AUSTIN, Texas — Paulete Mbuangi spent the first part of her life growing up in Angola, a country in the southern part of Africa. She was surrounded by her large family of eight brothers and sisters. She says her life was pretty good there, but ultimately, her parents wanted the family to move.

When Mbuangi was 11, her mother moved to Brazil, and Mbuangi and a few of her siblings eventually joined her there.

“It was really different,” Mbuangi said. “But it wasn’t that much better.”

Mbuangi said it was hard for her mother to find work in Brazil. She would sell Crocs in the street, and Mbuangi would sometimes help. But because they didn’t have a permit to sell, when the cops would show up, they had to run.

Eventually, Mbuangi’s mother decided that the family would move to the United States, and they embarked on a long journey to travel by boat, bus and foot to get to the U.S. 

“The bad thing about it is it takes like months to get here, and you gotta go through a lot of countries,” Mbuangi said. “It’s really dangerous and a lot of people die. I don’t know, it’s just a challenge.”

The trip would take eight months total. When crossing from Colombia to Panama, the group had to take a boat, and Mbuangi said she lost her aunt during that time when the boat tipped over, and they didn’t have life jackets.

When they got to Panama, it became even more challenging with the terrain they had to travel across. Mbuangi and her family had to pay guides to take them through the jungle, which meant going up and down mountains and through very muddy paths. It also required them to cross streams and creeks.

“One time, I almost drowned, and I didn’t know how to swim,” Mbuangi recalled. “A friend came and picked me up real quick, and I was like ‘oh my God, really scary.’”

At another point on the trip, Mbuangi and her sister were walking together ahead of the rest of the group, but they got separated. Mbuangi was in the jungle by herself for days without food or water.

“OK, what do I do now? I have walked for three days. How many days do I have left?” Mbuangi recalled of that time. “I just had the strength to keep walking. I was like I have to find my sister. Maybe something happened to her, and that was like the thing keeping me moving.”

Mbuangi would eventually find her sister and her family in a nearby town. From there, the family continued the journey north through Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico. They ended up at the U.S.-Mexico border near Laredo and had to wait there three months until being allowed into the United States. Once in Texas, the family headed to Austin to start their new life.

“I remember when I got here I was like ‘wow,’” Mbuangi said. “We were passing through downtown, and I was like ‘wow, this is something really different.’ It made everything that we went through worth it.”

The transition to life in America was made a little more difficult because just months after arriving, the pandemic hit. Mbuangi was in the eighth grade at the time and had to take classes online when she spoke very little English.

In the fall of 2020, she started at Navarro Early College High School, and after walking around the campus and meeting people at the gym, she decided to try a sport.

She had seen girls playing volleyball and thought she wanted to try that, but a chance encounter with John Nelson, the girls basketball coach, changed her mind and the course of her life.

“I was trying to tell him I was trying to find volleyball,” Mbuangi said. “But he was like basketball. I was like no, volleyball.”

“I kind of suggested she start at the beginning with us, and she got right in,” said Coach Nelson. “She came the next day and the next day and the next day and didn’t miss a day from then on.”

Mbuangi showed a lot of natural athletic ability early on, but she had never played basketball before and did not know the rules of the game.

“She had no clue what was going on, on the court,” said Nelson. “Didn’t really know how to legally move within the game of basketball.”

“They would tell me it’s travel, but I didn’t know what travel means,” said Mbuangi. “It was hard to understand the rules because there’s a lot of rules of basketball.”

It didn’t take long for Mbuangi to pick up the rules, to pick up the game and show she could play.

“As soon as she understood something, she would put it in her tool bag and make it her own,” said Nelson. “That is a quality that not a lot of people have.”

Basketball gave Mbuangi an outlet, a place to find friends and to fit in.

“This team means a lot to me, basketball even more,” said Mbuangi. “Coming here to the country, basketball is like my safe space.”

Through her hard work, she became an excellent student and an incredible basketball player. Mbuangi helped Navarro make the playoffs for two straight seasons and scored almost 30 points per game this season, leading the Vikings to a second place finish in their district. 

“People that didn’t know me, coaches would come to me and say you’re getting better,” said Mbuangi. “I was like maybe I’m getting better, maybe I’m learning how this works.”

Her success on the court and in the classroom is opening doors for her future. She wants to play basketball in college and then become an immigration lawyer. 

“Paulete, since I’ve known her, has kind of had a worldly intelligence,” said Nelson. “Understanding that she had this perspective on things that a lot of young people don’t have because they haven’t lived through as many challenges as she went through. There’s not a lot of pressure on you to make a shot in a basketball game when you’ve lived the life she’s lived.”

“I feel like it’s just prepared me. Everything I went through prepared me and helped me be a stronger person,” said Mbuangi. “Just courageous I guess.”

Her incredible story has also gained the attention of a national contest. Mbuangi is one of 10 finalists from across the country for the Jersey Mike’s Naismith High School Basketball Courage Award. The winners of that award will be announced on March 6.