Mawejje’s mission possible to Winter Olympics

Chasing a dream. Mawejje in snowboarding training. The Ugandan dreaming of making history in the Winter Games has grown in love with snow that he admires (inset) before starting his training. PHOTOs |  COURTESY

What you need to know:

  • He is currently in Argentina trying to make it “among the 30 qualifiers” for the event. Mawejje says only five slots are left and he faces competition from snowboarders from Brazil, Russia, Slovenia, Argentina and Chile among others for the five slots.

Brolin Mawejje! Remember the name, you might need it soon.
In a classic case of bringing life to Jamaican musician Chris Martin’s lyrics; “if you can’t love me now, don’t love me later” – when much later is much greater, the 29-year-old Ugandan seeks the support of his nation as he vies to become the first African to snowboard at the Winter Olympics.
“I want everyone at home to understand me and what I do,” Mawejje says.

He is not just seeking love but in a race against time too as a dream to become a neurosurgeon also hovers over his head. 
Maybe the race is even overdue as Mawejje had initially sought to earn this Olympic dream in 2018 before it was dealt a major blow by a heart attack.

Mawejje is almost certain of making it to the February 2022, 24th edition in Beijing, China. But he still needs 22 points to make the grade.

He is currently in Argentina trying to make it “among the 30 qualifiers” for the event. Mawejje says only five slots are left and he faces competition from snowboarders from Brazil, Russia, Slovenia, Argentina and Chile among others for the five slots.

“Mathematically, we are and have been on pace to qualify but it has become a money game now,” Mawejje told SCORE as he dug into his two-year-long qualification journey that started with competing at the World Championships in Utah in 2019 and later in 2020 in Germany.

“You have to be good enough to have a chance to create a spot for your country. You need a certain number of points and that is what I am trying to create,” he adds.

Unfortunately for Mawejje, the qualifying process was made harder by the ravaging Covid-19 pandemic that “forced us into calculations after the closure of countries.”

On March 12, 2020, the US, where Mawejje emigrated to as a 12-year-old boy in 2004 and discovered this sport – went into lockdown barring incoming and outgoing flights. 

That took away eight competitions and closed the southern hemisphere, where you find countries like Argentina and Australia that could have offered competitions for Mawejje to make the Olympic grade.

“That is when the whole process became complicated and expensive. Once you have an available source of water and it is cut off, you have to find ways to get water,” he says.

“It now boils down to training and who has access to training. If someone has money to go for training for like three months, they would be better prepared for the two or three available qualification events.

“Pre-Covid, we were spoilt for choice with over 20 events spread across the two years for us to qualify. You had many chances to get the points even without the expensive training,” Mawejje, who has received some support from Uganda Olympic Committee (UOC) through an Olympic scholarship that would help him train but has mostly run fundraising campaigns to get this far, explains.

The scholarship, UOC president and National Council of Sports (NCS) chairman Donald Rukare says, is an assurance that they “are more than ready to support any athlete willing to represent Uganda in any games” but also shows how much Mawejje has forced his way into the plans of local sporting authorities. 

The first time Mawejje returned to Uganda in 2014 to explain his ambitions and record a documentary on his life, the then NCS general secretary, Jasper Aligawesa, told him “that is not an Olympic sport and Africans don’t do winter sports.” 
Now he believes he has a 70 per cent chance of making the winter Olympics .

“We need to explore this area (winter Olympics and learn from it. Kenya has already been on this path and it is time for us to also do the same,” Mugula tells SCORE.

At the time of this interview earlier this month, Mawejje was in Australia – for a 10- day training – and was due for a few others in Switzerland before flying to Argentina.
“I have to do it (training) segmented because that is what I can afford,” Mawejje, who came from humble beginnings but is on course to change his family story and spread love in the world in many ways, says.

Far from home
As a toddler, Mawejje lived and grew up in fear – not only of his father Peter, who always beat up his mother Annette to the extent she wanted to kill herself after seeing a video of another woman that did so due to domestic violence, but teachers at school too.

“I had never seen my father smile,” Mawejje narrated in his award-winning documentary, “Far From Home,” recorded from 2012 and released in 2016.

“At two years, he used to beat me with a belt. At five, he used a cane and by 11 it was a cable,” Mawejje recollected.
His mother moved to Lincoln, Massachusetts, in the fall of 2004 – leaving behind her family – to work for a lady called Susan Mygatt, who needed someone to take care of her stroke-stricken mother.

“Susan asked ‘are you going to take care of my mum yet you left your kids back home?’   But I told her I did not leave my children because I wanted to. Surprisingly she bought a ticket for my son Brolin to join us,” Annette shared in the documentary.

