Dikembe, 1966-2024

Coming to the US from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1987 at the age of 21, Dikembe Mutombo came to study at Georgetown University on a scholarship from United States Agency for International Development (USAID).   He hoped to become a doctor and return Kinshasa, his hometown, to practice medicine.

He didn’t even like basketball, but fate had other plans as he was convinced by Hoya’s legendary coach John Thompson to join the university’s basketball team.  Together with Alonzo Mourning, the LA Times dubbed them as Georgetown’s ‘Impenetrable Wall’.

Coach Thompson told him, “I know you want to be a doctor but you can go out to make a lot of money and go out to save lives at the same time

His full name is a mouthful – Dikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean-Jacques Wamutumbo.   Playing 18 seasons in the NBA, he became one of the greatest shot blockers and defensive players of all time.

His impressive basketball resume aside, Mutombo is well known for his humanitarian work in Central Africa, especially in his DRC.   He set up his own foundation that builds hospitals and schools but his noble intentions at first were not warmly received by authorities as they thought he had other motives.  Politics, greed and envy, is an uncontrolled pandemic anywhere in the world.

The first modern 300-bed hospital opened in DRC in 2007, the first in 40 years, bearing the name of his late mother, Biamba Marie Mutombo.   It employs 400 doctors and nurses.  Asked why he built it, Mutombo replied, “I’m sick and tired of seeing people dying at a young age.  It hurt me a lot.  People were dying from diseases that were treatable.  I thought that I could be part of the change and contribute to society and mankind.”

There was once a woman who gave premature birth to triplets in a small village clinic but it was not equipped to care for the babies.  Doctors told the parents that the babies would be simply left to die.

The father knew about the newly built hospital, brought the babies there and pleaded to the doctors to call Mutombo in the US.  Calling, they told him that both father and mother don’t work and asked if they’ll take the babies.  Mutombo simply said, “Please make them live.”

The triplets spent almost four months on life-saving machines and the grateful parents named the babies after him.   The hospital hired the father as a sanitation worker so they could buy the babies’ needs.

“I don’t regret that I didn’t go to medical school.  What I’ve done now is more than just treating people today.  I’ve treated future generations to come.”

The world needs selfless people like Dikembe Mutombo, but brain cancer cut his life short at 58.