I am happy to share some major news with you, the real news of our lives, not their soul-crushing news.  I think we will be able to pay off Devota Nyiraneza’s $10,000.

Also this morning, I ordered 250 copies of “Tales Of The Mansion,” they are on the way and will be here shortly. Another dream come true.

I am very close to having another $6,000 to give to Devota, a new United States citizen,  in order to help her pay off the $10,000 loan she mistakenly signed thinking it was for financial aid for her son to go to college, a sadly common experience both for refugees and young American students.

She just did not understand the language. She applied for financial aid, but never for a loan, and got loan papers instead. She insists on repaying the loan, she s spending $125 a month on her payments.

She is raising four children, all of them the results of rapes incurred during her year-long walk on bare feet and with no food to a United Nations refugee camp.

All along the way, she saw the bodies of dead children abandoned by their families, she would not let her daughter out of her sight and carried her on her back for a year. She lives with those children now and works two jobs to care for them. She has had to move into a much smaller apartment because of these loan payments, taken out to help her oldest son go to Buffalo State University.

In the past two weeks I’ve given her $4,000, all from your contributions, which came from every state in the Union, red and blue, left and right. People are, after all, just people. Helping and caring for others is built into our souls and spirits.

This Saturday, when I visit her in her new apartment in Albany, I will have another $5,000 to bring her, all of it raised online and through the blog by the Army of Good. We don’t really need to give seven percent to crowdsourcing websites any longer.

I am just $1,000 short, and I will either make up the difference myself or collect the remaining funds this week in the donations and contributions that are still coming in to my post office box – P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816 and via Paypal, [email protected]. I feel so hopeful about this, we will change the trajectory of this worthy and brave woman’s life.

This was a grass-roots campaign for sure, the vast bulk of the donations were for $5, $10, $20 and $50, these small donations for so many people – I call them the Army of Good – have added up steadily, a remarkable thing, a remarkable story. It will never make their news, but it is one of the biggest and most important stories of my life. There have been some larger donations as well, one for $1,000 two for $500, and thank you.

Maria and I have a new and unexpected chore each evening, sorting through dozens of envelopes with checks and even small cash donations, from $5 to $2. The most poignant messages from people stuffing crumpled old bills into these envelopes with a simple message: “for Devota.” It take hours to sort them, count them and then get them into the bank. They are happy hours.

I tell the refugees that the America they see on the news is not the real America, the real America lives in these messages and donations I receive every day.

RISSE, the refugee and immigrant support center in Albany, the very wonderful organization that brought Devota and her plight to my attention and arranged for me to meet with her, has agreed to accept the money on her behalf.

I will give it directly to them on condition that they administer and manage the loan payments and help Devota handle them in the best way for her. Devota’s experience has prompted RISSE to plan a new program to help new refugees and immigrants navigate financial and loan agreements.

She very much wants their help.

Devota, for those of you new to this project, walked across Central Africa for 2,485 miles from Rwanda to Cameroon to escape the Rwandan genocide in 1994.  She carried her three month-old daughter on her back, I will be seeing both of them together when I visit her this coming Saturday. She works two jobs, one at Catholic Charities helping the disabled, the other mopping floors at the Albany Medical Center.

She is gracious and generous, without any hatred or vengeance in her heart. That smile is very genuine. I wasn’t completely certain we would raise all of this money in just a week or two, but now I am certain – and very humbled and gratified – that we will. That is the biggest story of the day.

 

The second big story is that today I went on CreateSpace, a self-publishing website  this morning and ordered 350 copies of “Tales Of The Mansion,” a collection of short stories written by the Mansion residents over the course of a short story workshop I taught with Julie Smith, the Activities Director there.  We finished proofing the books this week. The books cost $653 to print, and they will sell for $10 apiece, plus shipping, if appropriate. I will be happy to sign the books if people request it.

I told the residents at the workshops that  their stories are important, and they responded by writing 15 of them. I’ve added a dozen or so of my own photos. The book looks sharp, the stories are touching and surprising and very honest.

I am giving 100 copies to the Mansion residents and their families for free, and Connie Brooks of Battenkill Books, has already sold more than 120 copies, so she will get the rest. If there are more orders – you can pre-order here – I can order more books quickly.

Connie Books of Battenkill takes paypal and major credit cards, and you can also order them by phone, 518 677-2515. As I mentioned, I will be happy to sign the books if requested, and I’m sure the Mansion residents will be happy to sign books as well, if requested. (I can’t speak for them, but I will certainly ask.)

There will be a public reading at the Mansion, date to be announced. It will be for the residents and their families, and will be open to the public.

All proceeds – every penny – will go to support the Mansion outings programs, they take the residents out every week to visit parks, historic sites and cultural events,  thanks to the Army of Good, next month they will go on a two-hour lunch and ride on a Lake George steamboat.

To me, this is the real news of real people. The news the corporations present us is profit-making, not civic-minded, it is narrow and skewed towards hatred and division presently mostly be people arguing in TV studios in major cities.

The more hatred and evil and argument, the more good we do. That is our non-violent and very human response to their news.