Left to Tell ~ Immaculée Ilibagiza & Steve Erwin (80 of 2024)

"Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust" by Immaculée Ilibagiza is a profoundly moving and inspirational memoir that recounts the author's harrowing experiences during the Rwandan genocide. Immaculée's storytelling captures the unimaginable horrors of the genocide while also offering a message of faith, hope, and forgiveness.

Immaculee Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee's family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans. Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them. The triumphant story of this remarkable young woman's journey through the darkness of genocide will inspire anyone whose life has been touched by fear, suffering, and loss.

The narrative follows Immaculée's journey from a peaceful and loving childhood to the devastating events of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The author's ability to convey the intense emotions and challenges she faced during those dark times is both gripping and heart-wrenching. Her survival, both physically and spiritually, becomes a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

What sets "Left to Tell" apart is Immaculée's profound spiritual transformation amidst the horrors she witnesses. The book explores how faith and prayer became essential tools for survival and healing during the darkest moments of her life. Immaculée's discovery of God's presence amid such profound suffering adds a powerful layer to the narrative.

The themes of forgiveness and reconciliation are also central to the book. Immaculée's ability to forgive those who committed unspeakable atrocities demonstrates an extraordinary strength of character. Her journey towards forgiveness, despite the unimaginable pain she endured, serves as a powerful example for readers grappling with their understanding of humanity and forgiveness.

The writing style is straightforward yet deeply evocative, allowing readers to connect with Immaculée's experiences on a personal level. The memoir not only serves as a historical account of the Rwandan genocide but also imparts important lessons about the human capacity for cruelty and, ultimately, the healing power of forgiveness.

In conclusion, "Left to Tell" is a powerful and thought-provoking memoir that goes beyond recounting historical events. Immaculée Ilibagiza's resilience, faith, and capacity for forgiveness make this book a testament to the strength of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable adversity. It is a must-read for those seeking stories of hope and healing in the aftermath of profound tragedy.

Rwanda was assigned to Germany during the Berlin Conference of 1884. Belgian forces then took over the country after World War I. In the early 1930s, Belgium introduced a system that could have sown the earliest seeds of a permanent division by classifying the population into three ethno-racial groups - the Hutu that formed most of the population (84 %), the Tutsi (15%) and the Twa (1%). Compulsory identity cards were issued that specifically called out the ethnicity that each citizen belonged to. Tutsis though lesser in number were considered the elite and resentment against them by the Hutus grew as years went by. This was further abetted by the Belgian administration and the Catholic Church. Rumors of killing of Dominique Mbonyumutwa, a Hutu sub-chief in 1959 marked the beginning of the Rwandan Revolution. A Hutu dominated republic was created and the country gained independence from Belgium in 1962. This in turn led to a mass exodus of Tutsis to neighboring countries including Congo. They began agitations to return to their homeland immediately. However, most of them remained in exile for the next three decades.

The Rwandan Patriotic Front was formed in the 1980’s, and the first attempt at an attack on Rwanda was made in October 1990. It was under the leadership of Paul Kagame that the RPF gained more strength and started a guerilla style war. The next four years followed with peace negotiations and occasional wars. Meanwhile, the Hutu gained more power in the country and there were sporadic incidents of killing of those Tutsis that remained in the country. The assassination of the then Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana on 6th April 1994 ignited the fire of the horrendous genocide that lasted for four months. Almost a million Tutsis were supposed to have been killed in the most heinous manner during this time. The post primitive of weapons like machetes, clubs and other blunt objects were used against them.

 “What can I do? What can I say?” asks Kiki as the play begins.

Odile Gakire Katese, popularly known as Kiki is a Rwandan playwright, director and cultural entrepreneur who has worked extensively to record the lives of those that were killed during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. As people walk into the theater and take their seats, she is seen seated on a chair thinking, scribbling something on a notepad now and then, tearing off the pages one after another, crumpling it and throwing it on the ground. Eight women walk in, dressed in bright blue, their hair braided in bright pink, blue and orange.  They seat themselves behind their drums, four on each side. They are members of Ingoma Nshya, the Women Drummers of Rwanda.

