Buffeted by war, Ugandan adapts to US life as boxer.

By David Segal NEW YORKCoKassim Ouma landed at Dulles International Airport in February 1998 with one of the lamest plans in the history of travel.A 19-year-old deserter from the Ugandan army, he arrived vastly underdressed for winter, a season heCOd never seen, then started hitchhiking. When a cab driver pulled over and asked where he was going, Ouma said C[pounds sterling]RichmondC[yen], because he had heard that Ugandans live there. The driver assumed he meant Richmond Highway, a misimpression that Ouma was in no position to correct because he didnCOt speak English and knew nothing about US geography. He was dropped off at a rather dingy Alexandria, Va., motel, where he lived until his money ran out.That took two weeks. When Ouma was homeless, he moved in and out of shelters, and on and off the streets, and found work delivering fliers for a pizza joint. Instead of simply dropping the circulars at the front door, as instructed, he would knock and ask everyone who answered the same question, using two words he had picked up: C[pounds sterling]Boxing gym?C[yen] heCOd say, usually to blank stares. C[pounds sterling]Boxing gym?C[yen]Yes, this was the sum total of his plan: (1) fly to the United States, and (2) box. A month after heCOd arrived in the country, Phase 2 began when Ouma spotted the Alexandria Boxing Club and waited there until the clubCOs manager, Dennis Trotter, showed up to unlock the door.C[pounds sterling]ThereCOs this guy waiting outside the gym,C[yen] Trotter recalls one recent afternoon. C[pounds sterling]DidnCOt understand a word he said. And he didnCOt understand a word we were saying. We just knew that he wanted to box.C[yen]OumaCOs highly improvised arrival in the country is part of C[pounds sterling]Kassim the DreamC[yen], a documentary showing at the Silverdocs festival at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, Md. The film, which charts OumaCOs path to the junior middleweight title, initially looks like an anything-is-possible. We learn, he had been abducted from his boarding school at age 6 by the National Resistance Army, a rebel force that would eventually topple the government. He grew up torturing whomever he was told to torture and killing whomever he was told to kill. And up to the moment he decided to fly to the United States, he assumed he had no choice but to live the rest of his life as a soldier.C[pounds sterling]I pretty much wanted to show Kassim the way I perceive him,C[yen] Davidson says. C[pounds sterling]I think he has a huge heart, and at his core heCOs a good person. But heCOs incredibly frustrating, and heCOs got a dark side that you donCOt want to get near. It saddens me quite a bit. And his story isnCOt done. HeCOs 29 years old.C[yen]Ouma, who was granted political asylum in 2000, now lives in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., with his three children and his mother, whom he brought here from Africa a few years ago. He traveled to New York in April for the Tribeca Film Festival, where C[pounds sterling]Kassim the DreamC[yen] debuted. C[pounds sterling]This guy threw 1,331 punches in 10 rounds,C[yen] says his manager Tom Moran, beaming at Ouma and referring to a 2004 bout against Verno Phillips. C[pounds sterling]Nobody has ever done that.C[yen]Ouma starts shadow boxing and smiling. C[pounds sterling]This feels good!C[yen] he shouts to no one in particular. C[pounds sterling]I havenCOt done this in a while.C[yen]ItCOs been a few months, in fact. Ouma last fought in March, losing his third straight bout, this time to a guy he was heavily favored to whup. To know Kassim these days is to have a theory about why he lost his title and canCOt seem to get it back. He parties too much, some say. He hangs out with the wrong people. HeCOs stressed by his past. HeCOs lost his passion for the sport.C[pounds sterling]I agree with that,C[yen] Ouma says. C[pounds sterling]ThatCOs why ICOm going to train and come back as a different guy.C[yen]Ouma likes the film, mostly. He wishes that Davidson had left out scenes like the one of him furtively puffing on a blunt on his way into a sparring session. Ouma likes to think of himself as a role model and a humanitarian dedicated to bettering the Ugandan people. The party-guy image isnCOt helping.C[pounds sterling]When youCOre a kid and a soldier, you smoke,C[yen] Ouma says with a shrug.It was the only way to cope with life in what became known as UgandaCOs war in the bush, he says, and it wasnCOt his only behavioral issue. When Museveni took control of the government, in 1986, Ouma was unable to sit still in classes at the military school where he was sent. Instead, he gravitated to sportsCofirst taekwondo, then boxing, which seemed more appealing once he learned that members of the Uganda military team were occasionally given visas to travel overseas.Ouma was supposed to fly to Texas with