[New York Daily News] Rockets' Tracy McGrady finds true calling in missions to ravage

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Rockets' Tracy McGrady finds true calling in missions to ravaged Darfur

BY ANDY MARTINO
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER

Saturday, November 22nd 2008, 1:15 PM

Tracy McGrady was expecting to see nice drawings, happy drawings, the kind that kids typically make. In a cramped room in eastern Chad last year, where 8- and 9-year-old Darfurian refugees gathered for an art class, McGrady assumed the pictures would look like those that his own three children brought home from school. But the crayon depictions McGrady saw were horrifying: Scenes of airplanes dropping bombs, people on fire, men squatting in bushes and spraying machine-gun bullets.


Rockets guard Tracy McGrady visits the Darfur region of western Sudan, where genocide has left hundreds of thousands dead and millions more homeless and living in bleak desert camps


At that moment, McGrady realized that this trip would be more intense than he thought, and would forever alter his outlook on life. "That really moved me," McGrady says. "You had drawings of people shooting at kids. It was very disturbing."

The Houston Rockets guard known as T-Mac was in a refugee camp in Chad, speaking with victims of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in neighboring Darfur. What had begun as a celebrity fact-finding mission was leaving a profound impact on McGrady, transforming the once-pampered superstar into an impassioned activist. The trip also resulted in a documentary film and collaboration with the United Nations.

More than a year later, McGrady and his partners are ready to launch the Sister School Initiative, which will work with the U.N. to fund education in refugee camps, and link African and American schools with the ambitious aim of modernizing education in war zones.

McGrady has already enlisted several NBA stars, and hopes to use his platform to bring change to this region where women are raped, children are killers and babies are set on fire, a place whose troubles changed him forever.

***

The conflict in Darfur, a region in western Sudan roughly the size of Texas, began when McGrady was still a club-hopping, Rolls Royce-driving NBA hotshot.

The causes of the war are complex, involving deep-rooted ethnic and economic tensions. The current fighting began in 2003, when two Darfurian rebel groups, claiming neglect and mistreatment, launched an attack on the central government of Sudan.

The rebellion escalated into a humanitarian crisis that many consider genocide when the government armed and supported Janjaweed forces. These militiamen began raping, torturing and killing anyone accused of supporting the rebellion.

The Janjaweed have destroyed entire villages and indiscriminately terrorized men, women and children. Additional rebel groups have emerged, making the conflict a war between many factions whose agendas are not always clear. Various ceasefires and peace agreements have been signed and broken, and the violence rages on; the U.N. estimates that as many as 500,000 Darfurians have been killed since 2003.

A solution to the crisis will not come easily, says John Prendergast, the former Clinton administration official and expert on the conflict who served as McGrady's tutor. "The ideal scenario is that (the Sudanese) government will fall, but that isn't going to happen," he says. "They are very much in charge. So the second option is that they should have to share power (with the various rebel groups)."

Prendergast says that the international community will have to work together to facilitate lasting peace. The process will be complicated by the animosity and violence on every side of the conflict, which has descended into a hellish quagmire in which members of every faction terrorize Darfurians at will.

Many who escaped death have fled to refugee camps across the border in eastern Chad. There are nine major camps in the area, each holding about 20,000 people. The inhabitants are left with little to do but nervously await another Janjaweed assault from across the border.

***

Elissa Grabow has been close with McGrady since T-Mac was 17, a young star about to begin his NBA career. Grabow worked for McGrady's agent and eventually became the All-Star's personal assistant and manager. A few years ago, she began to notice a change in McGrady.

"Tracy has always had a big heart, but he never had those college years, so when he came into the league he had this crazy time when you get wild, party all the time," she says. "After 11 years in the league, he made a shift in his desire to understand what's important and what really matters. The going to clubs, the bling, it had no meaning for him anymore. It was empty."

After McGrady, 29, was traded from Orlando to Houston in 2004, he befriended his new teammate Dikembe Mutombo. The Congolese-American was knowledgeable about the Darfur crisis, and willing to teach an increasingly curious McGrady. "Being in those conversations with Dikembe really brought a light to my eyes," McGrady says. "But then I got tired of hearing about it. I wanted to see it."

In January of 2007, when McGrady and Grabow began planning his annual charity event, usually a bowling party, McGrady surprised his friend with a more ambitious suggestion.

"I want to do something bigger, more global," he told her, acknowledging that if he was going to use his celebrity to make an impact, he would have to hurry. "I need to do it while I'm at my height," he said.

They settled on an eight-day fact-finding mission in eastern Chad. In September of last year, McGrady and Grabow flew to Africa, where they were met by activists Prendergast and Omer Ismail. Filmmaker Josh Rothstein and cinematographer Brian Jackson joined the group, charged with documenting the experience. Rothstein's wife - and Elissa's sister - Jill Grabow and Ira Seright, a friend of McGrady's, also came along.

The group's primary destination was a refugee camp called Djabal, next to the town of Goz Beida. Upon the groups arrival, McGrady's luxurious lifestyle immediately came into conflict with his surroundings. Each group member was given a small cinderblock building to sleep in, but the buildings were hot and overrun with bugs. Everyone else pitched a tent in the nearby sand, but McGrady had never slept in a tent and didn't intend to try it.

"Tracy is very vocal," Rothstein says, laughing. "That first night, he said, ‘Hell no, I ain't sleeping in no tent.'"

So McGrady remained in the cinderblock hothouse, unable to sleep. "The next day he was miserable," says Rothstein. "His back hurt and he was tired."

Finally, McGrady dragged his mattress out of the building and placed it diagonally in the tent, allowing his six-foot-eight frame to squeeze in.

