The story of Bismack Biyombo is nothing if not inspirational. Growing up in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), he knew extreme poverty to a scale in which most Americans cannot begin to fathom.
Walking to school with his younger brothers and sister, they were without shoes for the 45-minute to one-hour one-way treck.
His parents and all the other men and women would wake up at 5 a.m. to head off to work until nighttime, yet still they didn’t have enough money to provide the children with even three square meals per day. Biyombo said he and his siblings often wouldn’t eat until the nighttime, and sometimes it was nothing at all.
“My brothers, my sister didn’t have food. And me as the oldest in my family, I was always understanding the pressure of my parents. And the hardest part was to see my dad come home and my mom come home and my sister and my brother go to bed with no food. I think that was the hardest part for me.”
Now blessed with riches he likely couldn’t have imagined in those days, due to his basketball career with the Toronto Raptors, Biyombo plans to follow in the footsteps of fellow countryman Dikembe Mutombo, investing his own money into the DRC to help others in need. He’s also taken to using Mutombo’s famous finger wag on blocked shots, something that has earned him a talking-to this summer.