[ESPN] Mutombo donates $15 million for hospital in Congo

great stuff

 

One of my best friends works in Congo. It rains there.

 

Mutombo Hospital to open in Congo, Yao Restaurant to follow Soon.

 

What a great human being, I'm proud to have him in our city.

I want to hear him speaking French.

 

I second that. Mutombo is a wonderfull person it warms my heart to hear things like this. God bless those poor people this will help!

 

im going to major in premed, can i become an NBA superstar instead?

there aren't too many good poeple out there but im glad he's one of them.

 

Small things can sometimes say alot about a person, and in the case of Mutombo, he always takes his time when signing an autograph. His signature is awesome. Others who I shouldn't name (Sura faints) just scribble something unintelligible as if they couldn't be bothered.

For some reason the smile, the engagement, the effort to ONE MORE TIME, write your name for some 10 year old fan has always made me like Deke moreso than some others. Contrast that with DA who even when injured was always "too busy" to sign any autographs....

I know it's small and petty of me, but they guy recognizes the worth of the kid receiving the autograph, while I think others recognize and exaggerate their own worth....

 

This is very cool.

 

On the same team, Deke donated 15 million dollars to build a hospital, JH stole a pair of sunglasses worth, how much? a couple of thousand dollars?

 

This probably doesn't exactly belong here, but this photo is priceless.

Juwan and Deke in China

 

I just went to his foundation's site and donated I suggest anyone out there who can spare anything to please give to his great cause www.dmf.org

 

I feel so guilty. Mutombo was my least favorite player for like 10 years, pretty much until he came to the Rox actually.

Live and learn I guess.

 

More on this:

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/basketball/nba/2006-08-14-mutombo-cover_x.htm


Enlarge By Richard Drew, AP

Mutombo, seen here with United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2001, works closely with the United Nations Development Program.




By Roscoe Nance, USA TODAY
After 15 years in the NBA, Houston Rockets center Dikembe Mutombo has the means to live the life he could only dream of growing up in Kinshasa, capital city of Congo.
Mutombo, who will earn $2.2 million for the upcoming NBA season, is able to own multiple homes and drive luxurious cars. But the memories from his youth compel him not to forget his impoverished homeland, the former Zaire.

He paid for the Congolese women's basketball team's trip to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and for the track team's uniforms and expenses. He regularly sends medicines and equipment back home.

Mutombo's most daunting undertaking has been construction of the 300-bed Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital near Kinshasa, where the ceremonial opening is Sept. 2. The hospital hopes to receive patients a few weeks later, pending the last shipment of equipment and arrival of a sterilizer. He has given $15 million of the $29 million cost.

The "air of expectation" at the neighborhood or ward level is incredible, says Joyce Hightower, a Kinshasa-based physician who is a consultant to Mutombo's project.

"This is what they are calling 'a jewel,' an institution of this quality," she says. "It is giving priority to the people who are the poorest," what Mutombo desires most.

Mutombo is $7 million shy of the building's cost and must still raise money to cover operating expenses, which he estimates will be $2 million-$2.3 million a year.

That is why today he is launching a campaign to recruit 100,000 donors who would pledge $10 a month to his foundation for one year. "With this we can reach even the (lower income levels) of the American public," he says.

"Dikembe could have enjoyed all the luxuries and creature comforts of (the USA) and not been concerned," says TNT basketball analyst John Thompson, Mutombo's coach at Georgetown University. "I'm proud ... that he's applying his education, applying the values his parents taught him and helping people."

Mutombo says the hospital, named in memory of his mother, is in keeping with an African proverb: "When you take the elevator up to reach the top, please don't forget to send the elevator back down so that someone else can take it to the top."

The project, begun in 1997 through the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation, is Mutombo's way of sending the elevator down. "People in my country are dying," he says, "and I want to save them."

'A godsend for the people'

Dr. Mimi Kanda, director of the National Center of Minority Health and Health Disparity at the National Institutes of Health, left to be Mutombo's senior adviser for the project. She says life expectancy is 45-47 years in Congo, 79 in the USA. One in five babies, she says, don't reach their fifth birthday.

Kanda, a pediatrician by training, says children in Congo are still dying of preventable diseases such as malaria, polio and measles. Patients needing magnetic resonance imaging exams or CT scans must travel to South Africa or Europe.

"This hospital is definitely a godsend for the people of Kinshasa," says Faida Mitifu, Congo's ambassador to the United States.

Initially, Mutombo encountered numerous "bumps in the road," even from his NBA brethren. Ground was broken in 2001, but construction didn't start until 2004 because donations came in at a slower pace than he anticipated, especially from other NBA players.

