McGrady on Africa: 'I knew I had to go'

After a journey to refugee camps in Chad, NBA All-Star vows to spread the word about atrocities in Darfur

By JONATHAN FEIGEN
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

There was so much Tracy McGrady did not know. Not then, not in the beginning.

The Houston Rockets star had seen the news reports about the atrocities in the Darfur region of western Sudan, where a genocide has left hundreds of thousands of people dead and millions more homeless and living in bleak desert camps.

He had begun to educate himself with conversations with experts. But he did not really understand what genocide means, how horrific the tragedy was in Africa's largest nation.

Where his journey began, almost as much as where it would lead, is part of his story. But even then, he knew he needed to see it all, the horror and sadness, for himself.

"I still don't know why," McGrady said, "but I knew I had to go." The more he learned, the more he knew that to make it a part of him, to let it change him, he had to go to the refugee camps and see it for himself.

So McGrady went to Chad to live among Darfur's displaced people, to hear their stories, to hold their babies and to vow to return to his world to be their voice.

He needed to see the orphans, barely able to walk, wandering through the camps, unattended, alone. He needed to sleep in tents overrun by maggots and frogs and rats. He needed to wake up in the middle of the night and feel the tears dampen his face.

He needed to live it.

"Now that I've gone over there and experienced it, I know," McGrady said.

"I could have read about it, seen it on TV. People can tell you. But you have to be hands-on to get the full effect, to really understand the devastation, the sadness of it all."

He brought a filmmaker with him, and they plan to make a documentary that he hopes will help spread the word, perhaps even inspire others to join the cause.

"I was really, I don't know — it just did something to me," McGrady said. "I was overwhelmed. It was by far the hardest thing I ever did, by far. It was the hardest thing and the best thing."

Darfur, an arid area about the size of Texas, covers an expanse of western Sudan and borders Libya, Chad and the Central African Republic. Its people, who number up to 6 million, work at subsistence farming or as herders. They rank among the poorest in Africa.

The violence began in 2003 when two groups of African rebels rose up against the mainly Arab leaders of Sudan, a country rich in oil deposits. The government shipped weapons to Arab Janjaweed militias, and the gunmen attacked ethnic African villagers who trace their lineage to sub-Saharan Africa.

The Janjaweed, sometimes with the help of government aircraft, wiped out entire villages of ethnic Africans. Although it remains unclear how many lives have been lost, estimates range between 200,000 and 400,000 dead. At least 2 million fled to refugee camps in Darfur, and more than 230,000 others escaped to Chad, where McGrady visited three camps.

Imprint of devastation

McGrady and the rest of the group repeatedly said they have been changed forever, and they asked, how could they not be?

"To live a lifestyle like mine — pretty damn good — go over there and sleep in tents, hear stories, see devastation — nothing compares to this," McGrady said. "From this point on, whatever I go through, it will be easy."

As McGrady told the stories he had heard barely a week before, he saw the women and the children and heard their voices.

His voice cracked. He stopped and found the words to tell of the women who go into the hills for nine hours to gather wood and then sell it for 15 cents at the end of the day.

The men would have gone, he was told, but they would have been tortured and killed. The women said they knew they would be raped, but they went anyway. They needed the 15 cents.

"If the men go, (the Janjaweed) cut their arms off," McGrady said. "They take out their eyes and put them in a bag and send it to their wives."

He closed his eyes and saw the faces of the children who sat in his lap and showed him the pictures they had drawn. A humanitarian aid group had set up an art school as a form of therapy.

But the pictures were not like the cheerful drawings of birds and flowers that decorate family refrigerators back home. Instead, the children's sketches showed planes dropping bombs on villages or men on horseback killing their parents.

He told of the unmarked trucks that rushed toward him, carrying militiamen with rocket launchers and rifles, and he spoke of his anxiety at not knowing their intent. The trucks sped past; he was not harmed.

But McGrady can no longer think of "AK-47" as an innocent nickname for a Utah Jazz forward named Andrei Kirilenko; it is now a reminder of those moments of doubt.

