Immaculeé’s faith carried her through the
darkest days of the Rwandan genocide.
For about one hundred days thousands of Hutus armed with machetes and
other makeshift weapons hunted Tutsi neighbors like 24-year-old Immaculeé
Ilibagiza and her family. Her memoir, Left
to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, gives a harrowing
account of survival under the most stressful of conditions, as she and six
other women hid in a Hutu pastor’s small bathroom for three months. Immaculeé became a U.S. citizen a couple of
months ago and continues to write books about her Catholic faith.
Over the years I’ve had students read memoirs in
order to understand a historical event. Immaculeé’s
account and another memoir, Paul Rusesabagina’s An Ordinary Man, discussed below, can draw the student into this
somber topic more than a straightforward history book, and fortunately I have
the academic freedom to choose my texts and experiment with the curriculum. To supplement these personal accounts with a
wider perspective, I usually include a short online article that gives students
the necessary background information. In
the case of Rwanda, it’s important to show that both the perpetrators and
victims were real people who made moral choices and faced the gravest of moral dilemmas. The subject requires careful analysis
and measured discussion, as many students tend to write off the “Dark
Continent,” to use the old colonial phrase, as a place where life is not valued
and mass violence is the norm. We know
that the genocide could have been avoided every step of the way; it was not the
product of inevitable “ancient tribal hatreds.”
What I hope my students realize is that political forces on the local,
national, and international level instigated the flames of hate and allowed
them to continue unabated. A Tutsi army
invading from the north of the country managed to end the holocaust without
help from the United States and in spite of French assistance to the Hutu
opposition.
After the spring of 1994, Rwanda is not so much
the country of mountain gorilla preserves, banana groves, and free trade coffee
as perhaps it once was in the eyes of the international community. The Land of a Thousand Hills is the site of
one of the worse and most systematic massacres of a people in world history,
and it continues to offer lessons in humanity, or the lack thereof. The genocide tested the resolve of the United
Nations, United
States and France to intervene and save lives, but the
international response was found wanting in the small African nation’s hour of direst need. We also get insights into the
fragility of civilization. Victims
suffered excruciating death at the bloodied hands of neighbors and old family
friends, as well as professional death squads.
Motivated by fear or a sense of ethnic obligation and historic
comeuppance preached rabidly by Hutu extremists, the perpetrators were
relentless in their pursuit of “cockroaches” and “snakes” hiding in the swamps,
churches, or a pastor’s secret bathroom.
As the subtitle of her book suggests, Immaculeé
searches for God in the darkness. The author’s religious faith gives students another perspective, as the other texts in my course give a secular or Muslim point of view. The
physical comfort was bad enough, but the “mental anguish,” she writes, “was
even more intense. I was trapped alone
with my thoughts, and the dark fears and doubts that had haunted me since my
arrival became relentless—they wormed into my heart and undermined the
foundation of my faith.” Killers lurked
outside and on a few occasions they entered the house looking for victims. Fortunately they never spotted the bathroom
door hidden behind a large wardrobe. “When
the killers were out of earshot, my thoughts drifted away from God, and the
negative energy rushed in.”
A key theme of the book is forgiveness. Admittedly, I have an
issue with her view of forgiveness, though I don’t necessarily share my opinion
in the classroom. I understand the
therapeutic importance of forgiveness.
Bitterness and hate can destroy a person. It’s important to let it go and not keep it
bottled up inside. To a certain extent I
admire people who take this road less travelled. Most of us want vengeance. Still, forgiving those who commit heinous
acts can border on the ridiculous and even irresponsible. And I
think it’s great if someone can “discover God” during evil times, but one
must keep things in perspective, no? “I thanked Him for delivering us to the bathroom,”
writes Immaculeé. “I truly believed that
God had guided Pastor Murinzi to bring us here.” That’s wonderful, but what about the other
victims who weren’t so lucky? Did God, a
“cosmic sadist,” abandon them? I like to
elicit the students’ opinion on the following statement from Immaculeé: “The
killers are good people, but right now evil has a hold on their hearts.” Readers of this blog know my view here, but it's open for debate and I welcome the students' take on evil provided that they give a decent rationale for their view. In sum, Left
to Tell yields good classroom discussion and students learn some things about
genocide by reading a survivor’s memoir that they would not otherwise learn.
