I have updates from the front lines for the Army of Good. I so appreciate these small donations that keep coming in, to my Post Office Box, and to my Paypal, for Devota, who spent a year walking across Africa to get to America, and for Mawulidi Diodone Majaliwa, a wood carver who had to leave his grandfather’s carving tools behind when he came to America last November.
We are hoping to pay off much or all of a $10,000 loan Devota took out for her college-bound son, thinking it was a financial aid grant, an all too common mistake involving student loans. So far, we have raised more than $5,000.
You can read about Devota here. You can read about Mawulidi here. I’ve met both of them in Albany, at the RISSE (refugee and immigration center) there. I will see them both again this Thursday, and will bring them the funds we have collected for them.
I hope can clear Devota’s $10,000 loan, but whatever we collect will help her greatly. I think we will get there, or get very close.
One reader of the blog, a self-described member of the Army of Good, is sending $300 to help Mawulidi buy the tools he needs. I am also bringing him a wood carving kit so he can resume his smaller carvings. The bigger tools will have to come from Home Depot. I believe we have enough money to help get his tools now, and thanks.
Scores, if not hundreds of people are sending checks and donations for $5, $10, $20, even $100 for Devota, a woman grace and love for the four children she is raising by herself, the children of the rapes she suffered by soldiers along her long march.
I’m excited about the help we are going to give these two brave and loving people. They are our brothers and sisters in America, they came for the same reasons our grandparents and parents came, to live freely and give their children better lives. Thank you.
If you wish to contribute to the work with Devota, or other refugees or the Mansion residents, you can do so by sending a check to my post office Box, P.O. Box 205. Cambridge, N.Y., 12816 or through Paypal, [email protected].
Tonight, the RISSE soccer team is going to see “Spiderman” and eat lots of soda and popcorn, this was my idea and I paid for it, I didn’t wish to ask for donations for it. Monday, another portable air conditioner goes to the Mansion, this one for bill. I think one more, perhaps to Sylvie, will do it. Thanks again for that. Life is good.
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.
“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.
We are approaching the end of summer, back to school, our October Open House, the season of change, the transition between summer and winter. I thought it’s a good time to consider what is next for the Army Of Good, and perhaps to give all of us a chance to take a deep breath.
We have done so much this year, from filling the refugee warehouse with supplies in January and February helping Devota pay off her loan in August, and about a thousand things in between. I want to thank you again, we have again and again achieved our goal of doing good rather than arguing, and in so short a time.
Every time I asked for help, you responded,and scores of refugee children and adults and as many elderly residents of the Mansion have benefited greatly from this work, which has just begun, at least for me, and hopefully, for you. I think the Army of Good is for real, and here to stay.
I feel morally obligated to give this amazing new kind of Army a bit of a short breather, a chance to give our bank accounts a rest, and for me to gather information, distribute our dwindling reserves wisely, and prepare for what comes next. I can hardly believe what we have accomplished, how many lives we have touched. I feel gratitude and humility.
I hope to continue filling the holes in the Mansion residents lives and support the refugee children and their parents as they navigate their new lives in America. I’m not going to halt that work, even for a minute. But I am not ever comfortable asking people for money, and I think it’s good to take some time off from that.
In September, I am joining the celebrations for Assisted Care Week, we are sponsoring a “pizza party” at the Mansion on September 11, for the residents and staff, and a boat ride on Lake George on September 14th, and the publication of “Tales Of the Mansion,” a collection of short stories written by the residents.
Ali and Brother Francis at RISSE are going on vacation, and the school will take some time off before the Fall after school program kicks in. We are sponsoring a retreat at Pompanuck for the RISSE kids in September, and we have ordered their new soccer uniforms. I’m going to propose a boat ride to Ali when he gets back from the Sudan, where he is attending his sister’s wedding.
I am scheduled to meet with a half dozen refugees and their families to hear their stories and write about them and see if they need help. I’m planning a trip to the Statue Of Liberty for the students of RISSE.
The past six months have been among the most rewarding of my life, and I hope the next six months will be even better. I do admit to being near exhaustion sometimes, I have felt this more acutely in the past few weeks.
I’ve been racing all over this read to meet people and take their photos, plus working to finishing my next book (“Gus And The Small And Big Lessons Of Bedlam Farm), due out sometime next year, sorting out and depositing money. There is so much good work to do with the refugee and immigrant families, and the Mansion residents.
But I don’t wish to take advantage of you good people, you deserve a rest and so do your bank accounts. Mine does.
It’s been an intense and challenging time.
I don’t want to be asking for money every time I write. I will continue raising money for Devota’s loan payments and will work to thoughtfully dispense the $2,000 or so remaining in the refugee/Mansion bank account I set up to separate this money from mine. My blog writing will continue as usual.
I have to take a breather myself or the top of my head will blow off, and I need to finish my books with some thought and care and still help run the farm and maintain my blog and take my pictures. Red and I will still be doing our therapy visits, and Assisted Care Week will be a hoot.
In mid-October, after our Open House, Maria and I are heading to New Mexico for a little over a week, we have found a beautiful bed and breakfast south of Santa Fe, and will use that as a base to relax and explore New Mexico, take some photos. I will be blogging from there, at least a photo a day.
It would be wonderful if you could send some decorations or pennants or favors or photos to help celebrate Assisted Care Week on September 11. We don’t need any money, we have enough for the pizza. (The Mansion, 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816), Everyone at the Mansion so loves the things you have been sending on holidays. The Mansion residents would, of course, love to keep reading your letters and seeing your photos and cards.
If you have any spare change lying around and wish to help replenish this fund for the fall – we spent a lot of money on air conditioners and boat rides paying off refugee loans – you can sent it to my post office box – P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., or paypal, [email protected].
I will of course be blogging about the Mansion residents, etc., throughout. I just thought this wonderful Army deserved a bit of a break.
