In 1972, Lazaro Busuku, at 61, already was becoming an old man, by central African standards, when he fled from a genocidal civil war in his native country of Burundi.

He was in his 80s in 1994, when another genocide, this one even worse, struck in Rwanda, the country where he had taken refuge. He was forced to flee for his life again.

He then survived 13 years of refugee camp life in Tanzania. By this time, he had lived into his 90s in a place where people rarely see 60.

Then Busuku had to move again.

Burundi had been declared safer, and Tanzania and other host countries were about to send hundreds of thousands of Burundian refugees like him home.

The United Nations and United States, though, agreed that there could be no safe home in Burundi for Busuku and about 9,000 others who had lived as refugees since 1972. The U.S. State Department offered to resettle most of them in the United States, wherever local agencies were willing and able to place them.

An Omaha agency that has brought many other African refugees to the city leaped at the chance to bring Busuku here, along with the Burundian refugee family who had taken him in as one of their own at the camps.

So it was that a flight dropped out of the night sky into Omaha's Eppley Airfield, delivering one of the oldest refugees America has ever accepted to his latest, and probably his last, home.

Busuku was 96 when he arrived in Omaha on July 31. A U.N. medical escort rolled him into the Eppley terminal in a wheelchair. He smiled and cracked jokes to the delegation that rushed to meet him and his adoptive family.

Over the following six weeks, Busuku has had some digestive trouble with American food. But physically he's relatively healthy, and he's mentally sharp, say local resettlement agency workers.

The Burundians, members of the Hutu ethnic group, said they lived in difficult conditions in the Ngara refugee camp in Tanzania, often eating just one meal a day. Few had jobs or schooling. They weren't allowed to go more than about two miles from the camp.

"If you live to be 65 in those conditions, you are considered very lucky, very blessed," said former Sudanese refugee Tor Kuet, director of Omaha's Southern Sudan Community Association, which resettled Busuku. "Someone this old - I have never seen that before."

Neither had several other refugee resettlement workers in Omaha and nationally heard of such an ancient wanderer coming to American shores.

"Ninety-six?! You might have broken the record for the oldest refugee," said Joel R. Charny of Refugees International, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.

In Iowa, only six people resettled so far this year were older than 65, said Jill Stuecker, who manages the Des Moines office of Refugee Cooperative Services with Lutheran Services in Iowa.

The reasons it is so rare to see such an elderly refugee resettled in the United States are twofold: First, people generally don't live that long in the war-torn areas from which refugees flee, or in camps where they take refuge. Just 3 percent of the so-called 1972 Burundian refugees are over 60. Second, elderly people often don't want to be moved to another continent.

Busuku was among the first wave of 1972 Burundians to be resettled in Omaha. More than 25 have come so far. Their cases are being handled by two local agencies, the Southern Sudan Community Association and Lutheran Family Services.

Language barriers and other issues have made it difficult to hear Busuku's story from him. He apparently speaks only his native language of Kirundi, not a common tongue in Omaha. Since shortly after his arrival, Busuku has been staying in Bellevue with a former refugee family from Sudan. Attempts to arrange an in-depth interview through the family have been unsuccessful.

Kuet said that family took Busuku in because his caretaker family from Africa - a woman in her 50s with two teenage daughters - initially was placed in a third-floor apartment, whereas the Bellevue family has a house. Busuku cannot negotiate stairs.

The Bellevue family also is affiliated with a church, which provides a broader support network, Kuet said.

But the mother and the teen daughters said last week in their midtown Omaha apartment that they and Busuku were upset at being separated. In reply, Kuet said he'd make it a priority to arrange other housing - a first-floor apartment or a house - so that they can be reunited.

More Information on Armed Conflict in the Americas

More Information on Armed Conflict in Other Areas