Strength In What Remains

I read Tracy Kidder's book, Strength In What Remains this week.  I thought it was a fiction novel. It wasn't until I read the second part of the book that I realized this story was about a real person.  Deo Gratias is a young man from Burundi in central Africa is a medical student when war breaks out between the Hutu's and the Tutsis.  He escapes the genocide in Burundi by traveling to Rwanda on foot.  The experience scarred him physically and psychologically.  He escapes to America.  With $200 in his pocket, he leaves the airport and tries to survive.  He lives in an abandoned tenement in Harlem and delivers groceries for $15 a day.  He doesn't understand English and finds very few French speakers in Harlem.  He meets up with a woman, a former nun, who tries to help him out.  She finds an older couple who take him into their home (by now he is sleeping in Central Park) and send him to college at Columbia University.  Deo is not only smart but he is lucky too.  He is focused on building a medical clinic in Burundi.  Tracy Kidder wrote a compelling story about Deo and his journey.  In this story I painlessly learned quite a bit about genocide, African politics, immigration policies, and how the kindness of strangers can turn a person's life around.  Fascinating story!