Spry Voice

In 1994, Deogratias “Deo” Niyizonkiza delivered groceries to the homes of affluent New Yorkers for nothing but the occasional tip. He spoke little English and had been sleeping in an abandoned Harlem building and, later, Central Park. A year earlier, Deo was a medical student back in Burundi whose education had been torn apart by war. Sharon McKenna, a former nun, was one of the people Deo delivered groceries to. When she heard him speak French, a conversation began and a friendship was formed. Sharon would help Deo meet a couple who became a sort of surrogate family, and they invited him to move into their Soho loft. Niyizonkiza had grown up in rural Burundi. He was in his third year of medical school in 1993 when the assassination of President Melchior Ndadaye, the country’s first democratically elected Hutu president, triggered retaliatory killings. As a Tutsi, Niyizonkiza was in danger. His studies ended abruptly, and he fled. By the time he reached New York the following year, the structure of his former life had vanished. He had no secure home, no command of English and no clear route back into medicine. Grocery delivery offered subsistence, but it also produced the encounter that gradually opened another path. With help from his new family and friends, Niyizonkiza studied English and entered Columbia University’s School of General Studies and earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and philosophy, pursued public-health studies at Harvard and later continued his medical education at Dartmouth. When Niyizonkiza went back to Burundi after years away, he found a country where the war had damaged not only hospitals and roads but also the trust that allowed communities to function. In Kigutu, near the shores of Lake Tanganyika, he convened residents to discuss what rebuilding might require. The locals donated land and labor. American students and supporters supplied early funds. Niyizonkiza took leave from Dartmouth and lived in a tent for approximately 15 months while helping manage construction. The health center that opened in December 2007 became the foundation of Village Health Works. Its programs expanded beyond clinical treatment into nutrition, agriculture, clean water, education and economic development. By 2022, the organization employed more than 700 people and served a catchment area of over 200,000 residents. Its work also reached a threshold that would once have seemed remote: a hospital capable of providing surgery, intensive care and advanced maternal and newborn treatment. Isitoshe, The 150-bed Kigutu Hospital and Women’s Health Pavilion opened in June 2023. Its four operating rooms, maternity facilities, neonatal intensive-care unit and adult intensive-care unit address needs made especially urgent by Burundi’s severe shortage of physicians and midwives. The institution is a public contribution measured not just in beds or procedures, but in care that patients no longer have to leave their country to seek. America gave Deo refuge, education and relationships that altered his prospects. Yet the central achievement was his decision to bridge the distance between American and Burundi by carrying knowledge and institutional support back to a place whose losses remained part of him. May the day break