Where Was God in Rwanda?

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

by Immaculée Ilibagiza

Hay House, 2006

216 pages, $24.95

Available in bookstores

“I was born in paradise.” So begins the life story of Immaculée Ilibagiza, a young Catholic woman who grew up in Rwanda.

Based on her subsequent descriptions of the beauty of the African countryside, the love of her close-knit family and the centrality of the Catholic faith in that family’s life, it’s easy to see why she chose to begin her book with those five words. But Immaculée’s life in paradise came to screeching halt when her beloved country made a swift descent into one of the most shocking genocides in history.

Rwanda’s history is a complicated one that involves elements of colonialism, imposed rule and ethnic strife. In the early 1990s, tensions mounted between the Hutus and Tutsis, the country’s two largest groups (which are divided more by class than ethnicity). During peaceful times, the two had shared common landscapes, lifestyles and languages. By 1994, the situation escalated to the point that the Tutsi minority was being threatened with annihilation by the Hutu majority. In the period of a few months, approximately 1 million people would be killed; many of them chopped to death at the hands of former friends who had been transformed into machete-wielding warriors.

After fleeing for her life, Immaculée found refuge in the home of a Protestant pastor who hid her, along with several other women, in a tiny bathroom. During the 91 days they spent there, the women huddled together in silence, barely daring to breath for fear of being discovered. Immaculée provides vivid descriptions of this petrifying existence, recounting numerous points at which she could hear the “hunters” calling her name, scraping their machetes and declaring their intentions to execute her.

“During my waking hours I was in constant communication with God, praying and meditating for 15 to 20 hours every day,” she writes before recounting how, in the midst of the genocide, “I’d found my salvation. I knew that my bond with God would transcend the bathroom, the war and the holocaust  … [I]t was a bond I now knew would transcend life itself.”

When she emerges and makes her final run toward safety, Immaculée discovers that she has lost everyone closest to her. She responds with a profound act of faith, praying, “I’m putting my life in your hands, Jesus … [K]eep your promise and take care of me. I will keep my promise — I will be your faithful daughter.” Her words bear themselves out when she extends forgiveness to the man who orchestrated the murder of her family.

Some might find fault with this book for dealing with the Christian life in purely personal terms: It is not a work of evangelization, catechesis or even history per se (although the first-person account of life inside Rwanda during this period is certainly of historical value). Instead, it is a testimony to Jesus’ power to love a soul through even the most horrifying circumstances.

Read it as a real-life demonstration of Philippians 4:7: “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

Your faith will never be the same.

Patricia A. Crawford writes from Winter Park, Florida.