Every day, the group drove 10 minutes into the heart of the refugee camp, where they spoke with Darfurians. McGrady's initial responses made clear that he did not yet understand the depth of their problems. "The bottom of Tracy's (learning curve) probably came on the first day, when he offered to build a swimming pool and soccer field," says Rothstein.

"I saw kids playing in dirty water," says McGrady, "and I was like, ‘Hmm, what would it take to get them a pool?' I saw them playing soccer in the dirt and wanted to do something about that, and knew that I could afford to build a field."

Later, Ismail, the interpreter, approached McGrady. "No, that's not what they need," Rothstein recalls Ismail saying. "That sort of set Tracy straight."

"It took me a day or two to understand what the real issues were," McGrady says. "But I got it."

As he walked through the densely populated camp, past endless rows of huts made of mud and bark, McGrady absorbed many sights that shocked and disturbed him. Orphaned 3-year-olds wandered around unsupervised. Thousands of refugees shared a single hole in the dirt as their bathroom. Women spoke of being raped while gathering wood to sell in the town. Men spoke of having their arms chopped off and eyes gouged out.

"Hearing the stories was paralyzing for him," says Grabow. "He just kept saying, ‘No, no, no, no. They don't take babies and throw them on the fire. They just don't.' He saw newborns on the backs of 4-year-olds, and he'd get overwhelmed and say, ‘Where are their parents?' There were lots of times when he would walk away and say, ‘I can't take it anymore,' and tell the interpreter to stop. Then he realized, ‘I have to hear it.'"

Midway through the trip, McGrady reached an emotional catharsis. "On the third or fourth night, I got back to my room, and I was real tired, so I went to bed early, like 9 o'clock," he says. "I woke up at 2 o'clock in the morning and sat up. I got to thinking about all the stuff I had seen and heard, and I just broke down in tears. I never cry, never really show emotion, but I couldn't take it anymore."

After that, McGrady began to see how he could help. "I went over there without any intention of starting anything," he says. "But when you are in that moment, you really want to do something right away."

***

McGrady is sitting in a circle in the dirt with Ismail, Prendergast and two Darfurian women, in a moment captured by Rothstein's camera.

"Ask her how she believes that me being an American, how an everyday American can help her situation," McGrady says to Ismail.

"The most important thing for us now is to have a school for our children," says a woman wearing a blue and white head scarf. "Because when we educate our children, then we can be a better community."

This message was reiterated in nearly every conversation that McGrady had. The refugees said that they lacked the resources to educate their children. Deeply affected by the drawings in the art class, McGrady was receptive. As they were leaving Chad, he and his group began to brainstorm about the project that would become the Sister Schools Initiative.

The idea is two-fold: McGrady screens Rothstein's still-unreleased documentary for his NBA friends, asking them to donate money and bring the message to schools in their own communities (Baron Davis, Jermaine O'Neal, Brandon Roy and Derek Fisher have already pledged). Working with the U.N., the project hopes to build and improve schools in the camps, and link them with American schools, thereby increasing global awareness of the problem.

"What exists now are rudimentary schools in huts and under trees," Prendergast says. "Each donation of $60,000 to $70,000 can provide enhancements for each school. That could be building infrastructure, training teachers, even building a girls' latrine. The U.N. will handle all that stuff on the ground. And the solidarity between the schools here and the schools there is the most important part."

The goal is to use McGrady's celebrity to change the way education is administered in the midst of conflict. "We're not looking to build some second-rate vanity project for an NBA player," Prendergast says. "We're looking to provide a model for how to educate people in war zones. Our plan is to someday involve the NFL and MLB. We can show that this model can be replicated."

As for McGrady, he will forever carry the burden of his newfound knowledge, and the hard-earned appreciation and patriotism that comes with it. "It was very touching and very, very sad," he says. "You know what, man? Now, I just thank God for what I have, for my family, and thank God I live in America."

 

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Tracy McGrady fights for Darfur

By ZACH McCANN | SENTINEL STAFF WRITER
November 23, 2008

As a basketball player, Tracy McGrady has evolved in the four years since he last donned an Orlando Magic uniform. He's shooting less, passing more and buying into a system where he's not the primary scorer — all of which have helped the Rockets to back-to-back 50-win seasons.

But McGrady, 29, has experienced just as much of an evolution off the court. He's grown up, he said, and that's evidenced by his work on the situation in Darfur, a region in Sudan where in recent years more than 500,000 people have been killed and millions have been forced to dislocate since fighting began.

McGrady visited three refugee camps in Africa last year, where he saw children wandering the wilderness unattended and people sleeping in tents infested with bugs and reptiles. It was like nothing he had ever seen before.

McGrady generated a documentary about the trip called "3-points," with the help of human-rights activist John Prendergast. On Nov.12, the film was screened to about 200 people, including basketball players, celebrities and movie-studio executives.

"We're looking to do more screenings of it in different cities," said McGrady, who finished with 17 points in the Rockets' 100-95 victory over the Magic on Saturday. "Something is definitely coming of it."

McGrady, an Auburndale native, is hoping to build schools for the children in the refugee camps, and then connect American students with children in Darfur through the Internet.

It's a project called Sister Schools Initiative, but it's still in need of more funding and support.

He's spread the word to other NBA names with the platform to make a difference, such as Baron Davis, Carl Landry and former Pacers star Reggie Miller.

McGrady isn't planning any more trips to Africa, though.

"I don't think it's safe to plan any trips over there right now," he said. "Maybe sometime in the future."

McGrady's passion for the Darfur tragedy symbolizes a social consciousness that wasn't as prevalent in his Orlando Magic days.

"I've gotta set a great example for my kids," McGrady said. "Being a father, being a husband. ... I'm the same old Mac but I've grown up a little bit."

Zach McCann can be reached at zmccann@orlandosentinel.com.