Unlikely

I met Ota Benga while skiing in the slopes at Ecole du ski Francis ESF Isola 2000 in the alps. It was strange seeing a 4 foot 3 inch pygmy skiing instructor. I too looked strange as a 6 foot 9 inch 382 pound professional wrestler who goes by the name of Doctor Savage. The two of us bonded right away and have been best friends for over 20 years now.

The first thing I asked him long ago is how did he ever learn to ski. Isn’t it virtually true that all Pygmy people are hunters and gatherers, practicing neither agriculture nor cattle raising? Didn’t you grow up somewhere inside of the Congo Rainforest.

Sir Ota Benga, a former Congolese pygmy, while looking up at me displaying perfectly sharpened front incisor teeth he said that he gets asked that question quite often.

He then turned the conversation around and asked me if I ever heard of Holt International? They began serving vulnerable children in the Congo Rainforest in 1973 through a USAID-funded nutrition program and later developed an international adoption program for the roughly 25 thousand starving children living deep in the Amazon Jungle.

I was one of the lucky pygmies at age 7 months old who was adopted by Pat Stryker's her net worth being $2.1 billion dollars which made her one of the richest people in Denver, Colorado. Currently based in Fort Collins, Colorado, my mom Patricia as she is known in certain rich circles is the granddaughter and one of the heirs to the Stryker Corporation fortune. The Stryker Corporation, which was founded in 1941 by Homer Stryker, built its fortune on Great Granddaddy Stryker's invention of the mobile hospital bed and subsequent medical devices and medical software inventions.

Ota proudly stated that he attended  Regis University a Jesuit, Catholic University in Denver, Colorado. Graduating with honors with a Master of Science in Applied Behavior Analysis Degree. Can you just imagine the look on those students faces when I walked around the campus as if I owned it?

I could relate to what he was saying because I graduated from Morehouse College a private, historically black men's college located in Atlanta, Georgia. It was the only college that offered me a full scholarship to wrestle there. Being the BWBOC (Big White Boy on Campus) wasn’t easy in the beginning. But when I became an All American wrestler and making the Olympic team I was suddenly just like any 20 year old immature and insecure college student. I am a lifelong fraternity Brother of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity.

Although the two of us were totally different in stature we were alike in many other challenges. He didn’t like being compared to a midget or Tom Thumb and me detesting being constantly aske how’s the weather up there Andre the Giant.

For a small guy he could out eat me. He said that he once came in third place at The Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest an annual American hot dog competitive eating competition. It is held each year on Independence Day at Nathan's Famous Corporation's original and best-known restaurant at the corner of Surf and Stillwell Avenues in Coney Island, a neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City.

 I invited Ota to a championship wrestling match that took place at The Sportatorium, located in downtown Dallas, Texas. Before we arrived there I took him to R. J. “Bob” Lee The Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo Texas on Route 66. It was famous for serving the biggest steak in the world. I couldn’t finish eating the 4 & 1/2 pounds of steak, (which is 72 oz’s) a baked potato, shrimp cocktail, salad & a bread roll. A long time ago original Owner Bob (RJ) Lee, that if anyone who could eat the entire 72 oz dinner in one hour gets it for FREE. I had to pay the 72 dollars because I couldn’t do it. Ota ate the entire dinner in 39 minutes his signature move being licking the plate but he was no match for Molly Schuyler, weighing in at 124 pounds, ate not one, not two but three 72 oz. steaks in 20 minutes flat. Not only did she scarf down the steaks, but she also ate three baked potatoes, three side salads, three rolls and three shrimp cocktails.

I lost my fixed wrestling match to some unknown wrestler who called himself Red Rover. I was paid a substantial amount of money to take a dive. ($132,000 dollars)

I was there with Ota at the birth of his second son and he was there for the birth of my twin daughters Jasmine and Lilly. What was so bizarre about the birth of our children is the fact that his son weighed 12 pounds and 8ounces. While my lovely twin daughters weighed 8 pounds and 8 ounce all together.

We had become so close after our divorces that we decided to live in close proximity. It didn’t happen right away because he was intent on living in cold climates. I was a former Floridian. When he highly recommended for us to move to Switzerland. There was months of silence between us like most true friendships over settling upon a resident state or country that would benefit the two of us. Eventually, we settled on Salt Lake City, Utah. It has cold winters so that Ota could mountain ski with some decent warmer days thrown in and hot summers that I would definitely enjoy. Many people may not be aware of but there are a lot of cool things to do in Utah such as: Scuba diving, flying in a vertical air tunnel, spending some quality time with Trappist Monks, watch a movie and drink beer right in the theater, eat a square donut, my favorite thing to do was to visit the many award winning winery and Ota favorite thing to do three times a year, well second thing to do was to walk in the foot step of prehistoric dinosaurs. In the winter you just couldn’t keep him away from skiing and working at Park City Mountain Resort.   

All was well in our broken family lives until we both got really sick due to our genetic makeup.  Ota traveled home one summer to see if he could locate any of his tribal family. After about 3 days of living in the rain forest he contacted something called Monkeypox. Monkeypox is a viral disease that occurs mostly in the Congo Rain Forest. It is called monkeypox because it was first identified in laboratory monkeys. However, it is much more common among animals such as rats, mice, rabbits, and the African Squirrel. Symptoms begin with fever, headache, muscle pains, swollen lymph nodes and feeling tired.

Fortunately, the infected person is not contagious during the incubation period. However, human cases can be contagious as soon as symptoms develop. The person is contagious until all scabs from the pox lesions fall off. Consequently, the person is usually contagious for about four to five weeks.

I pleaded with him not to go there. He was an American pygmy now and his immune system made him a viable contestant to catch anything in the jungle even though he did take several vaccination shots before going there.

When I arrived at the Congo rainforest it wasn’t what I had visualized. It looked like downtown Miami. Half of the Forrest had been chopped down. Ota was in a hospital better than the Mayo Clinic in Baltimore, Maryland.

He was happy to see me as I was happy to see the sick looking pygmy puppy. His mother had just departed as she paid all his medical bills.

On the plane back to the states I suddenly got sick. I was really concerned that maybe I had contracted the Monkeypox virus. To my thankful surprise I just had a bad case of Jungle Cuisine food, food poisoning.

Looking back over the years of our friendship it dawn on the two of us how an unlikely it was that two completely diversified strangers could develop a lifelong friendship.