A decade ago, Rye Barcott was a walking contradiction - a soon-to-be Marine officer who longed to fight a war, an idealistic UNC Chapel Hill student committed to waging peace.
Amazingly, he did both, on different continents, at the same time. Barcott, who lives in Charlotte and works for Duke Energy, recounts his unusual journey in a new memoir, "It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine's Path to Peace"
Out on Tuesday, the story of how Barcott helped build a nonprofit, Carolina for Kibera, in Kenya's largest slum while serving in the Marines is the lead nonfiction title this season for Bloomsbury, the book's publisher.
He sets off on a national book and education tour this week, an international tour this summer. He's hoping to spread his book's message that helping people in poverty means giving them the tools they need and realizing that they know best how to solve their own problems.
"Talent is universal," Barcott says. "Opportunity is not."
In the book, we learn how Barcott arrives at that conclusion as he recounts his own coming-of-age story. It begins in Chapel Hill as Barcott, a rising senior from Rhode Island, sets off on a summer trip to do research for an honors thesis.
Inspired by a trip to Africa when he was 14, he has arranged to study ethnic violence among youths in Kibera ( key-bear-ah), Nairobi. He wants an adventure. He's also looking for a way to make a difference.
In the book, Barcott introduces us to Kibera's tin-roof shacks, its dangers and its energy. This Nairobi slum - one of the largest in the world - is the size of New York's Central Park and home to more than 200,000 people.
Half the population is younger than 15, and despite raw sewage and lack of safe drinking water, the place feels vital, compelling.
During his stay, he meets the two people who become his colleagues - Salim Mohamed, who grew up in a nearby orphanage, and Tabitha Festo, a nurse who persuades him to lend her $26. Her plan is to sell vegetables and use profits to open a free clinic.
When he returns to Chapel Hill, he commits to starting a youth sports program in Kibera that would promote peace by putting rival tribe members on the same teams.
But Barcott has another commitment, too. He went to UNC-CH, his parents' alma mater, on an ROTC scholarship. He wants to follow in the footsteps of his father, who served as a Marine in Vietnam. After graduation, he goes on to complete officers' training, then military service in Bosnia, the Horn of Africa and, finally, Iraq.
Over the next five years, with the blessings of his superiors, Barcott serves his country, and, on his time off, nurtures his fledging nonprofit.
Worlds converge
Most of the time, he keeps these two worlds compartmentalized, rarely speaking about Kibera to his military comrades.
One day, the two worlds converge. He has gone to Abu Ghraib, the infamous Iraqi prison, to interview two boys accused of assassinating a city council official in Fallujah, Iraq. The boys are 11 and 15.
After the interrogation, he sees the boys playing soccer with other young prisoners. Until that moment, he has viewed them as the enemy. Now, he realizes they're kids, "caught in the crossfire, born to circumstances they couldn't control."
"... there had to be a better way toward peace than this, our detention at Abu Ghraib of two kids almost half my age," he writes. "At a fundamental level it was like Kibera. It shouldn't happen. It wasn't right."
Today, 10-year-old Carolina for Kibera has a $650,000 annual budget and multiple programs. The Tabitha Clinic, launched with Barcott's $26 loan to Festo, now serves more than 40,000 people each year.
Barcott has gotten attention before. In 2006, while he was serving as a captain in Iraq, he was honored by ABC News as its Person of the Week - a young American "who fights two wars at once." He's a Time magazine "Hero of Global Health" and a TED fellow, a program for "world-changing innovators."
After leaving the Marines in 2006, Barcott received master's degrees in business and public administration from Harvard. Then he spent a year writing his memoir, often at Owen's Bagel & Deli Shop in Charlotte's South End.
Last summer, he took a job in Duke Energy's sustainability office. He wanted to do something that mattered, he said in an interview, and he sees climate change as "one of the defining issues of our time."
He lives in Charlotte with his wife, Tracy Dobbins Barcott, a child psychologist who grew up in Harrisburg. They have a 10-month-old daughter, Charlotte. He serves on Carolina for Kibera's board of directors.
Do it now
Barcott is 32 now, energetic and earnest, with a boyish smile. He finds the limelight "a little awkward," he said, because his book's message is about participatory development. "The whole point in Kibera is to recognize the heroes in these local communities."
But he also knows the book and ensuing publicity will benefit Carolina for Kibera. A portion of sales will go to the nonprofit, now a well-known institution housed at UNC Chapel Hill that draws support from many students.
Barcott wrote his book with college students in mind. Many "are looking for ways to make a difference and serve," he said. He wants them to know they don't have to wait for status or title to make an impact. "You can do it now."