On arrival, “white things were coming down from the sky,” Mawejje recalled and because he still resented his mother for abandoning the family in Kampala, he moved into Mygatt’s home.  
“I fell in love with snow despite the culture shock. I had never seen snow before.” 
He was destined to rekindle this love later.
But first, he went to school, where he felt so unwanted and bullied he did not make friends till sixth grade.

“This African kid always wore a hood on his face, all you could see was his eyes. He never said a word but other kids always whispered things about him. He did not say where he was from but every day, I talked to him a little bit more,” James McCann, his first friend, revealed.
Phil Hessler, whose family would later adopt Mawejje, said: “he always pushed me away but I told him I was new at the school too.”

A time to play. Mawejje paid for his medical degree education through the sport. PHOTO | COURTESY

Sanctuary
The two introduced Mawejje to his sanctuary; skating. They watched, did, and talked about skating all day.

Mawejje learned quickly, snowboarding in the valley of Mountain Nashoba during winter, and started to dream of “being something in America.” He met renowned coach Rob Kingwill, who was in awe of the boy’s “power and drive,” at a Camp of Champions and snowboarder Travis Rice, who became a huge inspirational in his life.

However, the days of his trouble were far from over. At some point Mygatt found his friend McCann smoking and she tried to keep Mawejje grounded for a while. His mother urged him to take on basketball and threatened to return him to Africa, when she found him trying to claim his life with scissors because a girl could not talk to him.

“If you work hard, you will be successful,” Mawejje consoled himself. 
He believed from his snowboarding that he had to “fall and be willing to get back up.”

When Mygatt’s husband became ill, Mawejje was taken up by Hessler’s family living in Jackson, Wyoming, in 2009 – a move that would help keep him away from his mother who did not appreciate his obsession with snowboarding at the time.

When Hessler’s father Chris also fell sick - battling a cancer, Mawejje frequently visited the Mass General Hospital where he met Dr Fred Hochberg, fell in love with neurosurgery and started dreaming of building a hospital in Uganda. His mother pushed him to pursue this before his Olympic dream.
“You want to make your parents proud and that is why I stayed in school but you also want to make yourself proud.

“But it was very difficult to have certain conversations with her; like choosing sports over medicine, travelling so I had to step away. She did not know that I was paying for my education through snowboarding. I did not have to beg her for food and books because here if you play sports, you go to school.

“She just saw degrees but by the time we recorded the documentary, she could understand why I did what I did,” Mawejje, who has now forged a professional career out of the sport and has been picked up by renowned companies like Burton Snowboards and Bombas, among others, tells us.

Much as Mawejje stubbornly pursued his snowboarding passion, his insistence upon it was fueled by Dr Hochberg who, according to Hessler’s mother Sandy, “showed him that it is a long life ahead and you do not have to do everything at once.”

Olympic dream
The good doctor helped Mawejje discover that at the top of his priority list was becoming an Olympic athlete. In 2013, Mawejje was part of the US delegation to the World University Games in Russia.

By the 2017 edition in Kazakhstan, he had switched allegiance to his home country Uganda and was pushing for the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.

“The first thing you could see was his passion. I believed then and even now that he can put up a good show and should be supported through his dreams,” Peninah Kabenge, the president of Association of Uganda University Sports, says.

“Unfortunately, he fell sick and did not compete to his best in Kazakhstan.”
In Kazakhstan, Mawejje suffered a heart attack that initially put paid to the dream. Doctors thought he would die but he lived to die another day.

In 2018, with a crashed dream, he had to work on his mental game to return to the sport. But that was just the beginning as he went on to break his wrist on his return and his hand the next year. Last year, he also had shoulder surgery.

“There have been even more challenges. I have sacrificed my youth and lost many friends who do not understand my dream,” Mawejje, who had to slow down on his pursuit to become a neurosurgeon – a course he has been taking on for four years now, said.

“I have also watched my peers make it in a profession I want to be in. I looked at my mother and the sacrifices she had to make to bring me here and thought, should I let all our hard work go to waste?” Mawejje tells SCORE.

“There is no hospital yet, there is no Olympics yet so I have to continue,” adds the athlete who was until Covid-19 struck returning to Uganda at least twice a year to do charity work and “strengthen the relationship with my father as an adult even though I can’t change the past.”

At a glance

Name: Brolin Mawejje
Age: 29
Sport: Snowboarding
Schools
Hillside Academy (Prep School) 
Hormisdallen – Kamwokya
Lincoln Public Middle School, US
Jackson High School, US
University of Utah: Double degree in Biochemistry and Public Health
Also has a Masters in Public Health
Paused Masters in Pharmacology