Countdown To Lockdown (27 page)

At least not until I heard that kid by the side of that Bombali road. “Mick Foley.” I could have sworn he’d said my name. But perhaps I was wrong.

“Mick Foley, Mick Foley.” Two other kids. That time I was sure.
What were the odds that these two little kids had seen wrestling somewhere?

As our vehicle approached a bridge, our driver, Uzmam (who later in the trip would quite literally give me the shirt off his back), continued to show off an expert’s skill in navigating these stretches of very bad road. Children were lined up on each side of the bridge, singing in unison — some song they all knew.

What could they be singing about? “Welcome, welcome, Mick Foley. Welcome, welcome, Mick Foley.” Hey, they were singing about me!

“What is going on,” I said aloud, feeling as if I was in a strange new episode of
The Twilight Zone
or
Punked
, the “Ashton in Africa” edition.

I knew I would be meeting Alimany, the little boy who’d started me on this long journey. I wondered what this beautiful child might look like now — no longer a cherubic baby, but a little boy instead. Hughie’s age. Indeed, the night before my trip, realizing I’d lacked the foresight to buy a gift, I’d hurriedly packed a unique assortment of goodies for Alimany — a copy of
Mick Foley’s Halloween Hijinx
, a Mick Foley action figure, and Hughie’s stuffed Pluto (which he pronounced “Cluto”) figure. Hughie has enough things, I thought. Surely he’d never miss it.

When it came to things, little Alimany had few. I knew of his plight from the letters his father wrote. The family slept on the floor of a tiny mud hut, eating one meal a day, living largely off rice and the faraway hope of a better tomorrow.

I had offered to help several months earlier. “Find out what they need and I’ll get it for them,” I said. A similar offer to a child in the United States would probably yield a giant scroll of must-have items: cell phone, iPod, computer, video games, a Mick Foley action figure.

Alimany’s list was a little lower tech: a mattress, a mosquito net, used clothes, a sack of rice.

A few months later, I received a photo of Alimany sitting on the family’s new mattress, his wish-list gifts splayed out in front of him — the
mosquito net, the used clothes, the sack of rice. He had the broad, beaming smile of a child on Christmas morning.

Arriving in Alimany’s village, we were greeted by a cast of hundreds, dancing in the street, singing, pounding traditional drums. “The strangers are here, the strangers are here,” people yelled in the street.

I would meet Alimany later, I was told. But first, I would watch from my special table as the children from the village displayed their talents through traditional African song and dance. The sports coat I had brought for the trip was soaked through with sweat, and once removed, it would see no further duty on our African tour. I was thirsty and tired, hungry and hot, but nonetheless happy, looking at the joy in the eyes of the children.

This was apparently a big deal for this village, which had turned out en masse to witness the songs and dances of its children.

A boy walked out, eight or nine years old, a handsome little kid with obvious charisma, and a commanding voice he was about to display.

“Tonight, we celebrate the friendship of two individuals,” he said. “Two individuals who will meet for the first time.”

Cool
, I thought.
Who are these two people?

“Two individuals who, until tonight, knew each other only through letters.”

That was when it finally dawned on me. I turned to Renee, seated next to me at the table. “Are they talking about me?” I asked.

Actually, they were. Alimany was brought out, and our public embrace brought a huge ovation, an outpouring of joy from the village at large.

“Mick, you have to understand,” Gary Duncan from ChildFund told me. “This is their first sponsor visit in sixteen years, since before the war started. This is a very big deal to them.”

For a long time, after returning back to the States, I wondered if my thoughts of this trip might sound crazy to some. After all, I’d been blessed to take part in some wonderful things during the course of my
career. So why did I keep coming back to the thought that my week in this country had been the best week of my life? But wait, I reasoned. Hadn’t several WWE guys spoken of visiting our troops overseas in Iraq or Afghanistan as the best trip of their lives? No one thought
they
were crazy.

I’d been on two of those trips — one to Iraq, one to Afghanistan. They were great ones, no doubt. But the WWE’s first Tribute to the Troops tour had taken place without me. I’d been along for the second and third trips in 2004 and 2005. Then the trips resumed without me. WWE does one each year, and each year the trips are a huge success, with or without my participation.

Sierra Leone felt different. It felt like
my
trip. Like I had personally made a big difference. Some other stars had been there before, much bigger stars. Angelina Jolie, President Clinton. I read just last week that Salma Hayek had visited recently and managed to do one thing I never will. Holding a hungry infant, and realizing that she was with milk of her own, Salma Hayek, one of Hollywood’s biggest, most beautiful stars, nursed a hungry child in Sierra Leone. How cool is that?

Still, I’ve come to think of those three or four Bombali villages all lying along that stretch of horrible road as my little corner of the world to nurture and care for. A small dot on life’s map where I can make a visible difference. Where a little compassion and a little more money can go such a long way.

I’ve got so many great memories of my time in that land. Like that first visit with Alimany, and each visit after, when the tiny African child with the movie-star looks would lay his head on my leg and fall fast asleep.

Or meeting the SEFAFU (Sealing the Past, Facing the Future) girls — the victims of rape during that country’s cruel war. Looking into the eyes of each one and letting them know that I’d never forget them. Seeing these brave young women caring for the children of rape, realizing they’d been children themselves when forced into motherhood.

I saw the United States presidential election in Sierra Leone — watching as African men freely shed tears at 5:00 a.m. local time, when the results finally arrived: Barack Obama had been elected the next president of the United States. Our hotel in Maceny was the hotspot that night for foreign-aid workers and journalists, who all ventured out from their self-imposed exiles from modern civilization. Young, talented, caring people choosing to forgo life’s luxuries — for months, a year, sometimes even longer — so that they might help others.

