Ex-NBAer Manute Bol Gives Back to Native Sudan

Sept. 4 - Former NBA player -- 7-foot-7 Manute Bol -- wants to give back to his native Sudan by helping to build a school in the village where he was raised.

Besides providing education, Bol stated that the school could further another goal close to his heart - reconciliation between Christians in southern Sudan and Muslims in northern Sudan. Many of the Muslims now suffering in Darfur and neighboring Chad were soldiers who inflicted a lot of pain on southern Christians during the civil war that ended in 2005.

His native country has never been far from Bol's heart, even after he arrived in the U.S. in 1983 to play basketball. He played for the University of Bridgeport before starting a 10-year NBA career in which he averaged 3.3 blocks, 4.2 rebounds and 2.6 points in 624 career games with the Washington Bullets, Golden State Warriors, Philadelphia 76ers and Miami Heat.

As he became famous as a shot-blocking and three-point specialist, Bol lobbied Washington lawmakers to help stop the bloody civil war that raged in southern Sudan at the time, which killed more than two million people and created four million refugees.

He gave an estimated $3.5 million to relatives, many of whom were leaders in the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army. After retiring from the NBA in 1994, he was detained in Sudan during one of his visits and had to escape with the help of friends in Connecticut.

Since the war ended, Bol has returned to Sudan several times. It was on a trip home in February of 2008 that he decided to try and help build a school in Turalei. Like most of southern Sudan, Turalei is still trying to recover from the civil war, during which it was destroyed and most of its citizens killed.

Approximately 85% of the population in southern Sudan is illiterate and about 1.5 million children have no schools to attend. Only about 7% of the teachers in the south have any professional training.

Bol envisions an eight-classroom school; villagers will make the building bricks and the donated money would be used for a solid roof, books and supplies. He also hopes to persuade American teachers to train their Sudanese counterparts. The preliminary fundraising goal for the project is $120,000.

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