Left To Tell

Immaculée Ilibagiza huddled with seven other women in the 3' x 4' bathroom of her pastor’s home, silently praying and clinging to her rosary beads as she heard Hutus shouting her name outside the door.

“We know she’s here somewhere,” they yelled,
 stomping through the house, overturning furniture like a tornado. This wasn’t the first time the Hutus had come searching for her — and it wouldn’t be the last.

“Every time they came looking for me, I thought I would be found. I thought I would die,” Ilibagiza said.

She was never found, and she didn’t die. Ilibagiza — a member of the Tutsi tribe — survived for 91 days in the hidden bathroom, while genocide raged outside the pastor’s home and throughout the small, central African nation of Rwanda.

“The only thing that got me through was my faith in God,” she said.

Ilibagiza was a 23-year-old electrical engineering student when the genocide began. It was April 1994, and she was home from the National University of Rwanda for Easter break.

Suddenly, the Rwandan president’s plane was shot down over the capital city of Kigali. The assassination of the Hutu president sparked months of massacres of Tutsi tribe members throughout the country. Not even small, rural communities like Ilibagiza’s were spared from the house-by-house slaughter of men, women and children.

Ilibagiza’s father urged her to run to the local pastor’s home for shelter. There she sat for three months, praying with her rosary beads. The beads were a gift from her father, who was a director of Catholic schools.

Food was scarce at the pastor’s home. In three months, Ilibagiza dropped from 150 pounds to 65 pounds. Though her body atrophied, her mind and spirit remained strong. Using a Bible and a dictionary, she spent countless hours in the cramped bathroom learning English. She was already fluent in Kinyarwanda and French.

After 91 days of terror, Ilibagiza’s prayers were answered. She was liberated from her bathroom prison cell only to face a horrific reality: Her entire family had been brutally murdered, with the exception of one brother who was studying abroad. Nearly 1 million Tutsis were massacred during the 100-day genocide.

“Deep inside of me, I knew my family had died while I was hiding in the bathroom,” Ilibagiza said. “I also knew they were in Heaven, and they had died in the most honorable way trying to protect their family.”

In 1998, Ilibagiza emigrated to the United States to work for the United Nations promoting peace. During that time, she shared her story with coworkers and friends who encouraged her to write it down.

Ilibagiza’s first book, “Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust,” was published in March 2006 and quickly became a New York Times bestseller. The book, which has sold over 1 million copies, received a Christopher Award, “affirming the highest values of human spirit.” A movie based on her story is in the works.

Ilibagiza, 43, has received honorary doctoral degrees from several universities and has been honored with numerous humanitarian awards, including the Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Reconciliation and Peace.

Altogether, Ilibagiza has written seven books about the Rwandan genocide, faith and forgiveness. She travels the world speaking at conferences, events, schools and churches.


True Vineyard Ministries will welcome Immaculée to St. Edward's University in Austin on September 6 and to the Oblate Center on September 7.  Tickets on sale at www.truevineyard.org.

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