"My expectations were a little bit higher," he says. "I was looking at it to be done through the NBA. It might have been a mistake on my part by feeling that way. It was not an obligation or a duty ... to commit to my cause. But the guys have given me a lot of money."

The players have donated roughly $500,000, and the players union another half million. Owners have contributed $700,000. Mutombo would not say how much the league, as an institution, has given.

Family heavily involved

Mutombo learned about his country's medical deficiencies firsthand when his mother died of a stroke in 1998. The country was in civil unrest, and she was unable to get to a hospital because of a curfew.

His hospital is on a 12-acre site on the outskirts of Kinshasa in Masina, where about a quarter of the city's 7.5 million residents live in poverty. It is minutes from Kinshasa's airport and near a bustling open-air market.

Initially, the emergency room, operating room, intensive care unit, outpatient care and internal medicine department will be open. The infectious disease and pediatrics wards are expected to open within two years. Some beds from internal medicine will go to pediatrics.

Louis Kanda, Mutombo's cousin (and Mimi's husband) and a heart surgeon in Washington, D.C., designed the hospital and was responsible for all medical aspects, including hiring doctors and nurses. All the hospital's facilities are on one level, making for easier movement of patients.

Mutombo's wife, Rose, also Congolese, sits on the foundation's board. The four oldest of Mutombo's children are adopted — Reagan, 22, Pearla, 21, Nancy, 20, and Harouna, 17 — and they volunteer at the foundation office in Atlanta. All have helped while 7-2 Mutombo, a four-time NBA defensive player of the year and an eight-time All-Star, continued his NBA career.

"He did an outstanding job" with the hospital while playing, says Rockets assistant coach Patrick Ewing, who, like Mutombo is a Georgetown alum and will attend the ceremonial opening. "I'm sure it wasn't easy. You can be focused on more than one thing."

Indeed, Mutombo also is a spokesman for CARE, the international relief agency, and the first Youth Emissary for the United Nations Development Program, which connects countries to knowledge and resources that help people build better lives.

Mutombo says he has been at the U.N. so much that it's like "I work for them. They have my ID. They know everywhere I go."

He has worked on getting the hospital built the last nine years. He has met with presidents and princes, corporate executives and anyone he thought would make a donation, flying an estimated 500,000 miles for hospital-related business. "I thank my wife for still loving me," he says. "I am gone so much, two to three days a week."

During the season, it was not unusual for Mutombo to schedule breakfast meetings before practice or to wear a suit and tie to practice so he could meet with prospective donors afterward.

When the Rockets played in Seattle last season, Mutombo scheduled an 8 a.m. breakfast at the offices of Bill Gates' foundation. He was unable to get back to the team's hotel in time for the bus to shoot-around as required by league rules, so he took a taxi.

Coach Jeff Van Gundy told him that when he did his thing to make sure he could do it and make the bus. Mutombo apologized to his teammates, who understood.

"He's working night and day to get this done. I have newfound respect for him," says Houston forward Juwan Howard, who donated $100,000 and plans to be at the opening. "Athletes, myself included, we give back. We do things like build centers, give money, buy books, buy warm clothing for the homeless. But here you have a guy doing something even bigger."

Support from NBA, elsewhere

Mutombo has raised $7 million coming from the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation, mostly by making personal appeals to corporations.

In the early stages, the foundation sought to raise money by sponsoring fundraising events. That effort was disastrous. A silent auction in 1999 lost $45,000.

Mutombo since has allowed others to hold fundraisers for the foundation. Last year the Rockets donated the proceeds — $490,000 — from their annual Tux & Tennies Charity Gala to Mutombo's effort.

Says Rockets owner Les Alexander: "When Dikembe came into my office and showed me pictures of people walking to the hospital and carrying their own mattresses, and walking in and seeing no medicine, no equipment, no machines, it's hard to turn down someone who is helping people like that."

Other NBA owners are supporting Mutombo, including the Maloof brothers of the Sacramento Kings, who donated $25,000. The league office has made its resources and influence available in addition to supporting the project financially; Mutombo will not say how much.

"It's a great piece of work he's doing," says Phoenix Suns chairman Jerry Colangelo, who has pledged his club's financial support. "When you have a cause and you're passionate about it, it's easier to get people to join you if you lead first."

At one point Mutombo nearly lost the land the government had given him for the hospital because it wasn't being used. Refugees who had been displaced during the recent civil war began building homes on the property; some even started farming the land.

