Serge Homecoming

Thunder F Serge Ibaka visits with team broadcaster Brian Davis at a hearing aid clinic in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo. Ibaka is making his annual trip to focus on humanitarian work in his hometown. Over the next two weeks, Ibaka will also promote a clean water initiative, deliver medical equipment to an orphanage and conduct a basketball clinic in the capital city.

BRAZZAVILLE, REPUBLIC OF CONGO -- He was just a boy. His mother dead. His father jailed as a political prisoner during the civil war. The uncles who took him in decided they could not afford to feed him and turned him into the streets to fend for himself. He has traveled far enough since then that he could choose never to return. But, every year, back to these streets he comes.

Serge Ibaka’s mission here in his hometown has grown every year. He organizes the work through his own foundation and Oklahoma City-based Pros for Africa. He partners with the Starkey Hearing Foundation to stage hearing aid clinics that, this year, will help about 2,000 people. He works with an OKC foundation called Water Is Life to plan wells that will bring clean water to the neighborhood where he grew up. He will deliver $500,000 worth of medical equipment to a local hospital.

There are projects with NBA Africa and Hall of Famer Dikembe Mutombo. There are Basketball Without Borders camps and a reunion with a boy featured in “Son of the Congo,” the documentary about Ibaka’s life. And, oh, yeah: He needs to make time to see his extended family, too. Somehow, he finds time for it all.

“We’re trying to do what we can,” Ibaka said. He spent parts of two days in a dusty schoolyard a stone’s throw from the US Embassy, helping to fit hearing aids for more than 600 people at a clinic organized by the Starkey Hearing Foundation. In this part of the world, childhood illness and other diseases cause deafness at an alarming rate.

“Many children are thrown into schools for the deaf and become outcasts from society,” said Foundation director Brady Forseth. In some cases, they’re treated like they’ve been possessed by evil spirits (or) that they’re contagious.”

Ibaka understands he’s helping to give these people a chance at a normal life. “It’s impressive stuff that we’re doing,” he acknowledged. “These people can hear for the first time. They can talk. I feel blessed to be in this position.”

The lesson came home in a big way when a man on crutches hobbled into the tent. Ibaka did a double-take, then walked over and embraced him. The man was Eudes Okeli, whom Ibaka had known years before simply as “The Professor.” Okeli “knew me from when I was born,” Ibaka said. “He saw me grow up.” Ibaka handled Okeli’s hearing aid fitting and later called it “a great moment” in his own life.

Ibaka was called away on the second day of the clinic. There was a logistical issue that threatened events the following day in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The DRC is just across the river, but it’s a different country with a difficult reputation. Ibaka spent hours at the embassy resolving the problem.

When he returned to his hotel in Brazzaville, he was clearly exhausted but there was one more stop to make: To see Ricardo, the boy from “Son of the Congo”--the one who plays basketball on the same run-down court where Ibaka started out and declared in the film that he wants to follow in Ibaka’s footsteps.

It’s Ricardo’s 13th birthday and Ibaka has gifts. So he climbs back into a car for the 10-minute drive to the old neighborhood. It is dark, but the headlights of Ibaka’s car and a taxi carrying a small group of reporters illuminate the moment well enough as Ibaka presents Ricardo with a basketball, a Serge Ibaka Foundation t-shirt, and something more valuable than gold--a new pair of athletic shoes. The awe shows on Ricardo’s face as they chat briefly. Then they embrace, and Ibaka turns to go.

I walk with him. There’s something I just have to ask him about. I suggest that a lot of guys in his position--once they’d “gotten out”--would never even give their old turf so much as a backward glance. Too many painful memories. Too much on the plate that sits in front of them now. So why does he come back, again and again, to a growing list of demands and obligations that require so much effort and energy?

His answer is brief and simple: “It’s what’s in my heart. That’s just the kind of person I am.”

The Starkey Foundation’s Forseth offers something slightly more complex. “The lesson is that you can overcome (adversity) with hope,” Forseth said, “That if you’re given a chance at life, you try to succeed and be all you can be. He wants to give back to the people and to carry (the message) forward about being all you can be. Serge..found a way to not only survive but to be successful. I can’t think of a better role model than Serge Ibaka.”

Just before Ibaka slipped completely into the darkness surrounding the basketball court, to climb into the car and perhaps enjoy a moment to himself, I noticed some fatigue in his expression. “You look tired,” I said. “Yes, sir,” he replied. The look on his face made it clear he would be back in the morning, ready to go again.