Author: Tammy Lane • First Posted: Monday, July 14, 2008

 For Pierre Manga, who will receive his high school diploma Monday from Henry Clay High School, it’s a long way from fleeing rebel forces in his native Congo to celebrating with fellow graduates at Rupp Arena.

  Beginning Sunday, close to 2,000 seniors will graduate from Fayette County’s five high schools. Each has conquered challenges – personal, academic or otherwise – in order to reach this milestone. Each has a story to tell.

  Through struggles most would consider extreme, 19-year-old Manga has emerged grateful for the opportunities that have come his way.

  The oldest of three boys, Manga has carried heavy burdens, helping his brothers escape almost certain death, reuniting his family and grappling to learn English and make his way as a refugee in the United States. Through his journey, Manga – who is described as caring, humble and mature – exudes a spirit of determination that few can even aspire to and is thankful for the path that brought him to America.

  “We finally feel like it’s a home away from home,” he said of Lexington.

  His soccer teammates and coaches at Henry Clay have been the backbone of his support network. “We’re close and feel like one family,” said Manga, the team’s leading goal scorer.

  Tim Bernardi, a science teacher and the head coach, said Manga has taught his Henry Clay peers plenty.

  “He’s not afraid to say to students how lucky they have it, just growing up in this country and getting the education that they’re getting … and how fortunate they are, compared to where he came from,” Bernardi said.

  Manga’s journey began in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where his family was torn apart. As he wrote in a recent college application essay: “At the age of 12, the path of my life changed forever.”

  His father, a pastor, left home early in 2001 to do missions work. Two months later, rebels overran the town and pushed Manga’s family out of their home. Within two years, Manga’s twin brother, Jacob, was shot to death and their mother was kidnapped. “Her last words to me were ‘Take care of your brothers.’”

  And so Manga found himself the sole protector of Philip and John.

  “Years later, I would come to find out that our father had tried to get back to us, only to be kidnapped himself,” he wrote.

  Manga’s family was targeted because his father is a nephew of Patrice Lumumba, the DRC’s first prime minister. Though Lumumba was assassinated in 1961, tensions over his political philosophies remained high.

  The boys had taken shelter in a Catholic mission, but ultimately fled the encroaching violence. “I did not want my brothers to suffer what I had,” Manga wrote, referring to the rebels’ beatings.

  The three boys ran into the thick rainforest and made their way more than 150 miles to another village; much of the time, Manga carried the youngest, who was weak from hunger.

  “I remember sitting down and praying and then just waiting,” Manga wrote. “Several hours must have passed and then God answered my prayers. A large tree fell across the river and formed a bridge. … I knew we were going to make it. God was with us, and I had new strength.”

  After the boys spent five months begging on the streets, a pastor who had gone to school with their father recognized them and took them to a Red Cross shelter. A few months later, they were airlifted to Kenya and reunited with their father, who had escaped from his captors. It had been more than three years since the boys had seen their dad.

  “I had to tell him the bad news about our mother and Jacob,” Manga wrote in his essay. “I think that may have been the hardest thing I had to do in all that time that we were apart.”

  Classified as refugees, the family arrived in Lexington in February 2005. The transition was understandably difficult. About 1½ years later, Manga started working 30 hours a week at a Kentucky Fried Chicken to help pay the family’s bills. He’d go to school, soccer practice and work, then come home to do chores and tend to his brothers.

  That fall, Kirsten, a girl who also played soccer at Henry Clay, met the Manga boys and told her mother they needed a hand.

  “He calls me his American fill-in mom,” said Paula Hollis, who lives about a mile from the family’s Richmond Road apartment.

  With Hollis’ two daughters now grown and out of the house, she has embraced the role – making dinner for Manga and his brothers, doing their laundry, providing a routine.

  “It’s been a help (to their father), and I’m glad to do it. They’re good kids,” said Hollis, who attends Macedonia Christian Church.

  Manga praised Hollis in his essay, saying, “She taught us to laugh again.”

  Even broader smiles broke out last December when the boys got word that their mother, Christine, was found alive in a mission near their home village. A few weeks later, the brothers talked with her by phone – their first contact in more than four years.

  “I cannot wait to hold her in my arms,” Manga wrote.

  African Inland Missions is working with the DRC to get her to Kenya, where she will apply for refugee status.

  “We’re told she could possibly be here by the end of August,” Hollis said. “What she’s missed, at least I can fill in (the blanks) for her.”

  Manga will have a lot to tell his birth mother, too – about playing high school soccer, learning English (his fourth language), working part-time at KFC and Home Depot, attending Centenary Methodist Church, preparing for Transylvania University.

  People who hear Manga’s story are amazed at his family’s resilience, Hollis said.

  “The boys have taught me how precious life is and how not to take anything for granted. Plus, to be thankful for the little things,” she said.

   As an empty-nester, Hollis had prayed about possibilities in the mission field.

  “I have gotten to do missions work,” she said. “I just didn’t know they’d be ringing my doorbell.”

  Meanwhile, Manga is looking forward to the next phase of his life. As he ended his essay: “My American mom reminds me every day that God saved me for a purpose and to trust him to show me that purpose. That is good advice.”

IF YOU GO
All the graduations will be at Rupp Arena. The doors open one hour before each ceremony.

Sunday June 1:
4 p.m.: Lafayette
7 p.m.: Paul Laurence Dunbar

Monday June 2:
1 p.m.: Tates Creek
4 p.m.: Bryan Station
7 p.m.: Henry Clay