I’ve been writing about Devota Nyiraneza for several days now, in 1994 she fled the Rwandan genocide and walked 2, 485 miles across Central Africa with no food or shoes carrying her daughter on her back.
It took her nearly a year to get to a United Nations refugee camp, and then to America.
It took her nearly 13 years to get here.
Along the way, she faced starvation, rape, extreme heat and cold, she hid in forests in the daytime and stole food from farms along the way. Eight of her companions were killed by farmers with poison darts.
She is now an American citizen, she works two jobs, one working with the disabled for Catholic Charities, the second cleaning rooms and floors at the Albany Medical Center. Like so many of the refugees and immigrants at RISSE, the refugee and immigrant support center in Albany, she is overwhelmed trying to navigate the complexities of life in America.
When her son – her children were the result of rape – was accepted to Buffalo State University, she applied for what she thought was financial aid, and her request was accepted. But she had really applied for a loan, and didn’t understand the difference.
So her son had to leave school and is working to repay his own loan, and she has a $10,000 loan to repay. She sends the bank $125 a month. I offered to try to raise money to pay back the loan or reduce. In the 48 hours after I wrote the piece, I received nearly $3,000 in donations for Devota, and I hadn’t even requested funds or set up a fund.
I am seeking donations now, I hope to give her a check for the entire loan so she can resume her normal life – she just moved to a smaller apartment because the $1,400 monthly rent is now too much. Whatever we collect will help her, and I am optimistic about raising the entire amount from the blog.
Devota is a person of warmth and grace, soft-spoken, uncomplaining, generous of spirit. It seems miraculous to me that she has survived and she embodies the very best of the American ethos – taking responsibility, working hard, hoping to go to school herself once her son finishes his education. She has three other children to care for.
On her journey, her skin peeled off and her bones were exposed. Her worst memories are the children abandoned by their families because they couldn’t care for them, they died along the road. And the rapes by soldiers and militia members who threatened to kill her and her daughter if she didn’t submit.
It is very difficult for newly arrived refugees to navigate the very complicated world of American finance and documents and taxes. RISSE is working to expand their educational programs in order to help refugees like Devota. But she needs help now.
I think this is a person very much worth helping, and I am determined to try.
She is working hard and has a great heart, she deserves help climbing out of this burdensome situation.
If you wish to contribute, you can do so by sending a check addressed to me at my post office box: Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. Please mark the check “Devota Fund.” You can also donate via Paypal, send the donations to [email protected]. Please remember to mention “Devota Fund” in the message. All of these donations are kept in a separate account I use for helping the refugees and the Mansion residents.
There are many ways to look at the world, and I do not hate anyone who disagrees with me. The immigration system in America is a frightful mess, and certainly needs fixing, but Devota represents to me the best of the American experience: offering refuge to the vulnerable, and giving them a chance to save the lives of their families, and to pull themselves up in the land of freedom and opportunity.
Yesterday, I wrote about Devota Nyiraneza, who walked 2,485 miles across Central Africa to escape the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, and who came to America – to Albany, in May of 2007. She is a U.S.Citizen, working two jobs to pay off a $10,000 loan she mistakenly thought was a financial aid package for her son.
She suffered near starvation, rape and severe exposure on her journey, you can read about it here. Today, a number of people messaged me to say they wished to donate money to help her, and so I have agreed to collect donations, which I will turn over to her.
If you wish to contribute, you can send a check (please mark it Devota Fund) to Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816, or you can send it to me via Paypal Friends and Family, my ID is [email protected], I have already received more than $1,000 without even asking.
I think this is something the Army of Good wants to do. And it is something I wish to do.
Devota is a courageous human being, hers is a remarkable story. She is full of grace and acceptance. She risked everything to get to America and is working hard every day to build a life her for herself and her children, all of them the result of sexual assaults on her walk and in refugee camps.
This is truthful story about the real life of a real refugee, not the ones whose lives and character have been so viciously caricatured by our ambitious and heartless political leaders. Devota is a credit to any country she lives in, she works two jobs, one working with the disabled for Catholic Charities, another, cleaning hospital rooms at the Albany Medical Center. She has no hard or angry words for anyone.
Sadly, she left her family behind, they are no longer permitted to come to America. You can read my piece about her here.
The journey took her a year, she had no shoes or extra clothes or shelter. Many of the people she set out to walk with were slaughtered by farmers guarding their crops from starving refugees fleeing mass murders.
Thanks for considering this, I will visit her and follow her story. My sense is she wishes to take care of herself, and does not wish other kinds of support. But she is paying this loan off at the rate of $125 a month, and that will take a long time. Her son has left college to help pay for a different loan he took out to become an engineer.
