Chimpanzees Killed the Boys He Was Playing With. Surgeons Rebuilt His Face From His Own Arm. Then He Became a Wrestling Champion.

Dunia Sibomana was 6, playing near the edge of Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, when a troop of chimpanzees came out of the trees. His younger brother and a cousin — some early reports said a friend — did not survive. Dunia did, with his lips torn off, part of a cheek gone, facial muscle destroyed, part of his right ear missing, and a finger bitten away. He learned to eat by tipping his head back so food would stay in. Speech was broken. Other children taunted him until he left school.

Two years later a nonprofit, Smile Rescue Fund for Kids, and a retired Long Island dentist named Leon Klempner got him to Stony Brook Children’s Hospital. In January 2016, plastic surgeon Alexander Dagum led a rare operation: tissue and a nerve taken from Dunia’s forearm, veins sewn under a microscope, the beginnings of new lips. More surgeries followed — a dozen and then some. An infection set one of them back. The work was donated. The first small victory was a slurp of chicken broth that stayed in his mouth.

He lived with host and foster families in Brooklyn and on Long Island while he learned English. On a beach he met Miguel and Marissa Rodriguez. They later adopted him. Wrestling entered the house with them. The shy kid who spoke softly because of the damage to his mouth started winning. By eighth grade he was a Nassau County and New York state champion. He kept stacking titles. He is now Dunia Sibomana-Rodriguez: multiple state champion, national-level wrestler, headed to the University of North Carolina, sometimes speaking about the country he left and the children who never got the plane ticket.

The park is still there. The scars are still there. What changed is the plot after the attack: not a life defined by the animals that almost ended it, but a face rebuilt from his own body, a family that signed the papers, and a sport that gave him a place to put the force that used to have nowhere to go.

Sources

• CNN and Reuters reporting on the 2016 Stony Brook reconstructive surgeries
• Newsday coverage of the attack, treatment, infection setback, adoption, and wrestling career
• New York Post and PEOPLE profiles of Dunia Sibomana-Rodriguez as a high-school champion
• Olympics.com interview with Dunia and adoptive father Miguel Rodriguez