GORHAM – A man driven from his African homeland by violence has recently been honored for his work in Gorham as a site manager for elderly residents.

Georges Budagu Makoko, 39, a property manager for Avesta Housing, was selected last month by the USDA Rural Development for the 2012 Site Manager of the Year for Housing for the Elderly in Maine.

Makoko is the property manager at Village Square Apartments off School Street in Gorham.

“It was one of my biggest surprises ever,” Makoko, a Portland resident, said.

He said Barbara Soloway, Avesta’s regional property manager, called him for a meeting in the main office. He was unaware the award was coming.

“We’re very proud of him,” Soloway said last week.

Virginia Manuel, state director of USDA Rural Development, lauded Makoko for his hard work and caring.

“Georges has constantly gone above and beyond what is expected, and he is very deserving of this important recognition,” Manuel said in a prepared statement.

Makoko, who immigrated to the United States in 2002, has worked eight years for Avesta. He was born in Congo and moved in 1994 to Rwanda following the genocide. He lost family in the genocide that claimed about a million lives.

He arrived in the United States for a conference and stayed.

“It wasn’t safe for me to go back,” said Makoko, who became a U.S. citizen.

His wife, Lise, and their son Ael, almost 4, live in Canada, where she is a citizen. He’s waiting for approval for his family to move here. He and his wife met and became friends in Rwanda before she immigrated to Canada. They were married in the United States in 2007.

He’s been instrumental in raising awareness here of continued violence in Africa. In 2004, 163 members of his tribe were massacred and 200 wounded in a refugee camp in the nation of Burundi.

“I lost three cousins,” he said. “It was horrible.”

He helped organize a march in Portland. Last week, he said that since 1996 that violence has claimed about 6 million lives in Congo. And people are “still dying even now,” he said. “The Congo is very unstable.”

Statistics are staggering. Since 1993 in three countries – Congo, Burundi and Rwanda – he said about 7 million people have died.

He’s frustrated that the violence continues.

To improve his life, Makoko gained an education. He graduated from the National University of Rwanda with a bachelor’s degree in economic sciences, social science and management. He speaks seven languages, including Swahili and French.

In Congo, people live on an average of $1 per day, he said.

“We’re powerless, we can’t change anything there,” he said.

He praised opportunities available to him in the United States and his duties working for Avesta. “The work that we do is inspiring. I am glad to be part of such a noble mission,” he said.

In his office at Village Square Apartments in Gorham, Georges Budagu Makoko, who has achieved success here, tells of genocide and continued violence in his homeland in Central Africa.