Strength in What Remains

Kidder and Deo go to Deo’s medical school in Bujumbura. At the teaching hospital, Deo notes that a woman they see being discharged will be taken to a guarded part of the building until her family pays the bill. This practice, verging on imprisonment and extortion, has become common—in part at the behest of the World Bank, which insists that Burundi’s institutions need to bring in money. Eventually, Deo approached the minister of health with a detained patient in tow; the minister subsequently ordered the release of dozens of such patients, but Deo knows this is only a minor remedy.

Not surprisingly, Deo seems most at home when showing Kidder around in the context of the nation’s health and sanitation situation.

The time comes for Deo to start work on his new clinic in Kayanza, and Kidder accompanies him. This place is meaningful to Deo because it is where his parents have resettled after the crisis. Kidder notes that for $1000 of his own money, Deo was able to rebuild a school here. He has also rebuilt his parents’ home three times, because the militia kept destroying it. In a tragi-comic moment, the foundation stones for the clinic are mistakenly dropped a few hundred yards downhill from the building site. Deo declares, “This is so retarded!” (235).

Kidder follows Deo on the Rwanda portion of Deo’s flight. It is striking how close Rwanda is by air, when one’s life is not on the line. They visit the Murambi genocide memorial—a horrendous monument of skulls and bones. This was the site Deo was ordered to, but he headed back toward Burundi instead. Roughly 45,000 Tutsis were killed here—partly because French soldiers fled. They meet Emmanuel, the caretaker, whose family was slaughtered and who survived a gunshot to his head. Oddly, Emmanuel claims to remember Deo and claims to have helped him survive. The memorial is very raw, with human remains openly displayed. Kidder remarks that he feels almost numb in the presence of all these remains.

Kidder reminds the reader that the peace in Rwanda has endured for some time, whereas the crisis in Burundi simmered into the 2000s. Rwanda is rebuilt and thoroughly policed. Kidder and Deo pass men dressed in pink, convicted genocide criminals, who are working on rebuilding projects. Kidder notes that many—even human rights groups—accuse the ruling Tutsi Kagame regime of making cynical use of the recent genocide to impose a rigid rule over the country, and especially the Hutus. Deo concedes that the Kagame regime is guilty of much of this, as well as of the exploitation of Congo’s natural resources, but he also says that the Kagame party intervened and put a halt to the genocide. Many Western critics, he feels, make accusations against the Rwandan government to distract from their own failures and betrayals in failing to intervene in Rwanda or Burundi.

Kidder and Deo go beyond Deo’s former route to sites involved in the genocide and war more generally. Kidder notes that this is very emotional for Deo, who cries at some of the memorials such as the slaughtered villages preserved for posterity. Indeed, Kidder notes that much of what Deo sees in between the sites seems to gusimbura Deo, who is temporarily trapped on the threshold between past and present. He goes on to reflect that there is some value in the notion of gusimbura, as the toll of continued sorrow he sees during this trip is so awful.

Finally, they go to the northernmost point of Deo’s Rwanda exodus. Nearby, they encounter one of the most horrifying sites yet at a Catholic church at a place called Nyange. This church, now in ruins, was a site where many Tutsis sought refuge. Astonishingly, the priest chose not to try to shield them, but told their foes they could knock the church down and later build another one to replace it. Those seeking sanctuary were slaughtered. Deo, incensed, says he thinks the church should be rebuilt using the victims’ bones.

Instead of visiting another memorial, Deo and Kidder go to a lakeside vantage point looking out into the Democratic Republic of Congo. Deo blames the coltan businessmen for the ongoing conflict in the DRC; coltan is a rare mineral used in common devices such as cell phones, and profits are used by the factions in the Congo to continue the conflict. 

Over the next couple of years, Deo devotes his energy to the clinic in Kayanza. In 2007 he becomes a US citizen. He continues working on the clinic and it is finally completed. To make it a more useful place, he makes certain to incorporate the villagers into its management and operations. One of the most incredible events, which Deo tells at a fundraiser in New York, is that when he sought costs to make the road to the clinic passable, the villagers interrupted his search and built the road themselves. This is a great instance of strength and self-reliance.