Even if we don’t get to $10,000 anything we do get will be helpful to her. And we are already off to an impressive start, this one got ahead of me. Thank you for even thinking about this. Small donations matter. Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816 or Paypal, [email protected]. Small donations matter.
“When the elephant fights, the grasses below suffer.” – Rwandan saying.
We sat in silence for a moment, Devota and I. Then she told me her story.
In 1994, she was a refugee who fled the Rwandan genocide, she saved herself and her daughter from almost certain death by fleeing her country, and making her way to a U. N. refugee camp in the Congo. She walked more than 2,485 miles across Central Africa with her daughter on her back to get to America, without food or water or shoes or any clothes but the ones on her back.
It took her a year to get there, she walked every step of the way.
On her journey, he was repeated raped and assaulted by the soldiers of the warring countries she waked through, stealing food by day, hiding in the woods at night, either hot or cold all of the way.
Sometimes, I couldn’t make out what she was saying and had to look to Brother Francis, who was sitting with us. He explained. She spoke English well, but with a thick accent. But we made ourselves understood to each other.
I asked her if she was aware of the turmoil and controversy surrounding people like her in America right now.
She smiled and nodded. “Yes,” she said. I asked if she had anything she wanted to say about it. She smiled again and told me there was a saying in Rwanda:
“When the elephant fights, the grasses below suffer.”
I saw right away what she meant.
I drove to Albany this afternoon, to meet her, her full name was Devota Nyiraneza.
This talk was an important breakthrough for me, and I was grateful and excited to be going. Before this week, I only had access to the RISSE soccer team, and that took months. I loved writing about them. But it was important to me reach beyond them. I wanted to meet more women and talk to the adults in the program.
(I will not ever walk away from the RISSE team and Ali, they opened the door for me, they made today possible.)
I was so impressed by this woman, both of us sitting in this musty old library in a working class neighborhood of Albany.
She was poised, honest and strong. No matter how painful the questions were that I asked her, she looked me straight in the eye and answered them almost defiantly, and yet quietly.
She never blinked or looked away or lost her composure, although I very nearly lost mine hearing her story. She smiled readily, and warmly. It was almost as if she had been waiting to tell me this story.
Despite what she had endured, she never once complained or expressed any kind of lament or self-pity of the kind that is so American.
It came back to me, this feeling I sometimes had as a reporter when I had to ask people questions I knew would be painful for them. I don’t recall anyone handling a hard story more gracefully than Devota.
I have been working for nearly six months to earn the trust of refugee officials and to meet the people who are suddenly so controversial in America, the subject of so much lying and posturing and hatred. Our national soul seems sometimes to have turned to stone, especially when we turn on the very people who define the best in us and our history.
In America, people seem almost to envy people like Devota, as if they have struck it rich somehow just by coming here, and all of it at our expensive. That is an awful lie.
The refugee community is wary and secretive suspicious of strangers, especially now. And I could hardly blame them.
So many have lovers and parents and grandparents and brothers and sisters they have had to leave behind. Many are in great danger, it can be so dangerous to talk openly, even in the birthplace of democracy. Last year, the RISSE offices were burned to the ground by arsonists, all the tires on their vans slashed.
I asked Devota if she had ever heard of a blog, and she shook her head and said softly, no, she was sorry, she had not.
I was a reporter for a long time, but I I had few tougher assignments than winning the trust of this community and gaining access to it. It was quite worth it.
Devota is from Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. In 1994, she fled the genocide, with no money or shoes or anything but her young daughter. She walked barefoot across Central Africa, from Rwanda to Brazzaville Congo.
You can see how far she walked on this map of Africa.
Devota walked through raging rivers – sometimes she had to walk all night in the water – and blistering heat, was repeatedly assaulted by soldiers and the men in militias from different warring nations, there was danger all the way. They usually told her they would shoot her and her daughter if she did not submit. Sometimes, they shot the women anyway.
At times on this long journey, the heat was so intense that the skin peeled off of her feet and she was walking on her own exposed bones. She wrapped her festering and infected legs in grass and wrapped the grass around her feet.
At night, she stole food from farms to feed her daughter, sometimes she walked through rivers through the night. She carried a paper thin United Nations portable tent with her on her trip, at night, she used it as a blanket and wrapped it around her and her daughter. There was terror and danger every step of the way.
Devota went foraging with eight friends from Rigali, eight of them were killed by farmers guarding their crops, who ambushed them firing poison darts.
Only Devota made it to Brazzaville in the Congo, where she took shelter in a United Nations refugee camp which declared her a “vulnerable” person, and arranged for her to come to America. It was possible to do that then, the country prided itself for helping the vulnerable of the world.
Devota is now a U.S.citizen, I would not have dared to even approach her for a photograph if she were not.
