KINSHASA, Congo � There was no finger wagging Monday when former pro basketball star Dikembe Mutombo guided U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton through a hospital he founded in his native Congo.

Instead of offering up the gesture that was his trademark over 18 seasons of blocking shots in NBA games, the soft-spoken Mutombo smiled playfully at infants in a maternity ward and explained why he donated $19 million of his own money to fund the Kinshasa facility named for his late mother.
�This hospital was such a dream and today it is becoming a reality and so important to so many people,� the 42-year-old Congo native said. �We think that Congolese people deserve better health care and we hope that what we are doing here is setting an example so that people can have hope.�
Dwarfed by the 7-foot-2 Mutombo, Clinton was clearly impressed by the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital, which opened in December 2007. She recalled having met Mutombo�s mother in 1994 when the basketball star visited the White House while she was first lady.
�For me, it�s like coming full circle having met his mother and knowing how much she inspired and supported him,� she said. �Now he has taken his extraordinary success as a basketball player and has one of the biggest foundations in Africa, working not only here in his home country but around the continent to help provide services to people.�
�It�s a great tribute to his mother and to the values she raised him with,� Clinton said.
Later, at a town hall meeting with students at a Kinshasa college, Mutombo said he had been moved to build the hospital after his mother, who lived just outside the Congolese capital, died in 1998 because a curfew kept her from getting to a hospital in the city.
Mutombo also noted that he had hoped to become a doctor and was studying medicine at Georgetown University in Washington before his basketball talent was discovered.
He played for six NBA teams, was the league�s top defensive player four times and was selected for eight All-Star games during his career.