the team, using the visa he was given by the government in 1998. When that trip was canceled for unknown reasons, Ouma fled to Kenya, where family friends gave him $800 and a ticket to Washington. The Ugandan military, which executes deserters, was furious, and according to OumaCOs mother, it exacted a terrible revenge. A year after her son left, she says in the movie, soldiers came to her village and beat her husband to death.A spokesman for the Ugandan Embassy, George Ndyamuba, said the government did not kill OumaCOs father and had nothing to do with his murder.The loss was devastating to Ouma, who figured that his flight from Uganda had sealed his fatherCOs fate. C[pounds sterling]DreamC[yen] has an avert-your-gaze sequence in which Ouma returns to his village and wails and weeps at his fatherCOs grave, asking for forgiveness. Moments like that led director Davidson to conclude that Ouma agreed to make this documentary, in part, because he thought it would be therapeutic for him.C[pounds sterling]The film is one of the very few ways that Kassim has looked at his past. There is this happy-go-lucky guy who comes across in much of the movie and thatCOs very genuine, which is amazing given what heCOs been through. But when he crashes, he crashes hard, and if he goes back emotionally to his youth, itCOs hard for him to pull himself out of it,C[yen] says Davidson.During his months in Alexandria, Ouma was just a kid with a huge smile and a relentless jab. He showed up every day at the boxing club, which is geared to at-risk kids. He clowned around constantly and didnCOt want to leave when it was time to close up. Early on, because of the language barrier, nobody knew who he was or how heCOd gotten there. They didnCOt even realize he was homelessConot until boxer Kaye Karoma called his mother, who speaks a number of African languages, and put her on the phone with Kassim.C[pounds sterling]She was like, CyHeCOs homeless, heCOs got no papersCO,C[yen] says Karoma, sitting in the Alexandria Boxing Club. C[pounds sterling]CyYouCOve got to help that boy outCO. It wasnCOt until later that we found out what had happened to him as a child, and that he was running from the army. YouCOd think he didnCOt have a problem in the world.C[yen]Ouma started living with regulars at the club. On a few occasions, he hid in the gym and slept under the ring. Trotter knew he had talent, but he didnCOt know exactly how much until he snuck Ouma into a Virginia Golden Gloves tournament. (Snuck, because you need papers to fight amateur tournaments. They need to know who you are, to make sure youCOre not a pro.)C[pounds sterling]We went down to Norfolk (Va.),C[yen] Trotter recalls. C[pounds sterling]And Kassim was fighting the Number 1 dude from Navy. The crowd was booing him. CyAfricans canCOt fightCO. Stuff like that. And he beat the brakes off that guy.C[yen]A boxing camp in Florida got in touch and Kassim was flown south to work as a sparring partner. He soon signed with Moran and promptly won nine consecutive professional fights. By his 14th, heCOd become a favorite of ESPNCOs C[pounds sterling]Friday Night FightsC[yen], which televised one bout of his after another. The improbable upbringing, the superhuman punching capacityCoit was irresistible television.As OumaCOs boxing career took off, he negotiated a return visit to Uganda, where he was officially pardoned, having become a national hero. But the triumphant homecoming narrative was monkey-wrenched by a loss, just before his trip in 2006, to middleweight champion Jermaine Taylor.C[pounds sterling]That was the first time that Kassim didnCOt fight with his head,C[yen] Moran says. C[pounds sterling]And he hasnCOt fought with his head since then. I know Kassim has awesome physical talent, but heCOs lost mental focus and thatCOs even more important. Boxing is an unforgiving sport. You canCOt lose mental focus and expect to win.C[yen]Ouma knows that today his naysayers outnumber his believers. HeCOs earned a C[pounds sterling]couple million dollarsC[yen] over the course of his career, and heCOs held on to enough of it, he says, to be comfortable. For the time being. He lives in a small four-bedroom home in a suburb, but his daughter sleeps in the same bedroom as her grandmother, so heCOd like a bigger place. C[pounds sterling]I need another fight,C[yen] he says. There is none planned, though, which suggests that Ouma is starting from the bottom.Asked if he plans to stay in the United States, he says, C[pounds sterling]Of course,C[yen] then ticks off what he loves about his adoptive country: the food, the Target down the street, the freedom to fly wherever you want to fly, whenever you want to fly there.C[pounds sterling]ICOm ready for the second half of my career,C[yen] he says, as optimistically as possible. nLATWP News Service Buffeted by war, Ugandan adapts to US life as boxer

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