When we consult the website of the Carabins soccer team at the University of Montreal, we see that most of the players come from Quebec, apart from a few French. Then we come across an athlete from Russia.
This player is Guy-Frank Essome Penda. He was born and raised in Almetyevsk, a city in Tatarstan. We are not very far from the dividing line between Europe and Asia.
“It’s a city which is located at a distance from Kazan which is equivalent to that between Montreal and Quebec,” said the striker, who spent the first 14 years of his life there. It is a city which is best known for the exploitation of oil. “
Love
Essome Penda was born in 1995, not so long after the end of communism, when you think about it. His family tree presents branches that could be described as atypical.
Indeed, his father is Cameroonian, and his mother is Russian. It was as a student that his father went to Russia and then found love there.
When the family arrived in Quebec, Guy-Frank spoke only Russian, but he quickly learned the language of Molière, which he now masters very well.
“Right now, the person who speaks Russian the best is my father, even though he didn’t speak it when he arrived in Russia,” he says. Even my mother, whose mother tongue is, is starting to lose it. “
Photo Ben Pelosse
Guy-Frank Essome Penda capped his college career with a second national championship (in mortise) in recent days.
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Identity
So, how do you manage to define yourself when you were born in Russia to a Cameroonian father and a Russian mother and have lived in Quebec for a dozen years? The question is difficult.
“It’s a question that I still often ask myself,” he admits. It’s been a while since I moved from Russia and spent my formative years here. I integrate the values from here a lot, but I still have a lot of Russian influence. In our family, even in Russia, we were not the typical Russian family, with the influences of my father. It is a mixture of Cameroonian, Russian and Quebec values. I can’t identify with just one group. “
And he has no obligation to do so, he can be a bit of all of that.
Opportunities
If the parents of Essome Penda decided to leave Russia to settle in Quebec, it is so that their two sons have access to better opportunities.
“At the time, I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but as I get older I realize the quality of life I have here. I am still in contact with my old Russian comrades and I see that there is really a difference, ”he concedes.
We can say that the parental decision will have borne fruit since the 26-year-old student is a few weeks away from obtaining a master’s degree in computer engineering from Polytechnique with a specialization in cloud technology, all this while being a student athlete for five years.
And he did well to hang on because in his fifth and final year of eligibility, he crowned his student career with a second national championship, acquired less than two weeks ago.
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