"Just because they haven't given initially
doesn't mean they won't," said Susan M. Johnson,
executive director of the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation in
Atlanta. "Sometimes people need to see a work in
progress."<br><br>Several thousand residents of the bustling Masina
neighborhood perched in trees and stood atop the concrete wall
surrounding the hospital site to get a look at Mutombo
yesterday. Representatives of Le Fan-Club Dikembe Mutombo
hung a banner to welcome their idol.<br><br>Mutombo
paid $2,500 for one of Congo's most popular musicians,
Werra Son, to provide a free concert
afterward.<br><br>"The Bible tells us to honor people who look after
others," said Nadine Bokeka, an office worker who stood
with the crowd near a piece of construction equipment.
"Mutombo went away, and he made a lot of money, but he
came back and is helping his fellow man. It's a great
thing."<br><br>Mutombo's generosity to Congo is famous. He has paid to fix
the roof of the country's embassy in Washington and
provided hospital beds, buses and basketball uniforms to
national organizations.<br><br>"A lot of people work for
the government and never give anything back," said
Alphonse Ngalula, a builder of small houses who attended
the ceremony to applaud Mutombo. "Dikembe Mutombo has
not forgotten us."<br><br>Government officials called
on other Congolese expatriates to invest in the
country of 51 million people, which has been ravaged by
dictatorship, corruption and wars since becoming independent in
1960.<br><br>"I want to call on our brothers and sisters who are
successful everywhere to be inspired by your example,"
Christophe Muzungu said. "This will help in the rebuilding
of our country."<br><br>Kinshasa is littered with
the ruined examples of attempts to rebuild Congo's
health-care system - from a cardiac hospital unfinished and
now occupied by squatters to the spare furnishings at
Kinsasha General Hospital, to which patients must bring
their own linens, food and medicine.<br><br>Mindful of
the pitfalls, Mutombo's advisers at first suggested
that he invest in something less risky than a
hospital. When he persisted, they persuaded him to
establish an endowment fund to provide a perpetual source
of income for the hospital. His foundation is
searching for a humanitarian organization to operate the
facility.<br><br>"We're trying to think about the bigger picture," said
James C. Setzer, a program coordinator for the Rollins
School of Public Health of Emory University in Atlanta,
one of about 20 advisers and friends who form
Mutombo's entourage for this visit to Congo. "We're aware
of that white-elephant syndrome."<br><br>Mutombo,
whose face appears across Kinshasa on billboards for a
local cellular telephone company in which he owns a
stake, does not seem worried about the prospects.
<br><br>"We will make this happen because it is my dream," he
said, talking like a man who not often fails at what he
sets out to do.