Strength in What Remains is Tracy Kidder’s masterfully told true story of escape from genocide, life in America and a homecoming as improbable as it is inspiring.
Deogratis (Deo) was born in a small village in the mountains of Burundi. His family led a poor but peaceful life tending cows. The words Hutu and Tutsi were not spoken until he was 12 and had no real meaning until mobs of murderous Hutu’s stormed his school after the assassination of Burundi’s Hutu President. Deo was a Tutsi and ran for his life. For the next six months he hides in the woods navigating by the screams that precede the silences after the slaughters. A chance meeting with a courageous Hutu woman saves his life and launches an incredible journey from a refugee camp in Rwanda and back to medical school in Burundi and then to America.
Life in America begins at JFK where Deo is befriended by a fellow African who takes him to an abandoned crack house, helps him get a subsistence job and teaches him to navigate the New York subway system. Despite being plagued by stomach pain, haunted by memories and tortured by nightmares Deo’s determination and his chance meetings with kindhearted and generous people allow him to move from homelessness and a grocery delivery job to Columbia University and then to continue medical school at Dartmouth.
While in America Deo learns that his parents and some of his siblings are still alive. This knowledge rekindles his lifelong dream of opening a medical clinic in his home village. Over a period of years Deo returns to Burundi, builds a medical clinic for the poor and finds the Strength In What Remains of his family, his country and himself. ~Anne