Man on a mission
“Peace and tranquility” is how Wayne Slockbower describes his daily drives over the Sky Bridge onto Fort Myers Beach, despite what awaits him.
“It could be a broken pipe with water gushing everywhere, it could be the need to pull tree roots out of a sewer. And the calls come at all hours of the day or night,” said Slockbower, 61, who serves as property manager for 36 beach properties owned by beach resident John Kakatsch. “Many times I’ve jumped in that Gulf after a job and made the trip home in soaking wet clothes.”
Tough work for a guy who spent 30 years in the construction business before retiring in 1998. But he says he’s unfazed by any mess here on the island to which he’s going, and it’s probably because of where he’s been.
“I just had Thanksgiving in Africa – with five people who had never had Thanksgiving in their life,” said Slockbower, of Fort Myers, who returned to the area Dec. 1 after 30 days of mission work in a desperate region of east Angola for the sixth time in the past three years. “One time I saw a bunch of people stand under an avocado tree during a storm, and I wasn’t sure why. Then I realized they were hoping the fruit would fall down. That would be their meal.
“When I return home, I realize how spoiled we are here.”
But the simple things he delivered meant so much, including his creative culinary skills.
“I introduced them to pancakes, and they were licking the napkins trying to get every drop of the syrup,” he said of the impoverished and malnourished kids of the Quessua area. “When I put cheese on them, they yelled ‘pizza!'”
Then there’s the building of self-worth through the portraits he provides them as gifts.
“Many of them have never seen themselves like that,” he said.
Rolling up the sleeves
But it’s those construction skills of Slockbower’s that packed the biggest punch. One of seven members of a group from Fort Myers’ Cypress Lake United Methodist Church who first ventured there in 2012 – the result of “a calling from God,” he said – he quickly realized his abilities would shine once he saw an area ravaged by a 10-year civil war that concluded in 2002.
In short order, he was involved in countless projects, including the building of a boys’ dorm from rubble and the cleaning out of a water system that depended upon the gravitational flow from the mountains. Upon his arrival, what flowed from the faucets was black goop.
“And it’s not like there’s a Home Depot there,” Slockbower said. “To get just six plumbing tees, I had to search through six different markets to get one at a time. What takes five minutes here took half a day there.”
And most of his pupils are children the adult population there was nearly wiped out by either the war or AIDS. Slockbower was impressed by the youngsters’ determination.
“They realize they have to do it on their own, that they are the future. If they see you with a hammer, they’ll grab it from you and ask you to show them,” Slockbower said. “And these are kids as young as 7, 8 and 9.”
Dangerous terrain
All this while everyone had to gingerly tiptoe through an area with landmines.
“The people here were told they were all gone, but five of them have been discovered since I arrived there,” Slockbower said. “One of them was about 10 feet away from a path I walked along every day.”
Malaria is another killer.
“I met people who were no longer there when I returned on visits it had killed them. The local pastor has died from it,” Slockbower said. “At the hospitals, they are lined up outside being treated for it.”
With much of an infrastructure back in place, Slockbower’s most recent visit branched out to even more remote areas where medical assistance and prevention training, all well as things as basic as providing clothing and clean water, could be the focus.
“Something great happened after a recent trip – the daughter of the president of Angola was going to school at one of the buildings we built and after a storm blew off many of the roofs he came to the area and saw what we had done and saw the damage and he promised us help. Two weeks later, officials were there and the totally helped,” Slockbower said. “That gave us the chance to move on to some other areas of need.”
Home again, and living with his wife, Donna, in an RV, Slockbower already misses his adopted family in that foreign land. Will he go back again?
“Hey, I’d live there if I could if I could get the wife to go. It means that much to me,” he said. “And she’s a nurse, so she’d do a lot of good. But there are big bugs and no A.C.”
So for now, there’s plenty of TLC to give to the renters on the Beach. Slockbower had planned to embark on a cross-country trip with Donna come spring, but instead pledged another year of helping Kakatsch.
“He’s such a skilled guy and such a wonderful guy,” said Kakatsch of Slockbower. “I trust him so much and so does everyone else. It doesn’t take long for people to tell him, ‘I’ll just leave the back door unlocked for you. Lock up when you’re done.'”
When that much-deserved RV trip does come along. Slockbower said volunteer work here in the U.S. will be part of the travel plan.
He’s already off to a good start right here at home.
“Did you know that every Wednesday, despite having little time off, he helps cook lunch for 100 people at his church,” said Kakatsch, who believes so much in Slockbower that he helps sponsor his Africa trips. “That says a lot about what kind of person he is.”