The Rwandan genocide, long forgotten by most Americans, according to surveys, occurred during 100 days in 1994, when ethnic Hutu extremists killed 800,000 members of the Devota’s Tutsi tribe.
Most of Devota’s family was left behind, some were killed. She is desperately trying to get visas to admit the survivors into America, but it seems that is no longer possible. She has a brother and sister in Rwanda, she hopes to send her nieces enough money to get some schooling.
That will be difficult.
Devota has two jobs, one working with the disabled for Catholic Charities, the other as a housekeeper for the Albany Medical Center. She just moved to a smaller apartment because she could not afford her $1,400 a month rent. Her older son was accepted at Buffalo State University – he wants to be an engineer – and she applied for what she thought was a financial aid package, but found out later was really a loan.
She did not understand the difference, which was not made clear to her..
She now owes $10,000, which she is paying off in $125 a month installments. Her son had to leave school, hopefully temporarily, to help pay off loans that he took out to pay his tuition. He couldn’t stay at the University, he is attending some classes at a community college near Albany and paying back his loan.
This is why RISSE is feverishly setting up classes to help new refugees and immigrants understand the things they sign in America, where life is so much more complex. They want to reach the refugees and immigrants before they get into difficulty.
We sat in the library of RISSE, the refugee and immigrant immigration center in Albany where Devota has been taking English and financial management classes. We were bathed in a yellow light, the beautiful old room had seen better days.
She had three other children, all the the result of rapes, some of these assaults in the refugee camps where she spent several years. She was determined to keep every one of those children, they live with her now.
The meeting was arranged by my friend Brother Francis Sengabo, a Rwandan refugee himself (he spent a decade in the camps) and the director of operations for RISSE.
We spent more than an hour today talking in the library of the big Methodist Church, and I was struck by Devota’s grace and composure. I took notes and stopped every few minutes, to absorb what I was hearing. On the way home, I regretted that I did not invite her to the farm. I will when I see her next.
She said her haunting memories of that journey would always be the sight of so many people who starved to death along the way, or who died of exposure or were butchered and hunted down or assaulted.
It was common, she said, for the fathers to order the mothers to leave their children behind, because the entire family could never survive the journey carrying them and caring for them. She saw many children left to die of exposure and starvation.
She hid in forests during the day and ate herbs and berries. As she tells her story, her face is calm, she smiles at times, she is full of grace and acceptance.
Francis explained to her in their native Kinyarwanda language what a blog was and she looked at me and smiled politely. Yet she seemed to understand what I was doing there.
This is one of the people we are told are murderers and rapists and parasites come to take our jobs and steal our social services. She is one of the people they say need to be banned and kept away, lest our pure and idylllic – and white – civilization be polluted by their presence.
She seemed to me to be what America is really all about, and I am grateful for the chance to meet her.
I accepted her invitation to visit her new apartment and meet her children. Her daughter, the one she carried across Africa, was waiting for her outside the library, she is a beautiful young woman, full of life. We shook hands, it was a powerful thing to see her so healthy and alive.
I am excited to be entering this world and will share it here. Next week, I am meeting another refugee from Africa, a gifted wood carver – I have seen his work at RISSE. His carving tools were left behind when he came here, and he is doing menial work.
I hope to present him with a new set of tools when I meet him next week, perhaps he can sell the beautiful birds he makes out of wood carvings from trees. I intend to keep going, working to capture the true story of these people and present them as the remarkable human beings that they are.
Devota is an asset to our country and I am proud to know her and shake her hand. I got the benefits of freedom and security for free, they were handed down to me, she has given her blood and sweat for it, and pieces of her soul.
The refugee story is important to me and it needs to be told, again and again.
They are, to me, the heart and soul of the American experience. Writing about them is a debt I owe to my grandmother and to America, and a way of grounding myself during this difficult time. It feels good to tell the truth, and to try to do good.
Devota is very glad to be here, as hard as her life is, alone with three children at home.
I told Devota I wanted to give her a $200 check as part of my Refugee Scholarship Program, she is the third refugee from RISSE to receive a scholarship from my refugee fund, a special account I have set up to try and help refugees and immigrants. The scholarship program is loosely defined, I told her there were no strings attached, she could use this money any way she wished. My idea is for the refugees and immigrants to get small grants to pursue their passions in life.
The first two went to two young artists in the RISSE program who we paid to sign them up for the Sketchbook Project at the Brooklyn Library Of Art.
At first, Devota shook her head, and said thanks, but no, she didn’t want me to have to pay for speaking with her. Francis told her it would be all right, two other people had received scholarships, and so she accepted the check and thanked me and invited me to her home.
She shook my hand, formally, but there was great warmth and charisma in those eyes.
