Madieu

Not long ago, I didn’t know much more about Madieu Williams than what was listed on his Wikipedia page so traveling to Sierra Leone this June gave me the opportunity to learn more about Madieu’s extremely rich and personal relationship to our project. Madieu was born in Sierra Leone’s capital city of Freetown. His father left for the states when Madieu was only a few years old, and his mother left to join his father shortly thereafter. Madieu was raised by his grandmother till he was 8, when he joined his parents in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Madieu spent the rest of his childhood there, attending DuVal High School and subsequently choosing Towson University to pursue a degree and play football. A few semesters into college, when his family was going through a rough patch, he wound up having to take a lot of time away from his studies to chip in and care for his younger brother. One winter, feeling overwhelmed by all the changes in his life, he even contemplated dropping out of school. Around this time, he received an offer to join the University of Maryland football team. He accepted and eventually graduated with a degree in Family Science (in our very own School of Public Health!). Unfortunately, Madieu lost his mother to a stroke when he was only 21 years old. Madieu  was eventually drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals and since then, has also played for the Minnesota Vikings, San Francisco 49ers, and Washington Redskins. He recalls that his parents never really “got” football, rarely expressing interest in wanting to attend one of his games. Before she passed, his mother told him that “Football is only the beginning; you’re meant to do so much more.”  Recalling his mother’s advice, and wanting to give back to the communities where he spent his childhood, Madieu began the Madieu Williams Foundation in 2005. The foundation’s mission is to improve education, health, and fitness for underprivileged youth in both Sierra Leone and PG County. In Sierra Leone, the foundation focuses its efforts in the small rural village of Calaba Town, which was built after the civil war and hence lacks basic infrastructure. In 2009, the foundation funded the construction of the “Abigail D. Butscher Primary School,” named in honor of Madieu’s mother. When Madieu was barely 30 years old, he retired from football to focus his energy on the foundation. Since then, Madieu has partnered with the University of Maryland to facilitate projects with the school community; in 2002, the Maryland Sustainability Engineering (MDSE) team installed a solar array system to provide lights for the classrooms, principal’s office, bathrooms and the exterior of the school. Last January, the MDSE team traveled to Calaba town in preparation for building a secondary school across from the primary school building. Though Madieu has been traveling to Sierra Leone often over the last several years, this June was the first time his trip overlapped with the group from UMD. Over the two weeks, I was consistently impressed by how down to earth Madieu is: whether it be through making it a point to learn each of our names within his first couple days there, telling us about the cheesy pick-up line he used when he first met his wife,

demonstrating his pick axe skills as he helped dig the foundation for the new secondary school, or even hopping into the trunk of our SUV when there wasn’t room in any of the cars. When I returned to the states and told my husband that Madieu, a former NFL player, was on the trip with us, he asked “did you get his autograph?!” I laughed because the thought to request such a thing never even crossed my mind.  Not because Madieu doesn’t have celebrity status, but because he doesn’t act like he does.