At home with Carol Cheptegei

It is rare for someone to live up to so much praise but Carol Yeko Cheptegei does and surpasses it. She is as humble as she is generous. She is a brilliant and successful civil engineer running her own firm, a dotting mother of two and a wife to an athlete with an exciting career. Yeko is married to Ugandan long distance runner Joshua Cheptegei, who currently holds the 5km, 10km, 5,000m, and 10,000m  world records. She met Cheptegei before his name started lighting up international stadia and did not recognise who he was until two months later. 

The auspicious day

 “Cheptegei is a close friend to one of my in-laws and one Sunday, he came to pray from our church. After the main service, he attended our youth meeting, where he was introduced to me, not as a relatively successful athlete but as Cheptegei,” Yeko recounts.

At that time Cheptegei had just won gold at the World Junior championships in Eugene, America. He says he did not mention that detail because he thought Yeko knew who he was.

The couple wedded in late 2016 and now have two children; three-year-old Jethan Cheptegei, and one- year-old Jemima Cheptegei. Cheptegei says his wife is the reason behind his success.

“She is and she was the woman of my dreams. She has supported me to achieve my dreams and become what I am today,” he says. Yeko says she feels privileged to be married to him.

 “Apart from Cheptegei being a loving husband, he cares and works hard for the welfare of the entire community he lives in. What pleases me more is the fact that he is positively changing many lives through his work as an athlete in Sebei  Sub-region and the country at large,” she says.

Yeko comes from a religious background and her mother, Jessica Chesiakit, inculcated in her strong Christian values.

“My mother is a very devout woman, who believes there is nothing prayer cannot solve. And I was brought up to believe that,”  says Yeko.

Family, career and community

Despite her young age, Yeko says her life journey has been a long winding path of failures and fortune but, she says, her perseverance has enabled her to push on.

  “I grew up in a household where we slept and cooked in the same mud and wattle grass-thatched house. I was fortunate enough to also experience my father’s changing fortune. To see his hard work rewarded with enough money to build for us a permanent house, which was also the first in our village,” she says. Yeko comes from Cheboron Village, Kaptum Sub-county, Kween District. Her father was Stephen Sikuku, a popular engineer. She comes from a family of 10 children of whom she is the fifth born.

She says her childhood was idyllic and she did not know she was missing out on anything until later.

“We would go swimming every evening in the rivers of Sundet and Chebiny and return home with donkeys carrying water for both drinking and domestic use. It was fun and I still miss it so much,” Yeko says of her childhood.

 The wells and streams, where Yeko and her village mates fetched water, were spread out about two kilometres from their homes.

 “I never knew  that was a long distance until I moved to Kampala and found out that you can have running water in your kitchen,” she says.

Yeko loved her childhood so much that when time came to make her own family she did not think twice about setting up a home in the village. The Cheptegeis live in Kapchorwa a few kilometres from the town. Their home is a double-storeyed spacious house surrounded by greenery as far as the eye can go. Yeko does some subsistence farming just like the rest of her neighbours, which still surprises them.

“My neighbours are so good to me, they love us and they find it very surprising when I go to dig in the morning. They think being a wife to Cheptegei, the world champion, I should not have to do the digging myself but should hire someone else to do it,” she says with an understanding smile.

Giving back

Yeko and Cheptegei are aware of their advantage and have committed to helping their community as much as they can. In 2014, the couple started the Cheptegei Development Foundation to nurture talent and support underprivileged children.

 “We started the foundation because we wanted to offer opportunities to talented young people from poor backgrounds. We also provide funding for brilliant children to access education,” she says.

  The couple organises annual events, where parents register their children to compete and the best three among the competitors are offered education sponsorship.

 She says they are also fighting against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and teenage pregnancy through organising events to sensitise communities on dangers of such practices.

 “Our greatest dream is waking up one day to a community where the education of the girl-child is a priority and all children are enabled to discover and exploit their talents,” says Yeko.

Yeko has created a schedule for her and her husband to visit schools and communities to spread the gospel of girl child education. During these monthly visits, they also distribute sanitary pads to the girls for menstrual hygiene.

 She attributes the persistent cases of teenage pregnancy in the sub-region to deep-rooted culture that devalues the girl-child.

 “Our people still do not value education so much and this is responsible for high school dropouts and teenage pregnancies,” she says.

Becoming an engineer

Yeko sat for her Primary Leaving Examinations at Nsamo Mixed Primary School in Seeta, Mukono and her O and A-Level at East High School, Ntinda, Kampala. After her secondary education, she enrolled for a Diploma in Civil Engineering at Uganda Technical College, Elgon, graduating in 2014.

She upgraded to a degree in 2015 at Ndejje University and graduated in 2018. During her A-Level vacation, her father,  who had a progressive attitude towards work and gender, encouraged her to join him at the construction sites he worked at. This planted the seed that led her to pursuing a career in engineering.

“I loved the atmosphere at the construction sites but most importantly, I was proud of my dad’s work and wanted nothing more than to be just like him,” she says.

 But in 2014, Yeko’s world came crashing down with the death of her beloved father.

 “My dad was everything to me. He was an inspiration and I looked up to him. His death was the biggest blow and one of my lowest moments in life,” she says. However, what hurts her more is that her father did not live long enough to meet her husband, Cheptegei and also see her accomplish her dreams.

 With her father’s death, Yeko took over and started running her late father’s construction company called Afro Construction 2000 Limited as a manager, with her brother Isaac Labu as site engineer.

 She says although being a female engineer is very challenging, it is also rewarding.

“Being a female engineer and supervising men is a huge challenge. Men are disrespectful at times but I often move with my brother, who acts as my shield,” she says.

 Three years down the road, Yeko has become an inspiration to many girls, whose dreams are set on joining the engineering profession.

 “Many young women often come and ask what they should do to become engineers and it is always my pleasure to provide guidance. Sometimes I give them the same opportunity my dad gave me by employing them. Inspiring young people is a beautiful experience and one by one, I am changing young women’s minds to stop thinking engineering is only for men,” she says.

Projects

From that young girl following her father to construction sites, Yeko has grown into her own. She has handled numerous projects but the ones she is most proud of are those that are closest to her heart such as their home and the Cheptegei stadium, her husband’s training facility.

Handling race day

You will not find Yeko near a TV screen on days her husband is racing because  “the pressure is too much and I cannot stand it. It is very emotional watching my husband run, so I just go upstairs to my bedroom and make myself busy with other work,” she confesses.

The only person in the Cheptegei household brave enough to watch him race is his three-year-old son, Jethan. 

“Jethan is brave enough to sit and watch the races live with other family members. The only way I ever get to see him in action is re-watching after the race,” she says, beaming.

Memorable moments

Yeko’s  most memorable moment was when Cheptegei won a silver medal in London in 2017.

 “It proved that everything is possible with hard work and determination,” she says.

Future plans

Yeko hopes to continue mentoring and nurturing more women into the male-dominated field of civil engineering.