Deo was a third year medical student in Burundi when violence erupted between the Hutus and Tutsis, two different ethnic groups in the area.  Deo shares some of his earlier life and how he first heard the words “Hutu” and “Tutsi” but also how this was not a difference that you could necessarily see by looking at your neighbors and friends.  These are two groups who lived side by side, shared food religion and culture.  As a Tutsi his life was threatened during this time in Burundi and Deo hid in the hospital that he worked in while many people were killed and then fled for six months on food into Rwanada and straight into the midst of more killing and death.  Deo unlikely got a work visa that allowed him to escape to New York City.

Deo arrived in New York City with $200 knowing no one.  He working as a delivery person for a grocery store and slept in abandoned warehouses and Central Park until he started making friends who worked together to help him.  He ended up being able to go to Columbia and continue his pursuit for a medical degree.  Deo experiences a lot of confusion, nightmares and depression while he is living in New York and adjusting to his life in America.  He finds his peace through medicine.

Deo is connected with Dr. Paul Farmer (from Mountains beyone Mountains by Tracy Kidder) and ends up working for Partners In Health (PIH) and learning about their system of health care and clinics in Haiti and other countries.  Deo decides to return to Burundi to try to bring a similar system of healthcare there.  He takes Tracy Kidder through Burundi and goes through the horrors of his escape as wll as some of the highlights of his life there.  Deo returns to his parents village and along with the community begins building a clinic that will serve all without regard to payment.  They train local workers to work within the community on prevention and other health issues.  One of the things that is mentioned in this book is that Deo does this in a community that is primarily Hutu at this point.  And he promotes peace and works to teach people to overlook this and live with each other promoting well being. 

I was very moved by this book and was glad to hear about how the work of Dr. Paul Farmer continues to impact individuals to promote change in the world.  I am sure that there are many other stories of horror and escape during this 1993-94 in Burundi and Rwanda and that there is resilience that I can not begin to understand.  What impressed me so much with this story is Deo’s drive to return to the place of his nightmares and work to make it a better place.

This is a book that tries details the unthinkable.  Elizabeth Neuffer in The Key to My Neighbor’s House provides historical information on the genocides that took place in Bosnia and in Rwanda in the early 1990s.  Adding to this is personal stories of different people who had witnessed and lived through these atrocities.  They lived and continued to carry on from day to day and to seek justice through Tribunals held at the Hague.

In 1994, in Rwanda, more than 800,000 Tutsis were killed with machetes, guns and any other means by Hutus.  The author makes the point that Hutus and Tutsis were not necessarily different ethnic groups but more like different castes.   In Bosnia, tensions between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims shattered apart with the mass murder.

In both of these cases the most heart wrenching peace of it for me was that we were there.  The rest of the world watched on television from a distance as these atrocities took place.  UN peace keepers stood by as these killings took place.  This book gives personal stories life as they talk about the despair and hopelessness they felt as they tried to get the world to act as those they loved were separated from them or killed.

She goes through the discovering of evidence through stories and unearthing of mass graves.  And she chronicles the search for justice both in the courtroom at the International Tribunals and the personal journey of telling your story and owning what people survived.  This is a difficult book to read because of the things that were done and the horror that it was not that long ago and that the world was aware as it happened.

I want to share one excerpt, the one that gave the book it’s name (I imagine.) The judge had asked a former principal of an elementary school how such a thing could happen with people who had gone to school together and lived as neighbors.  He replied, “It is difficult to answer, this question.  I am also at a loss.  I had the key to my next-door neighbor’s house who was a Serb and he had my key.  That is how we looked after each other.  We visited each other for holidays.  My best man at my wedding was a Serb.  We were friends and he was the same one who threatened us.  It is inexplicable what happened to those people.  It was some kind of madness.  I mean, one did not know whom to trust any more and I do not have a word of explanation for that.”

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