of local running meets.
But it wasn’t always this easy for him.
The 30-year-old from Hallam was born in the African country of Eritrea which borders Ethiopia.
At his Frawley Road home, he explains the best he can the perils of the Ethiopian-Eritrean war. In 1998 both countries were at war with each over a land dispute. Ethiopia no longer had a border along the Red Sea and relied on going through countries, like Eritrea, to ship and trade.
A peace treaty was agreed on in 2000, but hostility between the two countries still exists.
Hailu said that a large number of Eritreans were detained in Ethiopia because of their origins long after the treaty was signed and in 2003 he was caught and taken to a refugee camp in Ethiopia.
He was there for six years.
Living on wheat and water he was not allowed outside the camp’s seven kilometre radius that held close to 10,000 people. And he couldn’t run.
“You’d be killed if you tried to go too far,” he said.
A friend of his tried to leave the region, only to be beaten badly and left on the side of the road.
“He had to go to hospital, he was not well.” Hailu spent his time building mud huts with members of the camp, a task that would take two weeks to finish. Despite keeping busy, Hailu longed to be able to run again. Before the camp, he could run 10km in 29 minutes flat. He thought we would not be able to run like that again. It wasn’t until his sister, Nebiet, 33, who was living in suburban Melbourne, sent over a large sum of money and paid for a plane ticket to Australia in 2009, that Hailu was able to revive his running dream.
“When I first arrived here, I told my sister straight away, sign me up with a running club,” he said. Since then Hailu has been running with community-based group ‘Running in the burbs’ consisting of adult recreational runners and competitive runners from the south-east region.
The father of four sons won the Jells Park Dandy Creek Dash last year, competed in the Upper Beaconsfield Tower Challenge this year and has his sights set on running a mean time come October.
He now runs 10km in 32 minutes, and hopes to get his time down to where it was before his time in Ethiopia. You can tell from his cheeky smile he’s elated at being able to do what he loves doing.
“I can’t thank my sister enough for getting me here,” he said. “I’m just happy I can run again.”