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Habitat builds home for MUSC researcher, family from Congo Editor’s note: The article ran Aug. 14 in the Post and Courier and is printed with permission. by Jennifer Berry Hawes Of The Post and Courier It’s been five years, six months. And, yes, Andre     Kadima still is counting.   It’s been that long since this story began. And now it finally has an end, a chance to start fresh with that great sign of the American middle class: homeownership.   The story, this chapter of his life’s story anyway, began in December 1999. Andre was a prominent surgeon in the African nation of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Which is not a democratic country. It’s a dictatorship, and Andre got caught up in a civil war that was leaving his fellow tribespeople displaced, dead and mistreated.   A man of deep Christian faith, Andre spoke out, videotaped atrocities and, in the end, was viciously attacked in his home by four armed, masked men. They broke in around 4:30 a.m., tied up Andre’s oldest sons and slashed Andre’s head, chest and operating hand. They left him for dead.   But Andre lived. For his safety, he fled to the United States and wound up in Charleston, under the loving wing of St. James Presbyterian Church members. From there, his plight caught the attention of Bert Keller, pastor of Circular Congregational Church who’d spent time in the Congo.   The two churches, one mostly black, one mostly white, began the arduous task of helping Andre find housing and a job.   St. James loaned him a tiny apartment, and Keller helped him find work as a lab researcher at the Medical University of South Carolina, where Andre is helping to study a potential cancer vaccine.   But the question remained: What about Andre’s family?   Years passed—one and two and three and four years—apart from his wife and seven kids. Andre fought depression. He fought loneliness. And he fought that overwhelming feeling that a man gets when he is not, and cannot, do a darn thing to better himself or his family.   Andre couldn’t be a father. And he couldn’t work as a doctor in the United States. Pointing to the long, thin scar across his right hand, he probably would never operate again.    Then, finally, one sweltering day in summer 2003 came the six letters from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services. Six of Andre’s children could join him in America. He rejoiced. He prayed.   Another year passed.   Around that time, Mount Pleasant Presbyterian Church took the helm of Andre’s care. The church let him move into a house it owns in Mount Pleasant’s Old Village. A temporary stop.   Then came the day his children arrived last summer. Andre and a cadre of church volunteers stood in a terminal at Charleston International Airport as he opened his arms wide and, for the first time in four years, embraced his children.   “You’re an awesome God!” St. James Pastor Charles Heyward Sr. prayed as airport travelers watched on.   His kids, then ages 10 to 21, looked stunned.   Soon enough, the kids began school, signed up for sports, biked on the beach, delved into all that is suburban life in Mount Pleasant. And thanks to an army of volunteers, they began to learn English and all the strange nuances of Americana.   His two youngest boys, James and Peter, signed up for soccer. Andre proudly e-mailed pictures of the boys on their All-Star team. His daughter, Evelyn, joined the French Club. His other daughter, Priscilla, traveled to Washington, D.C., for a class trip. His two oldest sons, Kenneth and Andy, began to look for colleges, a tough task given the Congolese government isn’t keen on helping out by providing their high school transcripts.   But another question remained: Where would this large family live?   They couldn’t live forever in the church’s house. Several Mount Pleasant Presbyterian members, along with help from Circular and St. James, began to hunt for housing.   They hoped the family could stay in Mount Pleasant, where Andre’s children already were in school or on James Island, where they mostly worshipped.   “Boy was that a lesson in affordability!” recalls John Nuremberger, a Mount Pleasant Presbyterian Church member.   But Nuremberger also is president of East Cooper Habitat for Humanity, just one of many connections between the church and Habitat.   “It didn’t take long for someone to say, ‘How about Habitat?’ “ he recalls.   To make a five-year-old story short, Habitat essentially doubled its usual floor plan and, thanks to two architects working pro bono, created a six-bedroom house that could fit Andre and his kids. They broke ground in January.   The house sits at the end of Hope Row off Mathis Ferry Road in Mount Pleasant. It means his children will continue to attend some of the area’s best public schools. When school starts in a week, two will attend Moultrie Middle, two will attend Wando High and two will hunt for colleges.   They all put in their 350 hours of “sweat equity.” Volunteers from the churches and college campuses around the country all hammered and sawed and sweated, too.   And now it’s done.   “I’m happy,” Andre says, his accent still thick with the sounds of French mostly spoken in his region of the Congo. “It’s a big dream becoming reality.”   Now comes the end of that chapter, and the beginning of the next.   Andre and his children were to move in Saturday. To a place that belongs to them, a place for new memories where hopefully they’ll be joined by Andre’s wife and his oldest daughter, who remain in the Congo. (Their journey has taken so much longer because they both were adults when Andre first applied to get his family here.)   But for now, it’s a celebration of what a community can do.    “This is such a moving and incredible story of faith, survival and a community coming around this worthy man and his family,” says Sallie Pritchard, a board member with East Cooper Habitat.   There still is work to do. Sally Cooper, a church member who has befriended the family, recently took Andre’s oldest son to look at colleges.   Others are helping them finish moving. Many simply are friends, inspired by all that this chapter of Andre’s story has meant to a community.     Friday, Aug. 19, 2005 Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to petersnd@musc.edu or catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Community Press at 849-1778.