Silver Lining Taekwon-Do suffers $100,000 in flood damages, owner says
MIDDLETON, Wis. — When Mathiam Mbow was 18 years old, he and his mother were mugged overseas. While Mbow says the situation could have been worse, it was at that moment he knew he needed to focus on self-defense.
Mbow is now 47 years old and hasn’t stopped practicing Taekwon-Do ever since. He’s owned and operated Silver Lining Taekwon-Do in Middleton for several years which is now a second home to more than 300 students.
Monday night’s flood destroyed nearly everything in the building.
“As you can see it looks like a war zone right now,” he said.
Every part of his 8000-square-foot facility was buried under a foot of water Monday night. Mbow’s wife was able to save some belts, uniforms, hand pads, customer contracts and memberships. She said those are being stored at a friend’s home in the meantime.
While Mbow’s livelihood was going underwater, he was overseas in Ethiopia.
“I felt very helpless because I felt that it was breaking apart and I’m thousands of miles away,” he said.
When he came back, everything was destroyed.
“I was taken aback. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” he said.
Mbow says the mats alone cost $25,000. To get everything out of the building and cleaned will cost another $25,000. To replace everything that was totaled in the flood will cost around $100,000. Mbow said there is no flood insurance because the area is not considered a flood zone.
As he tries to digest everything that happened to his business, he is keeping a positive attitude and finding his own silver lining.
“I like to believe that God doesn’t put on our shoulders more than we can handle,” he said. “My first reaction was sadness and despair but I quickly thought after that, I shook it off and said to myself,’This is mother nature at it’s best and there’s nothing we can do about it. How we choose to respond to the damage done by mother nature is going to determine the type of person I am,'”
It will be about a month or so before this building can be used again and a temporary location will be used in the meantime.
“This is what happened. The school is destroyed, but it’s not going to break us. We are going to get up. We are going to rebuild and start fresh. We will beat this. No doubt in my mind, we will beat this. So it’s going to be all right. It’s going to be all right,” Mbow said.
If you would like to contribute in helping him get his business back up and running, a link to his GoFundMepage can be found here.
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