Yesterday, I wrote about Devota Nyiraneza, who walked 2,485 miles across Central Africa to escape the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, and who came to America – to Albany, in May of 2007. She is a U.S.Citizen, working two jobs to pay off a $10,000 loan she mistakenly thought was a financial aid package for her son.

She suffered near starvation, rape and severe exposure on her journey, you can read about it here. Today, a number of people messaged me to say they wished to donate money to help her, and so I have agreed to collect donations, which I will turn over to her.

If you wish to contribute, you can send a check (please mark it Devota Fund) to Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816, or you can send it to me via Paypal Friends and Family, my ID is [email protected], I have already received more than $1,000 without even asking.

I think this is something the Army of Good wants to do. And it is something I wish to do.

Devota is a courageous human being, hers is a remarkable story. She is full of grace and acceptance. She risked everything to get to America and is working hard every day to build a life her for herself and her children, all of them the result of sexual assaults on her walk and in refugee camps.

This is truthful story about the real life of a real refugee, not the ones whose lives and character have been so viciously caricatured by our ambitious and heartless political leaders. Devota is a credit to any country she lives in, she works two jobs, one working with the disabled for Catholic Charities, another, cleaning hospital rooms at the Albany Medical Center.  She has no hard or angry words for anyone.

Sadly, she left her family behind, they are no longer permitted to come to America. You can read my piece about her here.

The journey took her a year, she had no shoes or extra clothes or shelter. Many of the people she set out to walk with were slaughtered by farmers guarding their crops from starving refugees fleeing mass murders.

Thanks for considering this, I will visit her and follow her story. My sense is she wishes to take care of herself, and does not wish other kinds of support. But she is paying this loan off at the rate of $125 a month, and that will take a long time. Her son has left college to help pay for a different loan he took out to become an engineer.

Even if we don’t get to $10,000 anything we do get will be helpful to her. And we are already off to an impressive start, this one got ahead of me. Thank you for even thinking about this. Small donations matter. Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816 or Paypal, [email protected]. Small donations matter.