"The United Nations has a white plane they fly to the villages to bring them food," McGrady said. "The Arab (militia groups) got a plane and painted it to make it look like the U.N. plane and bombed the villages. These people are thinking it's food. All they want is food.

"They're burning up the villages, throwing the elderly in the fire," he said of the militias. "I mean, it's just awful, awful to sit and listen to these stories. And everybody there has experienced the same thing.

"More than 230,000 refuges came over to Chad. We visited a refugee camp with over 15,000 from Darfur living in this camp. Just to see how they're living, sleeping in huts. Some eat maybe once a day. It's really, really sad.

"I have a 4-year-old daughter and almost 2-year-old son. I've seen kids, 4 or 5 years old, walking around with babies on their backs with no supervision, just wandering around. Little girls and boys just carrying babies on their back."

He stopped again, silent. With the faces of children overwhelming him, his voice broke.

"Up to 400,000 people have died in this genocide, in these attacks," he said. "It's crazy that this is happening. These people are innocent people, innocent people targeted and getting killed. "

Troops lack resources

The United States government has branded Darfur's violence as a genocide and led a drive in the United Nations to send peacekeepers to the region. About 1 million people remain in their villages in Darfur. They're protected now by about 7,000 soldiers from the African Union, but the troops are poorly armed and lack the resources necessary for the task, and they have failed to stop the violence.

The United Nations voted to send about 20,000 soldiers to join them, but Sudan until recently blocked their deployment.

New fighting has broken out in Darfur, and rebel leaders, government officials and international observers are to meet Oct. 27 in Libya for peace talks. They are not expected to make much progress.

McGrady's journey began months ago when he made a donation to the construction of Dikembe Mutombo's hospital in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Mutombo, McGrady's Rockets teammate since 2004, in July opened the 300-bed, $29 million Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital, named for his late mother.

Mutombo told him about Africa's humanitarian tragedies, including Darfur.

Later, McGrady saw a televised segment in which Chicago Bulls forward Luol Deng, whose family comes from Sudan, described the Darfur crisis. McGrady spoke with Deng and began making plans to visit the refugees.

He put together a group of seven others: John Prendergast, a former White House aide and co-chair of the Enough Project, which focuses on war crimes; Omer Ismail, the founder of the Darfur Peace and Development advocacy group; Elissa Grabow, McGrady's manager-assistant; Josh Rothstein, a filmmaker; his wife, Jill Grabow, who is the sister of McGrady's manager; Brian Jackson, a cinematographer; and Ira Seright, McGrady's longtime friend.

The group spent a week in camps in Djabal, Koloma and Koubigou.

Elissa Grabow said the trip was particularly jarring for McGrady.

"He's been a very pampered guy the last 10 years," she said. "He lives a certain lifestyle." But Darfur ripped him from his surroundings.

"His struggle is so surreal," she said of his time in the camps. "We are at the bottom of the Earth. All the excess we have is so ridiculous.

"It became apparent (sitting) with the people, spending hours with the refugees and holding them and hearing their stories."

McGrady funded a project with Doublewide Media to produce a documentary for those who haven't been keeping up with the media coverage or might not be aware of visits of other celebrities, including George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Mia Farrow and Don Cheadle.

The film will show McGrady's initial lack of understanding of the situation, said Rothstein, who has made several documentaries.

"The point of view of the film is Tracy's awakening to the human rights situation, Tracy actively becoming a more conscious human being, to use his celebrity and influence on people in new way."

To Prendergast, who has worked in African war zones over the past 25 years and has also served on the Clinton White House's National Security Council, McGrady represents something he cannot.

"Tracy can be the master recruiter," Prendergast said, "someone who has a fan base and can bring attention to a whole new group of people who don't know about this issue."

Although McGrady is a celebrity, Prendergast said, "he is also just a guy who went over there to learn and came back to tell a story. He is a human being sharing an experience with other human beings.

"Once they learn, they will want to do more."