An individual overcomes unbelievable odds, in a tale so implausible that it might well be rejected if it were a mere movie script, but it is a true story. In “Strength in What Remains,” Tracy Kidder tells us about a member of the Tutsi ethnic group in Burundi named Deogratias, or Deo, who barely escapes the Hutu slaughter of Tutsis in a harrowing journey on foot out of Burundi and Rwanda in central Africa during the genocidal year 1994. Deo makes his way to New York City but arrives penniless and speaking no English. He sleeps on a scrap of floor in crime-ridden tenements, endures abusive low-wage employment and then finds himself homeless, living in Central Park.
Despite such unpromising beginnings, Deo goes on to earn a degree in organic chemistry and philosophy from Columbia University and then gets into Dartmouth Medical School. From Dartmouth, he takes time off to start a free health clinic back in Burundi—in his home village, a mark of his forgiveness for those who had tried to kill him and a sign of hope for Burundi’s future.
Read the rest of the review of Tracy Kidder’s book in today’s Wall Street Journal, here.
3 Comments
Mr. Easterly,
As a long-time reader of both your popular and academic work, I was a bit surprised at something you wrote in your book review in today’s Wall Street Journal. Making the debatable, but fair, point that many authors focus too heavily on doom and gloom in Africa, you point out that “only” 0.01% of Africans have been killed by war and genocide… each year… for the past four decades. You’ve got an interesting point! This is only slightly higher than the percentage of Europeans who died in the Holocaust each year between 1940 and 1945, meaning that Africa has merely suffered something like a 40-year Holocaust — hardly worth mentioning when you consider that, at any given time, fewer than half the nations on that continent are engaged in wars, and islands of prosperity like Ghana have managed impressive per-capita GDP growth of -0.1% over the past 50 years.
In fact, 0.01% is significantly lower than the percentage of Americans killed each year in the second world war (0.08% or so, on average), a minor conflict barely mentioned in writings of the time, which mostly focused on how pleasant Switzerland was. During the Vietnam conflict we were losing only about 0.002% of our population each year for about 16 years — 5 times fewer casualties as a proportion of the population, and less than half the duration of Africa’s little war/genocide problem — and people would barely shut up about it!
Thus I propose that we adopt 0.01% of the population as the Easterly Threshold, requiring that any discussion of a conflict failing to achieve this level of decimation (millidecimation?) include a disclaimer that most of the population has not, in fact, yet died. Where populations are suitably difficult for us Americans to distinguish from one another, this percentage will be calculated on an arbitrarily continental or sub-continental basis (I’m just going to be charitable and assume you excluded North Africa) so as not to unduly focus on the mere handful of countries where every vestige of civilization has been nearly wiped out by decades of constant warfare. This immediately puts the whole history of the 20th century in a much rosier light: using the Easterly Threshold, a group like the Khmer Rouge barely clears the hurdle, massacring just 0.012% of Asia’s population in a year, whilst pathetic Saddam Hussein, even by the most charitable estimates, slaughtered a mere 0.007% of the world’s Arabs each year he was in power.
Sarcasm aside, the only reason I’m writing is that I’ve always respected your intellectual honesty even when I disagree with some of your conclusions, and your work in drawing attention to the urgent necessity of improving the quality and quantity of aid directed at helping the poor was a large part of my motivation to pursue a master’s degree in international development, which I begin next month (the bigger impetus was my time in the Peace Corps, where I saw firsthand the casual disregard of American aid bureaucrats for the worth or effectiveness of the “development” work we were supposed to be doing). When I open my Wall Street Journal, I expect the misleading representations of large numbers to be in the health care column du jour, not book reviews by academics I respect!
Regards,
Jonathan Custer
Lakeland, Florida (soon Birmingham, England)
In which I don’t care about genocides that kill only .01 percent of the population
My WSJ review on Tracy Kidder’s book on the Burundian genocide survivor generated this comment from a reader (abbreviated here, the full version is posted as a comment on the blog): Mr. Easterly, You point out that “only” 0.01% of…
Another success story from Brundi
http://www.smcm.edu/rivergazette/_assets/PDF/sept06/sept06/longroadhome.pdf
The student mentioned in the story is studying for a Master’s Degree at Al Azhar University in Cairo.