From African warrior to UO graduate.

Byline: Bob Welch / The Register-Guard

When Vincent Konchellah was a boy in Africa, he learned to write by spitting on his dark leg and using a stick to make impressions of numbers and letters.

He would walk, barefoot, 10 miles to school - against his father's wishes. Once, when his father learned Vincent was studying while on a cattle-herding venture, the man threatened to kill his son with a spear.

But Saturday, Vincent Konchellah will graduate from the University of Oregon with a degree in international studies. And he has been chosen to carry the program's banner during the ceremony.

Konchellah, 26, is a Maasai warrior whose Kenyan village has, until recently, valued education so little that fewer than 10 percent of young people make it through high school. Only three have completed college degrees - all at the UO.

"Vincent's coming here and graduating is just as unlikely as a young man from Eugene, Oregon, going to Kenya and becoming a Maasai warrior," says Gwen Meyer, who, along with husband John Neumeister, directs the Eugene-based Friends of Kenya Schools and Wildlife organization. "It is very unusual."

Konchellah grew up with 22 siblings in Enoosaen, a village of a thousand people that's about Eugene-to-Seattle distance west of Nairobi.

In Enoosaen, you learn to take care of cattle. You learn to fight. Konchellah says he has lost 15 to 20 friends to poison arrows in battles between tribes, the conflicts often triggered by stolen cows. You learn that the world is only as far and wide as you can see.

But in the early '80s, a missionary teacher taught Konchellah to count and read. He's never been the same.

``I just got so interested in knowing things beyond where I was,'' he says. ``In my village, you don't even see a car or bike or have electricity. You have huts built of sticks. But I was always like: What, exactly, is beyond that hill?''

Maasais are not encouraged to look.

``Traditionally, Maasais have turned up their noses to education because they're a pastoralist society,'' Meyer says. ``Cattle are their wealth.''

Not that the Maasais are not generous people.

When word reached the village about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Konchellah and others offered the United States the finest gift they could imagine: 14 cows, including one donated by Vincent.

His connection to the UO was Morompi Ole-Ronkei, a cousin who became the first Maasai to attend college, getting three degrees at the UO. (He is now Compassion International's associate director of programs in Africa.)

Konchellah began writing letters to the UO. He learned that he might be eligible for scholarships through the school's International Cultural Service Program. Eventually, a letter arrived for him. He had been accepted.

``I went off running, with a smile on my face,'' he says.

And seemingly hasn't stopped smiling since.

``For young people (in Kenya) who see the value of education, it becomes a passion for them,'' says Meyer, a senior research assistant in the UO's College of Education. "They see the value of education and have a very deep understanding of what needs to change in their country - and know it begins with education."

"I want to be an ambassador," Konchellah says, preferably to the United States. "That is what drives me."

His father has come to appreciate his son's quest to learn; Vincent is something of a hero when he returns to his village, passing out Duck shirts and caps to some he knows.

"I always tell my father I have a dream: I want to hook up with international organizations that focus on rural development in Africa. We can change things. Put up schools."

He'll soon begin work on a master's degree at the UO, and he hopes to then get his Ph.D. But that can wait. For now, it is time for Vincent Konchellah to receive his diploma. To carry the banner. To celebrate having found what's on the other side of the African hills.