After trying to have them removed peacefully, Mutombo had to enlist the help of the army and national police. He ended up paying about 40 women who had been farming the land $100 apiece, the equivalent of two months' pay for most jobs in Congo.

He also says he had to convince his countrymen he had no ulterior motive for the project. "Politically, it was a little bit difficult for people to accept it," he says. "A lot of people felt it was something behind the project. 'Why this young African want to do something that has never been done on the continent of Africa?' The question was why, why, why, why, why? There was concern that I was going to try to run for office. I am not in politics.

" 'President Mutombo?' No, no, no. There has never been a politician in my family, and I am not going to try to be the first one."

Hightower says the project has been well received from the highest levels of government to the poorest of neighborhoods in Kinshasa, where access to medical care has been unavailable.

Mutombo "is really investing in people to help people become better. We need more models like him," Hightower says. "His enthusiasm and tenacity is contagious."

'A new beginning for Congo'

Thompson, who plans to attend the hospital's opening, says he never doubted that Mutombo would be able to complete the project.

"Dikembe, by nature, is a social animal," Thompson says. "He's the kind of person who does not mind continually approaching people and talking about it — which is hard work after a period of time. His personality is suited for that.

"Dikembe can go to the president's inaugural ball, and you'd think it was for him."

Thompson, however, was concerned whether Mutombo "realistically knew what he was undertaking," given the potential for instability in Congo.

"His intentions are unquestionable. His efforts are unquestionable," Thompson says. "I was concerned with the number of dollars being used for what they're supposed to be used for. We've all heard stories of things not going where they're supposed to.

"The way government changes and political views and positions change, the hard work begins once the hospital is built. You don't know that the government is unstable. But you wonder."

President Laurent Kabila, who gave the land for the hospital to Mutombo, was assassinated in 2001. His son, Joseph, succeeded him. The country held its first free elections in more than 40 years July 30, with 32 presidential candidates.

"I don't foresee that much concern of instability," Ambassador Mitifu says, adding that regardless of the outcome of the election, Mutombo's hospital won't be affected.

"The government understands the need for better health care infrastructure. For me, it's a good premonition for a better Congo. It's a new beginning for Congo. It couldn't have been more timely."

 

YEah, deke is one of my favorite players. He cares about his people. I read somewhere that initially the price tag on that hospital was 7 million dollars, then it shot up and deke stuck with it, Congratulations deke!!!
he also won the 2000 presidents service award. I think it goes out to roughly 20 people a year, and is the highest honor in this country for volunteer service. I may be wrong, but in recent years, i haven't seen any other athletes on it.

 

hey I can do that easily.

*goes to sign up*

 

was anyone else watching ABC 13 yesterday when this was mentioned? they started with the whole doctor turned superstar scenario and then ended with him saying why he did this etc etc. then under his name it said....from the atlanta hawks..

i was confused for about 1823901283 seconds..

 

With all due respect to Deke, I take umbrage to the implied message here that Deke is many times more learned, educated, or what have you, than the other players mentioned. Deke is from the Congo, spent the formative parts of his life there, and has been a fixture in Congo throughout his illustrious career. Congo has been embroiled in a devastating civil war since 1998. That he could opine about the effect of That war on the economy is obvious.

It would be akin to someone asking Francis about the changes in the Takoma Park/DC area in the last 10 years, or Barkley about Alabama politics... I'd imagine both would answer the questions with aplomb. In addition, Shane Battier is probably the smartest athlete I've ever met.

To suggest that Deke's intelligence is transcendent based on that anecdote alone, and, in the same sentence, suggest that Steve Francis, JL3, Battier, Barkley, Rudy Gay would be wholly incapable of answering such a rudimentary question about their home, is very misguided.

Deke's linguistic talents are, of course, impressive. But you'll have to remember the U.S. is fairly sui generis in its insistence on monolingual education.

 

vwc - I agree with everything you said (with the possible exception of the last sentence - which is over my head, but I don't think is an insult to me, so again I am ok with it), but I go back to I just don't see people asking Steve Francis his opinion on the Iraq war and the American economy. I am not saying he could not answer it (and I am not picking on SF, I just grabbed a bunch of topical names). It is just that nobody seems to care what he (or our athletes in general) think about current events. Maybe we just don't expect enough from our athletes.

The other day I heard CB4 being interviewd I think on Dan Patrick. All of the questions were are you going to run. I only caught the last few minutes, but I didn't hear anything about what are the major problems in Alabama and how would you fix them. Well now that I say that out loud, I guess we can't get any politico to specifically say what the problems are and how they will fix them. Maybe we just don't expect enough from our leaders.