He sought asylum. She was seeking to help. Friday, he graduated from law school.

It had been decades since Fred Mbuga had a mother figure in his life. Then Dorothy Berry called out of the blue.

When he was a boy in Uganda, his village was attacked. His family scattered. He lived in the bush with his father for five years, riding out the war – uncertain whether his mother was alive. They eventually reunited, but she died when he was a teen.

The story of how Mr. Mbuga ended up in the United States – kidnapped, tortured, and seeking asylum – was published in the Monitor in 2018.

Something grabbed Dr. Berry’s heart as she read about this man pursuing a law degree at night while working two jobs, supporting not only himself but also his sister and 11 children, including his own three, back in Uganda. Dr. Berry also had worked nights through medical school. So she wrote to the Monitor.

Mr. Mbuga “sounds like an intelligent, hard-working, huge-hearted man,” the recent retiree typed. “I’m not hugely wealthy, but could help him with $250 or $300 a month.”

Mr. Mbuga, whom the Monitor in 2018 had identified by a pseudonym due to his fear of persecution by the Ugandan government, was hesitant. But he agreed. 

“Since that day, she became my mother,” he says, sitting at a school cafeteria table with a maroon graduation gown folded in front of him. “If it hadn’t been for her, I would have quit.”

Through five-plus years of phone calls and visits, the relationship has enriched – and changed – them both. It is a testament to the rewards that redound to those who give.

“I’ve never been a mother, but I would imagine the experience was like the experience of seeing her child grow and become more secure in the world,” says Dr. Berry, who has also helped several others whom she has encountered through news outlets. “I felt great pride in his strengths, and great joy in his overcoming obstacles.”

“I’m able to look with a little bit softer eyes, or softer heart, at struggles that immigrants have,” she adds.

Perhaps the greatest struggle came when the refugee resettlement agency where Mr. Mbuga worked got a sudden influx of Afghan refugees after the U.S. pullout in August 2021. 

There was no time for homework – or for rest. Once, he fell asleep in the school parking lot, missing the class happening just inside. He flunked the fall semester. He enrolled in the same classes the next semester. He flunked again.

He didn’t see a way forward. But he couldn’t figure out how he was going to tell “Dr. Dorothy” he was dropping out after all she had invested. 

“I told him, ‘It’s a speed bump; it’s not the end of the road,’” she says in a phone call from Arizona. 

That road had been long. He had thought hard at the outset about whether to pursue this degree or use his commercial truck driver’s license to earn a better living. He’d had to prioritize earning money before, including when his father, tortured during the war, became too weak to support the family.

“Then my heart told me, ‘No – you go for school,’” he recalls, putting on his tie as his classmates get lined up for graduation. “I’ve been struggling to go to school since childhood.”

Mr. Mbuga – the first from his village to earn an undergraduate degree – added to that a diploma from the Massachusetts School of Law on June 7. It was a poignant symbol of all he’s accomplished. But it was not the only one.

His persistence also won asylum for his children – Maurice (20), Jeremiah (18), and Pamela (15) – and he was finally able to bring them to the U.S. in March after 12 years apart.

And back in Arizona, there was a heart softened by seeing the world through the eyes of an immigrant.

It belonged to his “Mum.”