Temple’s Kur Jongkuch has lived many lives, but his best life so far has been through basketball

Kur Jongkuch was a young child not given the necessary resources to thrive.

The Temple men’s basketball forward arrived into this world and spent a good portion of his early years escaping a dire situation after his family was forced to flee their home in South Sudan and sought safety in a Kenyan refugee camp because of the second Sudanese Civil War.

It was on this trip that his mother, Tabitha Gabriel, gave birth to him in Nairobi. For two years, Jongkuch experienced tough living conditions.

As for Jongkuch, his memories of what happened are not vivid. But he was told stories about the individuals who lived at the Kakuma camp as a result of a conflict that killed an estimated two million people.

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“The food rations they would give us, since it was a refugee camp and we didn’t have access to food, whatever you got, it wasn’t a lot,” Jongkuch, 23, recalled. ”... A meal might feed three people, but you have to figure out how to feed 10 people with that one meal. Sometimes people went without eating. Your mom and dad might have to pass up one meal for you. You might have to pass one up for your sister and brother.”

Jongkuch’s uncle died inside that Kenyan refugee camp as a result of sickness.

“I lost not only friends but close family members [and] cousins,” said Malith Kur, Jongkuch’s father, who teaches conflict resolution at McGill University in Montreal. “People that I grew up with. Some of them, of course, fought in the war and were killed, but they killed [civilians], people among us. I remember at one point they killed one of our community leaders while we were sleeping at night.”

Refugees struggled with starvation and others lost limbs. In South Sudan, Jongkuch’s relatives joined the war to protect themselves from imminent threats. The ones who escaped the war faced danger, too.

“People are coming to take your family, take your lives,” Jongkuch said. “You have to defend yourselves, in whatever means possible. I have lost some family members due to that. Lost some family members on the walk from South Sudan to Kenya because not many people made that long trip. You don’t have food. You don’t have water. Some people may pass [away] from wild animals that are hungry. You can’t really defend yourself against a 1,000-pound animal. I have lost family members due to all of that.”

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Two years after entering the refugee camp, Jongkuch was able to leave. His family won a “lottery ticket” that afforded them a move to Ontario, which was not the case for most refugees.

The transition was difficult for his parents. Malith Kur worked on a chicken farm and went to school. Despite some of the early challenges, he felt at peace.

“The only thing that made us happy was that our children were safe,” he said. “We were not afraid of anything that would happen at night. They were not hungry anymore; even if you didn’t have much, food was still available.”

As for Jongkuch, he had to learn a new language and customs. His parents had to work extra hard — which made things challenging.

“Moving to Canada, we didn’t have much,” Jongkuch said. “My mother and father worked two jobs, and [they] worked overtime. So they were never there. So it was my brother and me. We essentially took care of ourselves from when we woke up. We made our breakfast and made our lunch for school. We went to school and came back and did our homework, and then we would go play.

“Then, our parents would come [home]. So getting accustomed to life there was a little hard for us as kids just trying to navigate our way through things.”

His mother remembers when he was first bullied at school. Jongkuch would fight back, so the school thought he was a violent student. When he was bullied, Jongkuch would lock himself inside of the house. At school, he would not eat at the cafeteria because children would make fun of him.

At 7 years old, Jongkuch wrote a letter to his mother expressing sadness. The letter was not what she expected.

“He said, ‘Mama, I am going to kill myself,’” Gabriel remembered.

Child protection and the police were called. When those two units arrived, she was told to give him medicine to calm him down. Gabriel refused to put her son on medication.

After going through a rough period in elementary school, Jongkuch found success and a renewed focus when he started playing sports. He signed up for multiple sports, including baseball and football. After suffering a back injury before his senior year of high school, he stopped playing for a bit.

It would be a friend who suggested he stick with basketball and consider joining the London Basketball Academy in Ontario. Jongkuch developed over time, and his 6-foot-9 frame and strong athletic ability earned him an offer from Northern Colorado, where he carved out a role and eventually became a big piece of the Bears’ run to the College Basketball Invitational last season.

He transferred to Temple as a graduate student this past offseason, pursuing an innovation management and entrepreneurship master’s degree at the Fox School of Business.

Now, his role has increased without forward Jamille Reynolds, who recently returned from a thumb injury.

“He’s a great teammate,” Reynolds said. “He’s an older guy. He’s seen a lot. He will be [with the] younger guys and all that. He’s just a great teammate, and he knows what he’s doing.”

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Jongkuch’s background made him who he is, but for some of his relatives, the war had long-lasting effects that have not changed.

“You can share traumatic experiences together that bond you a little closer,” Jongkuch said. “But I have a cousin that has not spoken to his mother in 17 years. When they talk, there’s not much to talk about because even though they’re mother and son, they barely know each other. In that instance, it pulls people apart.”