My wake-up call came early, way too early, later that same morning — about an hour and ten minutes later, to be exact. I really didn’t want to move — I just wanted to lie there for a while, another eight or ten hours, right about the time the hotel’s daily ten-hour allotment of electricity would kick in.

Besides, my knee was swollen and throbbing, the result of a most untimely fall down a hill at the SEFAFU project a day earlier, when my left leg slipped on the dusty steep slope and my entire weight came crashing down on my right knee, which was pinned at a precarious angle beneath me.

The last MRI of my right knee, taken two years earlier, hadn’t been pretty: three partial ligament tears. I accepted that one day a ligament might go, maybe a second, maybe a third — but not all at once, which was certainly my fear when I first fell. And not in Sierra Leone, the home of one doctor for every two hundred thousand people. And not in front of the poor SEFAFU girls, who’d already been through quite enough in their young lives.

The singing never quite stopped, it just got considerably softer; the pounding of traditional drums softened, too.

Eventually, realizing there was no good option, I struggled to my feet. A loud cheer went up and the singing and playing resumed at normal volume.

I was tired and sore, just longing for sleep, but nonetheless woke up
after a few minutes of insistent knocking, and hobbled sleepily to our vehicle.

This was, after all, an important day: the dedication of the schools. Until about a month earlier, I’d had no idea that my money had funded the schools. I thought my donation had been used to purchase school materials — desks, textbooks, library books, teacher training manuals for other, previously built schools. It wasn’t until I received a booklet, detailing the five “Mick Foley Schools,” that I even found out. My wife had come to me teary-eyed, having read the booklet, and said, “Why didn’t you tell me you’d built these schools?”

“Because I really didn’t know.”

I was still in a light stage of rest, my head leaning on the vehicle door, eyes closed but not really sleeping, when I heard the voices of children singing, off in the distance. I rubbed my eyes, then looked up at the sunrise coming over a mountain. My eyes panned down to the source of the singing. Children, beautiful children, singing their hearts out in front of their school.

Remember the Whos? Those adorable figments of Dr. Seuss’s incredible imagination who sang with such joy despite the Grinch’s best efforts to stop Christmas from coming?

That’s what these children reminded me of. For as we lurched closer along that rough road, then started our ascent up the hill to the school, I could see the joy and hope in the eyes of those children. Singing with such pride in front of one of the Mick Foley Schools. It wasn’t really a school as we know them. Just some walls and a ceiling — three little classrooms with tiny desks and some chairs. My children would have laughed at the prospect of learning there — most U.S. children would. Then again, my older kids shudder in fear at the prospect of being seen by their friends while riding in their dad’s minivan.

Come to think of it, I don’t think my four kids would feel much like singing if they awoke Christmas morning and saw that
everything — pop guns, pampoolers, pantookers and drums, checkerboards, bisselbinks, popcorn and plums — had been stuffed up the chimbley.

I guess it’s just a matter of expectations. For these kids, who’d been learning their lessons under a tree, the Mick Foley Schools, as humble as they may have been, were pretty good places to learn.

We visited all the little schools that day, each visit accompanied by the songs of children and that look of hope and joy that had become synonymous with my time in this desperately poor country. Hope and joy. We don’t hear much about these words in the limited attention the twenty-four-hour news channels begrudgingly give to Africa. Usually it’s famine, genocide, civil war, natural disasters. To be sure, those are part of Africa’s story — a large part. But there are other stories waiting to be told, if only more people would be willing to look.

Perhaps my week’s most distinct memory took place on the last stop of the day, the last official stop on my trip. We visited a ChildFund International health clinic — a basic thatched-roof structure that had helped bring a marked improvement to the community. “Our children still die,” the village chieftain told me. “But not as often as before.”

The village now had one nurse to look after the needs of an entire community. One nurse instead of none, one birthing bed instead of none. Children still died here, but not as often as before. None of this would be acceptable in the United States. It shouldn’t be acceptable in Sierra Leone. Yet, it was so much more than they had before — and they were thankful just to have it.

I spoke with the chieftain before I left, and he made a list of requests for things his community was in need of. A new primary school. A new junior secondary school. A paved road connecting the villages to the highway. Water projects, sanitation projects, more health clinics for the surrounding villages. As he spoke, I got the distinct feeling he thought I was doing a lot better financially than I actually was.

“But most of all,” he said, “the children need sponsors.”

“Really?” I said.

“Yes,” he assured me. “The children need sponsors. Very few have them and it’s so important to them.”

In my last book, I wrote of ChildFund International’s work and gave their contact information for anyone interested in helping. Over time several dozen children found sponsors as a result of the book. Several dozen children from all over the world.

I’d like to try something a little different with this book. Contact ChildFund International and let them know you’re specifically looking to sponsor a child from the Bombali area in Sierra Leone. I know I wrote of this little dot on the map as
my
corner of the world to nurture and care for — but maybe some of you could nurture it with me. Tell them Mick Foley sent you.

Contact info: 800-776-6767

www.childfund.org

When I was much younger, I dreamed about wrestling in Madison Square Garden, performing feats of skill and great daring, in front of twenty thousand cheering fans. Fortunately, I got a chance to live out that dream — several times. It was great, too — everything I had dreamed it might be.

Just not as great as the response I received in an impoverished land, from children and chieftains, mothers and fathers, teachers and students, singers and dancers, none of whom had any idea what I did for a living. To them, I was just Mick Foley, the guy who helped build the schools.

I arrived home weary but happy, bearing gifts of traditional African attire for every member of my family — none of which would ever be worn.