
Last night, I finished reading “Strength in What Remains” by Tracy Kidder. It’s the incredible, heartbreaking, and moving story of Deogratias, a young medical student in Burundi who became a refugee during the genocide. It tells the story of his harrowing and indescribably difficult escape from Burundi and his subsequent arrival in the U.S. In the U.S., he doesn’t know the language, he doesn’t have a place to live and becomes homeless, and joins the ranks of the poorest of the poor - despite the fact that he was an extremely intelligent scholarship student back home.
The book then chronicles the challenges he faces in adjusting to life in the U.S. and obtaining permanent residency. However, unlike many immigrants and refugees, Deo manages to get into Columbia University. He completes his undergraduate degree there and eventually becomes a medical student at Dartmouth. He also joins with Partners in Health and tirelessly pursues his passion of improving health for the poor in his home country, Burundi. He doesn’t give up, and now he is the leader of an organization that builds health clinics in Burundi called Village Health Works. I loved this story because it demonstrates the resilience of the human spirit in the face of incredible, seemingly insurmountable odds. Despite coming to the U.S. completely impoverished, he somehow manages to succeed and do incredible things. His desire to better the world drives him forward. At the same time, I can’t help but wonder how much of his journey is due to luck — the book mentions many instances in which he was, simply, lucky: a Hutu woman decided to help him escape across the Rwandan border, he met a nun in the U.S. who is extraordinarily compassionate and took it upon herself to help him, an older couple saw something in him and took him in, even helping him pay for his education. Whether it was luck or destiny or inner talent and willpower, he did it. And his story serves as an example for the rest of us: that nothing is impossible.
Perhaps my favorite quote in the entire book is this one:
A phrase he’d put together out of his dictionary kept coming to him. “A different planet.” New York had many planets. Better, he thought, to be in Burundi, if Burundi were at peace, than to live on the wrong, impoverished planet in New York. This place made you feel like you were simply not a human being. How could you be a human being like everyone else, if your circumstances were this different?
This quote stuck in my mind throughout the book because it makes me wonder: is this true? Is it true that being among the poorest of the poor in the U.S. is worse than being an “average” poor person in one of the poorest developing nations? Most people still come to the U.S. and think of this country as the “land of opportunity.” Yet, I wonder — is that golden land a myth? What is the reality for the poor in the U.S.? Although I have worked with a number of low-income individuals through my volunteer service with LIFT, I still feel like their circumstances are far better than what the poor face in countries like Burundi or India or China.
However, I think what Deo is alluding to in the quote above is not simply the material circumstances, but the psychological ones. After all, it seems clear that daily tasks such as carrying (unclean) water for miles to your home in scorching temperatures is a misery that few in the U.S. must experience. Yet, perhaps being poor in America means you are surrounded by incredible opulence. That you are an outlier - that you are cast out from society. In the very bottom of the heap. That you are granted no respect, that people treat you like a child, and that you are dehumanized. In that way, you feel so alone that you cease to feel human. It’s the inequality that perpetuates these feelings.
Ultimately, I don’t know. I’ve never been in such a situation in the U.S. (or abroad) so I don’t really have any authority to speak about this topic. But this is my personal understanding of the quote, and I think it’s important to ponder whether this quote rings true or not. If it is true, then it makes the case that much stronger for working on domestic poverty issues — which are often seen as less important than international issues.













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