SAN DIEGO — People see Thokbor Majak on campus at San Diego State, see his 7-foot frame carrying a book bag on the way to class, and ask him where he’s from.

He tells them South Sudan.

They ask what it’s like.

“I say, ‘It’s home, it’s good,’” Majak says. “It’s a totally different setting from here, the lifestyle, the level of development. They don’t really get it because they don’t know what it’s like to be there. I know the differences. I can’t really express it because everything is taken for granted here.”

There are no 12,414-seat basketball arenas where he’s from. No high-rise dormitories or dining halls. No manicured lawns between paved sidewalks and bike paths. No freeways or overpasses. No fancy grocery stores or restaurants or department stores with escalators and perfume counters.

No electricity.

No running water.

SDSU’s redshirting freshman center is from Bor, in central South Sudan along the White Nile River. He wasn’t born in a hospital, but to a midwife in a circular mud hut with a grass roof. His family lived in a rural village outside the city, on a subsistence farm about the size of Viejas Arena’s court where they planted maize, sorghum, millet, peanuts, pumpkin, simsim (sesame), okra. They had a few cows for milk and meat.

“You grow the food that you eat,” Majak says. “There is nothing commercial on a large scale.”

You go to bed when it gets dark, wake up at dawn.

You fetch water from the nearby borehole well.

You bathe and wash clothes in the Nile, avoiding the crocodiles and hippos.

The children, as soon as they were able, are indoctrinated in the daily rigors of survival. He harvested crops in the torrid climate (daytime highs range from the upper 80s to upper 90s). He accompanied his uncles into the forest for firewood. He helped build huts. He helped fish in the river.

“He really comes from humble beginnings,” says SDSU assistant coach JayDee Luster, who first saw Majak at a recruiting event in Arizona two years ago and was captivated by his combination of footwork and grounded perspective. “For him to be here and play in an arena like this, for a guy like that, how do you not believe in a higher being?

“It’s like, you’re not supposed to be here.”

‘An A+ person’

Majak’s mother died when he was 1.

His maternal grandmother raised him and his older brother, not entrusting them to one of his father’s three other wives (polygamy is common is South Sudanese culture). His brother, three years older, got in trouble and dropped out of school. There were concerns Thokbor might head down a similar path.

The trajectory of his life changed a few years later, but it really changed a few years before he was born, in the aftermath of the bloody Sudanese Civil War that by some accounts killed 2 million. An uncle was among those displaced by the sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians, trekking hundreds of miles through deserts and war zones to the safety of the sprawling Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya.

He was part of “The Lost Boys” who received political asylum in the United States. He first was sent to Nebraska, then settled in Kansas City and befriended an American family. He told them the story of his young nephew in Bor and wanting a better life for him; the family offered to pay Thokbor’s fees for a boarding school in Kampala, across the southern border in Uganda.

Off Thokbor went. He was 8.

During a school break the following year, he began the overnight bus journey home to Bor, stopping in a border town with relatives for a few days.

“I wanted to go to Bor,” Majak says. “My uncle said, ‘Don’t go.’ I was insisting. Two days later, the war broke out in Bor.”

He returned to Uganda and continued his studies. He liked biology, chemistry and other sciences. Maybe he’d go to medical school. Maybe he’d become an engineer.

He would spend seven years in Uganda, studying … and growing. He became too tall and lanky for soccer, the primary sport in Africa. Someone suggested he try basketball.

The school had a rudimentary hoop, but to find a proper outdoor court with games he jammed into a minivan taxi for the ride to downtown, then caught a city bus. The trip took an hour each way, traffic permitting. When he had free days, he stayed with relatives who lived closer to the court.

“The highlight tapes of him were on an outdoor court in Africa,” Luster says, shaking his head, “and in the background there’s an old Volkswagen. And it’s a man-made hoop.”

At 15, Majak was offered a spot in the prestigious NBA Academy Africa in Senegal. It was the first time he had played on an indoor court. He was 7 feet tall and weighed 185 pounds.

After two years there, he was sent to Dream City Christian School, a basketball prep academy in Glendale, Ariz. Luster had connections with the coaching staff.

“I went to see their team, and this guy was switching ball screens, he was moving laterally, he blocked a few shots,” Luster says. “I was impressed how he ran like a deer. I went and got (fellow assistant coach Dave Velasquez) and said, ‘You’ve got to come watch this 7-footer. I think he could switch (ball screens). He can move well for his size.’

“As we kept watching him, I thought he’s a guy who probably needs to redshirt — and give credit to the people around him, they bought into the idea of redshirting right away — but he’s a guy who in two or three years, people will be like, ‘How the heck did they get him?’”

The second time they watched him was against another 7-footer they were recruiting, current redshirt freshman Magoon Gwath, who also traces his family roots to the Dinka tribe of South Sudan but was born in the United States.

“One of my coaches told me after the game that the San Diego State coaches were here,” Majak says. “At first, I thought they were not serious. Sometimes college coaches come and they are like, ‘We like you,’ and then you never hear from them again. But they called me and they started coming to my games over the summer, and I knew they were serious.

“I didn’t know anything about San Diego State. I started researching it.”

He looked at pictures of Viejas Arena, read about the history of the program and its reliance on shot blockers to anchor the defense. But mostly he looked at the academic curriculum, at the course catalog, at the prospective majors. When he came on his recruiting visit, he had a list of specific questions for the academic advisors.

“He’s making the most of his education,” coach Brian Dutcher says. “He’s not here just taking classes. He’s taking classes that are important to him and that he feels can make a difference outside of basketball down the road. He is an A+ person, on the court, in the classroom and socially.”

Majak is majoring in sustainability, studying environmental impact and sustainable agriculture. He’s an A student. Professors have highlighted his papers as examples in class.

“When you come from where he comes from,” Luster says, “and you have an opportunity to come to America and live the American dream and how education can change your life, I think he really understands that. When you’re here in the States, you kind of take it for granted, and his perspective does not allow him to take it for granted.

“Early in the year, a teammate was jawing with him and somebody said, ‘Why do you let him talk to you like that?’ He said, ‘Coach, where I’m from, they’re actually at war. People are dying. I just let him talk. He has no idea.’”

Cultural differences, commonalities

At Dream City, players — teenagers — lived in a house together. They nicknamed Majak “Prez” because he ran the house, kept it in order, kept it clean, provided a mature presence amid youthful indifference.

The biggest cultural differences he notices are the reliance on cars — “Our apartment is like a five-minute walk from the gym and someone wants to drive there?” — and the lack of respect for elders, which is non-negotiable in the African culture.

“I remember the first time I came here, one of my teammates was talking back to one of our coaches, yelling at an adult. I thought, ‘Wait, what?’ I was so surprised,” he said. “Where I come from, that’s completely unacceptable. You can’t do that. We have total respect for adults. Here it is not always the case, and that’s something I really had to adjust to. People say sometimes you have to stand up for yourself. I know I can talk back, but I don’t need to because that’s just how I grew up.”

He phones his grandmother in Bor several times a week. He wires her and other members of their extended family whatever he can from his NIL and scholarship money.

Then he goes to practice and focuses on learning the game he’s played for only six years. He attacks the weight room and is approaching 220 pounds. He doesn’t cram for tests, knowing the retention suffers. He takes his time on assignments. He shakes hands with everyone he meets and looks them in the eye.

He’s known as one of the funniest players in the locker room. The glass is always half-full, even if you had to fill it from the borehole well. Electricity is generated with a smile.

“I can’t complain,” Majak says. “I’ve had a good life, considering where I came from.”

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