Tracy Kidder’s new book, “Strength in What Remains,” tells the story of Deogratias. In 1994 Deo is a third-year medical student when the Rwandan Genocide spreads to Burundi—his hometown. He is able to escape and travels to America, arriving in New York City with no English and little money. Halfway through the book, Kidder reveals more of Deo’s past. New York Times Book Review writer Ron Suskind describes a particularly powerful scene. As Deo flees yet another refugee camp, he sees a baby “sitting on the lap of his dead mother in a banana grove,” but he can only “stagger away, overcome with despair, and collapse into a heavy sleep.” He is woken by a Hutu woman the next day who “pulls Deo from the brush, discovers he’s a Tutsi and then, at extraordinary risk, saves him from beheading by telling Hutu guards that he’s her son.”
Refugees
Facing Today helps educators connect the study of history to issues in our world today. We select current websites, articles, films and blogs that reflect universal themes, such as identity, membership and participation, represented in our scope and sequence. Each media resource is linked to related Facing History materials, including study guides, videos and lessons.
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October 21, 2009
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June 19, 2009In light of World Refugee Day, June 20, The Boston Globe published "The Rescuers," an article sharing the story of Sasha Chanoff and Rose Mapendo. The two joined forces after Sasha and his team from the International Organization for Migration rescued 154 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in late 1999. Mapendo and her family were among those rescued and brought the United States.
Since settling in Phoenix, Mapendo helps raise awareness and money for Chanoff's successful non-profit, Mapendo International, based in Cambridge. Mapendo International has "recently helped resettle more than 100 survivors of a massacre in Congo," and fills "'an important niche'...by identifying refugees who are in danger" and who are not protected by the UNHCR.
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May 8, 2009Gerald Caplan, a scholar, activist, and journalist who authored the report Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide (2000), shares his ideas about genocide in the article "Some things we know about genocide - 10 years, 10 lessons." His decade of experience, especially his recent work running the international organization Remembering Rwanda and the emergence of the Darfur crisis, has led him to conclusions such as, "All of us are capable, under certain circumstances, of committing unimaginable acts," and "Most ordinary people will be bystanders. Acting righteously in a dangerous situation is more than we have the right to expect from people."
