Nearly two dozen years after Ibrahim Hussein became the first African to win the Boston Marathon, his countrymen and women still have an air of mystery about them. Perhaps the people hereabouts who know them best are the students at the Elmwood School in Hopkinton, where the Kenyan runners annually spend several hours chatting with them.

“You don’t know the joy you give us,’’ four-time champion Catherine Ndereba told them during Thursday’s visit. The children, who can sing the Kenyan anthem and count in Swahili, give Catherine The Great the royal treatment and her teammates, who enter the gym Super Bowl-style with smoke and spotlights, are welcomed like rock stars.

They have won so often, both here and around the planet, that the marathoners have become their country’s roving ambassadors. “More than anything else they have put Kenya on the global map,’’ says Mary Kimonye, chief executive officer of Brand Kenya, which promotes trade and tourism.

When Brand Kenya asked visitors what they knew about the nation, they mentioned runners and wildlife. What makes the runners more valuable is that they can talk and travel and they have a special affinity for Boston, both for its tradition and topography. While many top marathoners prefer less demanding layouts, the Kenyans enjoy the ups and downs here, which remind them of the highlands where they train in the Great Rift Valley.

“I love Boston because of the course,’’ says Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot, who smashed Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot’s record last time. “I am not good in flats. I like a place like here.’’

Cheruiyot and the rest of the 17 Kenyans who’ll run in Monday’s 115th edition of the world’s most famous footrace, grew up seeing the event on television. “Most of the time I have been watching when Boston is going on,’’ says Geoffrey Mutai, the country’s newest speed racer who’s making his debut here. And most of the time, as in 18 of the last 23 years, they’ve watched a Kenyan be crowned with the laurel wreath.

Never was it more important to them than it was three years ago in the wake of widespread violence after the winter elections. To see a Kenyan break the tape yet again in Copley Square meant that something positive had endured. “We are still here,’’ proclaimed Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot, after he’d won his fourth title that day.

In a land that is defined by tribes, marathoning both unifies and transcends. “Here, they are tribeless,’’ says Kimonye. “They think of themselves as Kenyans. This is something we would like the rest of the country to tap into. This has been a big force in trying to bring the country together.’’

Almost all of the top marathoners are Kalenjin (Ndereba, a Kikuyu, is a prominent exception) yet most of them don’t know each other well. “There are a thousand runners,’’ says Moses Kigen Kipkosgei, who trains with Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot in Kapkitony. “Every year a new runner, a new runner.’’

There are nearly 100 of them training more than 200 miles a week in his camp and the milieu is Darwinian. “It’s almost like a competition every day,’’ Kigen says. The sheer depth of talent is staggering. Last year Kenyans won in Chicago, Berlin, Rotterdam, Frankfurt, Seoul, Toronto, Barcelona, Prague, and elsewhere. Eleven ran under 2 hours and 7 minutes, three under 2:05.

But the race they want most to win is the one that began in 1897, the one that all but guarantees them immortality back home. “Once you win in Boston, everywhere you are known,’’ says Kigen. “Even in the street.’’

For Hussein and Cosmas Ndeti, who each won three times here, for two-time champion Moses Tanui, Lameck Aguta, Joseph Chebet, Elijah Lagat, Rodgers Rop, Timothy Cherigat, and the Cheruiyots, victory was profoundly transformative.

“Being a Boston Marathon champion follows them throughout their lives,’’ says Tom Ratcliffe, who has represented Kenyan runners for 15 years.

The prize money alone is life-changing. In a country where the annual per capita income is $1,600, Cheruiyot earned $175,000 last year for two hours’ work. After returning home he bought a tea plantation and land for his family and relatives. “I tell the people, this is my sweat from Boston,’’ he says.

An invitation from Patrick Lynch, the longtime race recruiter for sponsor John Hancock, is a valued upgrade for those wanting to make a global name. “After making results in smaller marathons, they want to move up to a big marathon,’’ says Gerard van de Veen, Mutai’s manager. “Boston is one of them.’’

After winning Frankfurt in 2008, Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot signed to come here the following year. Mutai, who has a couple of titles from Eindhoven and one from Monte Carlo on his résumé, ran the second-fastest time in the world last year (2:04:55) in Rotterdam and has a good chance to be the man here on Monday.

The Kenyans, who generally are modest and soft-spoken with a wry humor, have an easy camaraderie. They’ll joke over chicken stew and fruit at Hancock’s conference center on Trinity Place and they’ll make a point of sharing the workload during the race. “We have to do teamwork,’’ says Kigen. “You can not win a race on your own. You have to be assisted.’’

The Kenyans refer to each other as “colleagues’’ and they’ll run that way for the first 17 miles or so, one for all. But once the leaders head into the Newton hills, the colleagues become rivals. “They’ll celebrate a Kenyan victory but they want to win themselves,’’ says Ratcliffe. “They’re not going to sacrifice themselves for anyone else.’’

Still, there are enough of them in top form that the odds favor a Kenyan victory more years than not. That’s why Brand Kenya now has a booth at the John Hancock Sports & Fitness Expo just inside the door at Hynes Convention Center. Prime minister Raila Odinga is here this weekend, as is Kenyan ambassador Elkanah Odembo. He went to Bowdoin with Joan Benoit and he ran here in 1979, when Benoit and Bill Rodgers pulled off an American double.

That was when the Kenyans still were in thrall to cross-country and the steeplechase, before they discovered the lucrative lure of hardtop.

“Everything in Kenya now is marathon, marathon,’’ says Kigen.

The Husseins and Ndetis and Cheruiyots are household names back home largely because of what they did on a Monday in the Back Bay. They’ve also become their country’s most visible export. Who knew that running 26 miles could make you a national brand asset?

John Powers can be reached at jpowers@globe.com.