Metrowest Daily News 1/19/09: High School Notebook: Mbudimbu’s assimilation helped by sports success. Mbudimbu, a sophomore, has been in the country for only two and a half years, but he already comes across as a normal American high school teenager. Walking through the Wayland Field House, Mbudimbu slaps five and banters with classmates while they call for his attention, as popular with his peers as if he’d been in the school system since kindergarten. But Mbudimbu’s path to the high school has been much more circuitous. The DR Congo has been embroiled in a decade-long conflict that has claimed over 5 million lives and been called the deadliest war since World War II. Included among the casualties were Mbudimbu’s parents. To escape the turmoil, Mbudimbu and his siblings came to the United States, where the three have settled in Wayland.