Amanda Kabantu is one of the best basketball players in the Northeast-10, the East Region and NCAA Division II. Next week Kabantu and the Bentley Falcons head to Pittsburgh, Penn. to compete in the Elite Eight. But her journey through the NCAA Championship is just the tip of her story's iceberg.
“Everyone is just a magnet towards her,” Bentley women’s basketball coach C. White said of senior Amanda Kabantu. “You want to be around her. She makes every day better for everyone with that smile and, you know, she's got the coolest story of all I would say.”
Kabantu comes from a basketball family. Her sister Davina played at Division III Bates College. Her cousin Gemima was a standout at Northeastern. The Kabantus have nine other siblings, seven of them brothers, who almost all play basketball.
“At first I would just go with them just so my mom can have some free time,” Amanda said of following her brothers to basketball practice. “I was not really supposed to do anything. I started running around and being annoying and interrupting practice so their coach just had someone sit on the sideline with me and my sister and coach us so that we can leave them alone during practice time.”
That was in Goma, a city in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. It borders Rwanda. In 2017,Amanda, her sister and her cousin left Goma to come to the United States and play basketball.
“It was the first time that I've ever left all by myself with just my sister and cousin,” Amanda said of the journey with her team.
“We stayed for the summer in California and then things happened,” Davina said. “One of my cousins who was here had to come pick us up from the airport in Boston.”
Goma has been at the center of rebellions in the Congo for the better part of the last decade, flaring up again just this past January. The determination was made back in 2017 that it wasn't safe for the girls to go home.
“On a random Tuesday, like, schools will be closed; everything will be closed because rebels just came into town and it's not safe to be out and about,” said Amanda.
So that's how three basketball playing girls from the Democratic Republic of the Congo arrived in Portland, Maine. It's where they had a cousin living -- until they didn't. Months later he relocated for work, but the girls were already enrolled in school and adjusted to their new lives.
“You never plan for that kind of stuff,” Davina said. “It was wild, like, oh okay so this is what's happening.”
That's where we meet Scott Stacey.
“I always joke that Scott Stacey has a place reserved in heaven - a very nice corner spot in heaven – because, here’s a divorced man with two teenagers of his own and he took in three more,” said Brian Clement, Amanda’s AAU coach with the Maine Firecrackers.
Stacey's daughter, Grace, was a teammate of the girls at Portland High and Scott was of several people that received an email from the school looking for help finding a place for them.
“I remember thinking there's a pretty good chance there's no family that is able to take all three of them,” Clement said. “I talked to several people and we had already found people that would say like ‘hey this school, this town, I can take one.”
“We're at school and I think it was the second block of class and I just heard my name to go the principal's office,” Davina said. “I heard Amanda's name and, like, okay we all in trouble. And then Gemima’s name.
“We were just solving a problem,” Stacey said. “We’re just … we’ve got to take care of this issue. My one and only contingency was that if this is going to happen, all three of the girls are going to come stay with us. We are not going to see this family split up.”
So, all three girls moved in with the Stacey family – Scott, Grace and Charlie. And it didn’t take long for the group to form a real family.
“I don’t know how to explain it in words,” Amanda said. “It's just like [Grace is] my sister. “It's not just blood, it's everything. I would very much give up everything for them and I know that they would do the same for me.”
“It’s family,” Scott Stacey said after a long pause. “What greater a gift do we have?”
“I mean, home is where our loved ones are,” added Davina.
But it hasn't always been easy. The Kabantu’s father passed away since they've been in the US, and while the girls Facetime their family religiously, they haven't seen them face-to-face in eight years. They don't know the next time they will.
“You try and have empathy,” Stacey said, “but I can't imagine what it's like to be in their shoes. There was a long period of time when they first moved in to the house - and again this year - where there was no communication whatsoever [back home]. So that uncertainty … they're amazing individuals. They've seen a lot.”
“I remember putting my arm around Davina, and I think Amanda might have been on the other side of me,” Clement said. “I said ‘I'm so proud of you guys. This has got to be a very difficult journey and I've never heard you guys complain.’ And I remember Davina said, "coach, we feel safe here. We go to bed at night and we're not afraid.
“Growing up in a country that you love very much and you want to see succeed,” Amanda finished, “especially being here and knowing how fortunate this country is - knowing how fortunate democracy is - and people have a voice. It is heartbreaking. I want [the Congo] to be better. I want it to be good. I think that sometimes it's good for those things to be said. I think that these things need to be heard and I feel like the if you have the capabilities and abilities to speak for those who can't speak for themselves, it's important to raise your voice and just provide a little help whenever you can.”
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