Immaculee Ilibagiza was 24 in 1994, studying engineering at the National University in Rwanda. She went home for the Easter holiday in April and "it changed everything in my life."
Neighbors in her small village became killers as the extremist Hutu majority in Rwanda sought to kill all those of Tutsi descent, including Immaculee and her family. She lost both her parents and two of her three brothers during the genocide.
As machete-wielding murderers descended upon her village, Immaculee's father insisted she seek shelter at the home of a minister he knew, who was Hutu. "I know that man. Even if things go bad, he will not kill," her father said.
The pastor took in Immaculee and five other women and hid them in a tiny bathroom that measured just 3 feet by 4 feet. They were told not to speak, so the killers would not hear them. And they were fed scraps left over from the Pastor's family meals. Two other women eventually joined them. The eight of them stayed in the cramped space for 91 days until French troops entered the country and offered them protection.
Immaculee says "the killers never found me (in that bathroom), but I found myself." During her time in hiding, her emotions ran the gamut from anger to incredulity to fear. "The fear is our worst enemy. Dying is not the worst problem. The worst is to have that fear," she told the audience Thursday night at Walsh University in North Canton.
To combat that fear, Immaculee, who was raised a devout Catholic, turned to prayer. "Prayer has such a power. I would not be here if I had not prayed." She recalls praying the rosary 27 times every day. But she struggled with the portion of the "Our Father" that says "as we forgive those who trespass against us." Eventually, she says, God showed her how to forgive helping her realize that "the people who are killing you, don't see you. They are blinded by hatred and anger." She recalls letting go of her own anger. "I never felt in my life as beautiful as that moment, when the anger was gone," she said. After the fighting ended, she returned to her village and offered forgiveness to the man who killed her mother and one of her brothers.
In the months following the genocide, Immaculee started working for the United Nations. She moved to America in 1998 and began to write down her story. She credits God with guiding her to author Wayne Dyer, whom she met by chance at an event a friend invited her to. Dyer helped get her first book, "Left to Tell," published in 2006. It became a bestseller in a matter of weeks. She now has two other titles to her credit "Led by Faith" and "Our Lady of Kabeho."
She has used the proceeds from her books to help Rwandan genocide survivors, particularly orphans, through her Left to Tell Charitable Fund. That work is one reason Walsh University awarded her an honorary degree on Thursday.
Immaculee ended her talk by urging the audience to open their hearts to the possibility of forgiveness. "I still live with the pain of losing my parents, but God is with me." She urged the crowd to "hold on to hope." And closed by saying, "if in life you're conflicted between being kind and being right, always choose to be kind."
Immaculee's talk was part of Walsh University's continuing celebration of its 50th anniversary.
