Deo Niyizonkiza’s unique story of leadership and personal triumph displays the power of finding strength in the remains of tragedy.
Speaking at the second annual Walker Institute President’s Leadership Dialogue Monday night, Niyizonkiza, the African protagonist in Tracy Kidder’s biography “Strength in What Remains,” shared how he started his life in the United States with only $200 and no knowledge of English.
“Everyone here has a story of life,” Niyizonkiza said. “When people ask me about my life, the first thing that comes into my head is, ‘What about my life?’”
Before moving to the United States, Niyizonkiza lived in Burundi, where he was the only person who managed to escape the hospital he worked in when it was demolished by rebel soldiers. Looking back, he said he was grateful to have been the only person to leave his door open to escape when others secluded themselves in their rooms.
After the incident, Niyizonkiza traveled to the United States — a journey he described as a transition from “tragedy to normalcy.”
“I was shocked to see that the rest of the world was living normal lives,” Niyizonkiza said. “Here I am in such a beautiful country — so peaceful, so wonderful. And all I could think about was, ‘Am I having nightmares? Did it really happen?’ I found myself trying to cope and be a normal human being.”
Niyizonkiza talked about his struggles adjusting to the everyday life of his new surroundings in the U.S. After moving to New York, he was surrounded by people he couldn’t talk to due to his lack of English language skills.
Niyizonkiza said memories of his family, especially his parents, continue to move him.
“I seemed to wonder why my parents valued education when they never learned to read or write. I was lucky to have parents that told me they loved me,” Niyizonkiza said.
Niyizonkiza described his Burundian home as a poor region. While he still lived there, he started school and said he was greatly concerned by the decreasing enrollment each academic year. He said many of his classmates died because of the terrible living conditions, dropped out or, for girls, got married at the age of 13.
“These are the types of conditions that we lived in. These are the conditions that humanized the world, my world,” Niyizonkiza said.
Life in those poor conditions led him to pursue a career in medicine, he said, even though he had no prior knowledge of what medicine was. Within two years of moving to the U.S., he was attending medical school at Columbia University.
He said he wanted to create a change in his community and educate others about diseases that weren’t brought up in school lessons. He said he was concerned because those unknown diseases were still killing individuals.
Niyizonkiza wanted better for the citizens of Burundi, and in 2007 he established Village Health Works.
“I grabbed the community members and said, ‘Let’s do something together,’” Niyizonkiza said. “We did that, and it was remarkable to see all of these enemies carrying bricks and singing songs. It’s amazing to see what is possible when you bring people together.”
Since its opening, the health clinic has served more than 55,000 people, regardless of gender, race or the ability to pay. The community-driven health organization is what makes Village Health Works “unique among nongovernmental organizations,” Niyizonkiza said.
“It takes time, but giving up is not an option,” Niyizonkiza said. “When people get together, it’s the right thing.”