John Bitok still doesn’t take Aprils like these too well.

It’s tough to blame him. He used to hear myths of places like Syracuse but remembers thinking: ‘There’s no place where temperatures go to like negative something. People can’t live there.’

He’ll laugh at himself for that now. Because ever since that letter first arrived at his home in Kitale, Kenya, almost two years ago, Syracuse is the only place he’s ever wanted to go.

While temperatures dip into the 30s on the SU Hill on Saturday — and as Bitok’s parents, David and Rael Serem work their farmland in the 70-degree Kitale heat — Bitok and his Syracuse track and field teammates will compete in comfortable 60-degree weather at the Clemson Invitational.

Since coming to Syracuse from Kenya in September 2000, Bitok’s adjusted well to an environment that once seemed other-planetary.

He’s fought off injuries to lead the SU distance squad. (He won the 1,500 meters at last weekend’s Tom Tellez Invitational and will compete in the 5,000 Saturday.) He’s gained a pack of friends both on and off the track team. (Teammates all wanted to take him home with them over Winter Break. ‘That was like a prize,’ SU distance coach Jay Hartshorn said.)

And he’s almost got that weather thing down.

‘I just came here and I was like, ‘Oh, jackets?’ Snow is something I used to hear in my geography class. I didn’t know there was actually something like snow. I was like, ‘No way, they’re kidding.”

At SU’s first cross-country meet Bitok’s freshman year, he arrived wearing a thin green jacket — and still froze.

‘Why didn’t you bring your jacket?’ teammates asked him.

‘This is my heaviest,’ he responded.

He’ll strut around now — as much as his coat-hanger frame allows — in his SU track windpants and sweatshirt.

When Bitok came to America, he had a serious case of culture shock. First, there was the slang, a problem even though Bitok started taking English classes when he was 7.

‘In my chemistry class,’ he said last fall, ‘the professor there was talking about the TAs. I had never had a TA before, so I was like, ‘Is TA a new part of chemistry or something?’

Then there was the food.

‘Oh, it took me the whole year,’ he said. ‘I’m still adjusting to that. ‘These guys here have all fatty stuff like pizza, all full of cheese and fat, and meat everywhere. Kenyan is almost all starchy food. We have corn meal, potatoes. We don’t eat meat every day. We don’t have refrigerators there to keep the meat for like two months.’

In fact, Kitale (pop. 91,000), located in western Kenya, is a predominately agricultural area. Bitok’s parents earn, at his estimate, the equivalent of $20,000 tending their land. The family lives in three separate small houses — one for Bitok’s mother and father, one for his four brothers and the other for his three sisters.

Every time Bitok talks to his parents, he remembers how much he misses speaking in his native tongue. David and Rael will beg him to come home.

‘If I were given a chance to go there, I would go right now,’ he said. ‘But I have a lot of stuff to do here. I miss home a lot. It’s worth it being here. It’s not like I’m sitting here doing nothing. After I graduate, home is always there, it’s not like it’s something that’s moving.’

Bitok’s been on the go since Day 1.

He was born Kipchirchir Bitok on September 30, 1979.

Kipchirchir is the name Kenyans give to those born a few hours premature.

‘They were like, ‘Whoa this kid came fast,’ ‘ Bitok said. ‘Maybe that’s why I run fast.’

He took the surname Bitok from part of his uncle’s middle name, as is Kenyan custom.

Bitok used to run six miles back and forth to elementary school every day for eight years. He kept running, sometimes racing barefoot, through his boarding school days at Paul Boit High School in Kapkong.

Kenyans typically take two years off after high school before going to college. So, from 1998-2000 Bitok didn’t go to school. Instead, he taught math, chemistry and biology at a local high school, helping a friend who was a teacher. But Bitok kept running, following in the footsteps of his cousin Elijah Maru, once one of Kenya’s top 1,500-meter runners.

In spring 2000, Bitok was set to attend Life University in Marietta, Ga., before track coach Mike Spino realized his team was already full. Spino passed Bitok’s name along to Syracuse, which sent Bitok a letter that May. Bitok got an e-mail address through an African line so he could communicate with Syracuse coaches. He was accepted in August, just a few weeks before classes started.

As Bitok prepared to leave home, he contracted malaria — not uncommon in Kenya. To make matters worse, his flight was delayed just as the immigration papers he needed to obtain a visa were going to expire. Bitok finally made it out of Kenya — with just a day to spare.

He arrived at SU three days after classes started, but with the help of teammate Antony Mberia, a fellow Kenyan, Bitok settled in. He even took in a women’s soccer game, where he showed a curious onlooker what a Kenyan driver’s license and currency looked like.

But, as a result of his malaria, Bitok couldn’t run and missed the entire cross-country season. He recovered and competed in indoor and outdoor track, but, as Hartshorn said, ‘that was not any indication of where he could be.’

‘I don’t think it’s as easy as he makes it seem for him to be here,’ she said. ‘I think that’s important for people on our team to remember even though he seems to be so happy.’

This season, Bitok has already qualified for the Big East Championships in the 1,500 meters and Hartshorn hopes he’ll qualify for that meet and the prestigious Penn Relays in the 5,000 on Saturday.

These days, it seems Bitok’s right where he wants to be — studying and running in Syracuse.

His days are occupied, outside of practice, with work for his dual major in pre-med and information science technology. He has a job at the Schine Student Center, helping set up for concerts. He’ll spend this summer, like last, training in Syracuse (he doesn’t plan on going home until 2004 or 2005).

After all that winter jacket and pizza shock, Bitok is fitting in just fine. The cross-country team voted him its captain. A talkative sort, he’ll approach just about anybody and strike up a conversation — he jokingly calls himself ‘a menace.’

In an uncharacteristically solemn moment, Bitok narrows that pearly smile and reflects on his journey.

‘Obstacles are those things that you see when you take your eyes away from your goal,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to see obstacles. I want to focus on my goals.”

Published on April 4, 2002 at 12:00 pm