Kiki’s parents had fled to Congo in the 1960’s and she was born there in 1976. She first returned to Rwanda twenty years later. She didn’t know the country or its language. The only thing she knew was that almost two third of her tribe was killed. Who were they, how did they look like, what was their story were the questions she started asking. In an interview to intermission magazine before the world premiere of her play in 2019 she says,

“It’s important to remind people that before they were killed, they were people. If we only remember how they died, the attention is not put on the victim, it’s put on the perpetrator. It’s important that we archive life.”

It was this quest for life that led her to letter writing as a form of healing for victims and their relatives as well as the perpetrators. She travelled across rehabilitation centers, coaxing people to write letters to dead husbands, brothers, sisters, parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and friends who were killed or tortured. The perpetrators were asked to write to their victims. As in any other war-torn area, women were traumatized the most. Almost half a million of them were subjected to sexual violation and mutilation. Forget about writing it down, they couldn’t even bring themselves to talk about it. The shame was too deep.

Kiki asks,

“Why do we find it so difficult to write our stories down? Is it because once written, we will not be able to change it? Or is it that we were all perpetrators, and victims at some point in time?”

She brings in an adaptation of a Cherokee folklore ‘Grandmother Spider steals the Sun’ to carry the performance forward. Each letter, every snippet of the story and her interceding commentary is accompanied by the haunting, powerful songs and drumbeats by the women.

A perpetrator asks his victim, “What can I say?”

A grown man asks his younger brother, “Why did you run away from me? You said you can out run them. I heard the man who broke your back say at the trial that you looked straight at his eyes and said, ‘my brother will find and kill you.’ Where are you now, how are you?”

A killer’s daughter asks him, “Did you really kill those people?” He denies it. The daughter goes to the trial to know the truth. Seeing her there he doesn’t say a word. He is ashamed. She finally goes in disguise and her father admits to what he did. Kiki asks here what she thinks of him now. “He was a bad man,” she responds.

A daughter asks her father, “Why did you leave the house that day? Do you still think of me?”

Kiki talks about the family that she doesn’t know about. Her father didn’t know who his father was. His mother and a sister of his were the only ones that had reached Congo. Her father would never talk about the other members of his family. For Kiki it had been a huge void in her life. “Whose incisors have I inherited? Who gave me my freckles?” she had always wondered.

“How do we undo the un-undo-able? We let them live again.”

While entering the hall, each of us were given a piece of paper and a pencil. Kiki asks us, “Each of you, please draw a picture of your grandfather for me. I am searching for mine. I will select one of yours and take him with me.” She selects one that said, “You can have my grandpapa.” The background on the stage also serves as a screen for kind of a shadow puppetry where the letters, pictures of the people that wrote them or whom they wrote about are shown. We are shown the various grandfathers that she has collected from across the world. While we are trying to draw our grandfathers, the women drummers give a thundering performance that elicits a standing ovation.

In 2004 Kiki created Ingoma Nshya - New Drum or New Power breaking free from a centuries old tradition of forbidding women from drumming. “Drumming is a mark of respect to the King, performed only by a few selected men. It denotes power. That is wanted I wanted for these women who were left powerless. Many were reluctant to join at first. Music and drumming gave them the power of healing, of joy.”

She adds as an aside, “Men have whispered in my ears that there is a sexual connotation to drumming. It needs sticks and only men have it. Well, we have bigger ones is what I told them. Ha!”

Their bodies sway to the beats, they jump high in joy, the power in their hearts flows through their arms onto the handmade drums. Are drums the primal modes of conveying emotions, of communicating beyond language, I wonder. The rhythm takes me back home, to our chenda melam and the Tamil dabban kuthu. How is it that folk music sounds similar across the world? The voice and tone of the singers, the nuances of their tunes, seem to be the same. Music and dance, the most powerful healer. For these women, the trauma of the genocide is being drummed away slowly but surely.