I needed the 90-minute drive to the farm to collect myself a bit. I kept working her story over and over in my mind.
Maria was not home, I took a page from her book and went out to the barn and sat with the donkeys for a minute or two. I gave thanks for my life. I sat with Red on the doorstep while Gus and Fate chased each other across the yard.
I am eager to see Devota again, and perhaps, help her further if that is possible. Maybe I can save some money and help knock down that loan a bit. She is quite proud and determined, and I don’t know how much help she will accept. She can surely take care of herself.
I will figure it out. And share what I have learned.
RISSE is doing remarkable work on many levels, helping some of the most vulnerable among us.
If you have a spare $5 or $10 dollars, please think about donating to RISSE. I will continue to accept donations for the work I am doing with the Mansion residents and the refugees and immigrants I am meeting at RISSE. (Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., or Paypal, [email protected].)
This weekend, I am treating the RISSE soccer team to go see the Spiderman movie. We are buying them new soccer uniforms. The front will say “Bedlam Farm Warriors,” (their choice, not mine) and the back will say “RISSE.” With popcorn and soda, it will come to around $200 and I have the funds to pay for the uniforms and the movie.
The goal of the hero trip is to open, open, open, and finally open to the mystery of your self.
As the grandson of desperate immigrants, I always had this image of America as a safe and welcoming and free place, a light unto a cruel world. A country with great heart.
Last November’s election was a gift to me, it jolted me awake and is slowly turning me into a true patriot, I love my country in a new and completely different way. You can fight for your country with guns, you can fight for your country with heart. Both are powerful weapons and tools.
Albert Einstein wrote that blind belief in authority – any authority – is the greatest enemy of truth. I was taught as a reporter and a citizen to never be afraid to raise my voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. That is what patriot’s do, I believe they comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted. If you are neutral about injustice, then you have chosen the side of the oppressors.
Pope Francis challenges us to stand with the vulnerable and the poor, that is the true calling of the faithful. That was the true calling of Christ and almost every great man or woman of faith throughout human history.
How do I love my country? You don’t need to pick up a gun or rifle to do that. I can love my country by living my life.
I love my country by going to see Connie Martell, who is very much alone and at a crossroads in her life.
I do it by helping Devota Nyiraneza pay off the loans that keep her from going to school. I do it by helping Mawulidi Diodone Majaliwa get the tools he needs to resume his carving work, and the refugee children play their soccer games with pride.
I do it by helping the Mansion residents get the soap and body wash and books and air conditioners and clothes and trips to the outside world that they need.
Connie was the first resident of the Mansion that I spoke with and raised money for. She has a strong and very alert mind, and was so eager to find work and do good, even confined to an assisted care facility and on oxygen. From her, I got the idea of America once again as a generous and caring country.
When I asked people to send her patterns and wool, I had no idea I would be altering my life and hers. This was the first time I turned to the Army of Good for help, and I was astonished at the response. Every time I went into the Manson Connie was busy once more, her days had purpose and meaning, she no longer felt forgotten and less than useful.
This was a revelation, to me and to her. It paved the way for me to be a patriot, to love my country in my own individual way.
I did not have to join the raging mobs of the left or the right, or turn to cable for my news. I did not have to argue. All I had to do was do good, and in that way, reveal the soul of the country I love, and fight for that soul. I never imagined having so many loving soldiers right behind me.
My country is the world, wrote Thomas Paine, an my religion is to do good. Out citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in a state or town is only our local distinction. Out great title is Americans.
Whatever is my right as a man or woman is also the right of another, of every other. It becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess. those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, wrote Paine, “must undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
I learned this year to not fear or flee from conflict., or tremble under the shadow of what they call the news. I learned that belief in a cruel God or a cruel leader makes for cruel men and women. My country is not cruel.
“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason,” wrote Paine, “and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. I love the man or woman that can smile in trouble, that can gather from distress and grow. The patriotic heart does not rise to argument or rage or grievance, but to compassion and justice.
Connie had the right do her work, to knit with her baskets of yarn to pass out her shawls and caps to the staff and to the children in nearby hospitals. I was struck by the clarity of her mind, the honesty of her words, and her commitment to service. Very American to me.
She is the pioneer, she paved the way for the Army Of Good and all of the work it has done.
Now, she enters an uncertain world, and will have to make her own way there. I am no seer, I cannot predict her future, but I sense she is moving on, beyond my reach.
I am grateful to her, because she has shown me the way to be a patriot, to love my country, and so many of you have shown me what that means.
If you wish to write her, you can send your letters and messages to Connie Martell, 2215 Burdett Ave., Fifth Floor, Troy, N.Y., 12180. Your letters have the greatest value to here.
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.
