The Waratahs' new tighthead prop sits in a cafe in Coogee, 14,881 kilometres from home.

He orders a cappuccino but doesn't drink it. He doesn't touch the obligatory glass of water a waitress places on the table, either.

He is worried. He is not sure if he wants to tell his story but he is determined that if his journey to the other side of the world can inspire another young person to cast aside fear and doubt in pursuit of a better life, then it will be worth it.

So he takes himself back to that night in 2012 when he and a handful of other terrified, hopeful strangers walked by moonlight from Mozambique to South Africa, through the Kruger National Park.

He is Thierry Marcial Kounga Kuate, 17, from Bafoussam, in football-mad Cameroon. His nickname is Darcheville, or "Darche", after the French Guianan footballer Jean-Claude Darcheville, whose compact build Kuate shares.

He is a son and a brother, the middle child in a household of four mothers and no father, because he died when Kuate was four. He is his family's breadwinner and has been for five years since leaving primary school to labour on roads and building sites.

But he has just left it all behind because above all this he is an aspiring professional rugby player. He has a deep faith, and he has promised himself that one day he will be able to tell his children that he did everything he could to better his situation. So he has left Bafoussam and paid a stranger to help get him to South Africa, via Mozambique, beginning a three-year odyssey of uncertainty and hardship.

Now, in the middle of the night, that passion is driving him forward on this treacherous but well-trodden migratory path, used by millions of people over the centuries who have dodged predators in South Africa's most famous game reserve to leave behind conflict and poverty for a chance at something better.

It is driving him towards Johannesburg.

"I was scared, I didn't know where I was going," Kuate says. "I was just at the mercy of whatever happens, it happens."

Kuate's group made it to the other side of Kruger and on to a waiting bus that drove them into the heart of "Jozi", South Africa's teeming metropolis which attracts the Rainbow Nation's wealthiest and poorest, its strongest and its most vulnerable.

It would be another two years before a chance invitation to train with the Waratahs in Johannesburg turned into a 12-month process to bring him to Sydney and the home of Waratahs assistant Daryl Gibson, who taught Kuate, among other things, that Australia meant leaving your wallet under a towel at the beach while you went swimming.

There were many more ups and downs. A season playing for a plate of food a day and a corner of a storeroom floor at the back of a stadium with four other young men. Promises of a contract from the Lions; false starts with a number of smaller clubs, all which sees dozens of hopefuls like Kuate each year - each of them desperate, and willing to play for nothing but a sliver of an opportunity.

"I didn't want to complain about a bed, I wanted to focus on getting a contract. If I have a contract there are so many beds I can buy. That was what was in my mind."

There were also chance meeting with solicitor Derrick Kaufmann in Johannesburg, one which changed Kuate's life.

"South Africa is a difficult place to live, especially if you're an immigrant, there aren't many opportunities,"  said Kaufmann, who is also a part-time referee.

"When I got to know him I saw something different in him. I played professional cricket in my younger years and I was always on the fringes, and I felt I was never given the opportunity to break through, partly because I wasn't talented enough.

"But Darche has an unbelievable soul and something resonated with me when I got to know him. He is really committed to making a better life for himself. The opportunity to help was there and I couldn't walk away from it."

Kaufmann met Kuate at a rugby clinic in Johannesburg and struck up a friendship with the introverted young prop over the off-season.

It was Kaufmann who helped Kuate make the necessary South African residency applications. Together they navigated the mine field of broken promises and false hope, and it was Kaufmann's acquantaince with Gibson that led to a chance to train with the Waratahs last year - another life-changing encounter.

Impressed with Kuate's attitude and skills, head coach Michael Cheika invited Kuate to travel with the team for the rest of their two-game tour to Durban and Cape Town.

"I was so emotional, I didn't know what to do," Kuate said. "Being with the guys you always see on TV and now to train with them was such a big thing."

Cheika was sufficiently impressed to offer Kuate a contract with NSW. That was a year ago this weekend, but a painstaking visa approval process delayed his arrival for more than eight months. During that time, the Sharks also offered Kuate a contract, but the Waratahs' generosity - and the chance to learn from Sekope Kepu and Benn Robinson - had convinced Kuate he should move to Sydney.

"I believe that there are people you meet in your life and when you meet them your life changes. I really do believe that. I have met a few of those people, who have been good to me when they had no reason to be," he said.

So Coogee it is, a world away from Bafoussam, Mozambique and Johannesburg. Successive knee injuries have hampered his chances to crack the match day 23, and he misses his mother and the Kaufmanns, who became his second family during those difficult days in a strange country. But a strapped knee and the odd bout of loneliness have nothing against the inner strength that propelled a teenage Kuate across Kruger three years ago.

"I am so focused on what I want to achieve that I don't want to get stuck worrying," he said.

"What I went through has made me strong. What you think is the worst thing that can happen, if it happened to me it would not be strange. It is just my life, and who I am."