How a certain a minority race was targeted by a majority, how radio was used to instill fear and to spread mass propaganda, how neighbours and even family that knew you since the day you were born turn against you and kill you, how the genocide was planned meticulously over the years, is chilling. The similarities to what happened during the partition of our country and what we see all around today is scary. What is heartening in this case though is how a country and its rulers decided to heal themselves. As for whether it will last and for how long, Kiki says, ‘We can only hope.”

Inhabitants of  Rwanda

The earliest inhabitants of what is now Rwanda were the Twa, a group of aboriginal pygmy hunter-gatherers who settled in the area between 8000 BC and 3000 BC and remain in Rwanda today. Between 700 BC and 1500 AD, a number of Bantu groups migrated into Rwanda, and began to clear forest land for agriculture. Historians have several theories regarding the nature of the Bantu migrations: one theory is that the first settlers were Hutu, while the Tutsi migrated later and formed a distinct racial group, possibly of Cushitic origin. An alternative theory is that the migration was slow and steady from neighbouring regions, with incoming groups bearing high genetic similarity to the established ones, and integrating into rather than conquering the existing society. Under this theory, the Hutu and Tutsi distinction arose later and was not a racial one, but principally a class or caste distinction in which the Tutsi herded cattle while the Hutu farmed the land. The Hutu, Tutsi and Twa of Rwanda share a common language and are collectively known as the Banyarwanda.

The population coalesced, first into clans (ubwoko), and then, by 1700, into around eight kingdoms. The Kingdom of Rwanda, ruled by the Tutsi Nyiginya clan, became the dominant kingdom from the mid-eighteenth century, expanding through a process of conquest and assimilation, and achieving its greatest extent under the reign of King Kigeli Rwabugiri in 1853–1895. Rwabugiri expanded the kingdom west and north, and initiated administrative reforms which caused a rift to grow between the Hutu and Tutsi populations.These included uburetwa, a system of forced labour which Hutu had to perform to regain access to land seized from them, and ubuhake, under which Tutsi patrons ceded cattle to Hutu or Tutsi clients in exchange for economic and personal service. Although Hutu and Tutsi were often treated differently, they shared the same language and culture, the same clan names, and the same customs; the symbols of kinship served as a unifying bond between them.

Rwanda and neighbouring Burundi were assigned to Germany by the Berlin Conference of 1884, and Germany established a presence in the country in 1897 with the formation of an alliance with the king. German policy was to rule the country through the Rwandan monarchy; this system had the added benefit of enabling colonization with small European troop numbers. The colonists favoured the Tutsi over the Hutu when assigning administrative roles, believing them to be migrants from Ethiopia and racially superior. The Rwandan king welcomed the Germans, using their military strength to widen his rule. Belgian forces took control of Rwanda and Burundi in 1917 during World War I, and from 1926 began a policy of more direct colonial rule. The Belgians modernised the Rwandan economy, but Tutsi supremacy remained, leaving the Hutu disenfranchised.

In the early 1930s, Belgium introduced a permanent division of the population by classifying Rwandans into three ethnic (ethno-racial) groups, with the Hutu representing about 84% of the population, the Tutsi about 15%, and the Twa about 1%. Compulsory identity cards were issued labeling (under the heading for "ethnicity and race") each individual as either Tutsi, Hutu, Twa, or Naturalised. While it had previously been possible for particularly wealthy Hutus to become honorary Tutsis, the identity cards prevented any further movement between the groups and made socio-economic groups into rigid ethnic groups.

The ethnic identities of the Hutu and Tutsi were reshaped and mythologized by the colonizers. Christian missionaries in Rwanda promoted the theory about the "Hamitic" origins of the kingdom, and referred to the distinctively Ethiopian features and hence, foreign origins, of the Tutsi "caste". These mythologies provide the basis for anti-Tutsi propaganda in 1994.