Left to Tell
There has always evolved wars-even ethnically motivated-in Africa,but for the first time the 1994 Rwanda War spewed forth the seldom used Genocide. Persons who are either directly or remotely affected by the Rwandan ethnic cleansing War have relived many stories. The ethnic designations of "Hutu" and "Tutsi" became media notorious after the war but one fact remains that whenever the anomalies of war is recounted from whichever perspective, it remains fresh and evokes sorrow in our inner psyche as humans since the Rwandan genocide is complex!
Here enters the traumatic reliving of a yet to be easily erased memories of one woman's story of surviving the Holocaust as vividly portrayed Illibagiza-herself a direct victim-in her book, “Left to Tell.” She exhibited how far reaching and catastrophic religious and ethnic ideas could devastate a once peaceful and thriving country. Imagine a country where everybody was living in close-knit communities later to be affected with the plague of ethnic hatred to the extent that a particular tribe (Hutus) saw the issue of cleansing another tribe (Tutsis) as a "job that must be done”. A war were the affected tribe amidst the death dealing confusion of trying to seek divine security in churches were pursued and given burial rites in the pews of the churches, smearing bloodbath everywhere. Can we forget so easily the vivid picture of six ladies staying a bathroom hardly the size of a cubicle for more than three months with one of them learning a new language?
The book “Left to Tell” portrays a vivid picture of postwar reconstruction difficulties, both physical and psychological, the power of seeking spiritual light in times of heartrending distress and above all a victims sheer will and deliberate thought out weakness and determination to forgive and met out atonement to all and Sundry who erased her entire family from the surface of the earth. In fact, it became an ironic twist of tale that she sometimes covets the times of solitude
Here enters the traumatic reliving of a yet to be easily erased memories of one woman's story of surviving the Holocaust as vividly portrayed Illibagiza-herself a direct victim-in her book, “Left to Tell.” She exhibited how far reaching and catastrophic religious and ethnic ideas could devastate a once peaceful and thriving country. Imagine a country where everybody was living in close-knit communities later to be affected with the plague of ethnic hatred to the extent that a particular tribe (Hutus) saw the issue of cleansing another tribe (Tutsis) as a "job that must be done”. A war were the affected tribe amidst the death dealing confusion of trying to seek divine security in churches were pursued and given burial rites in the pews of the churches, smearing bloodbath everywhere. Can we forget so easily the vivid picture of six ladies staying a bathroom hardly the size of a cubicle for more than three months with one of them learning a new language?
The book “Left to Tell” portrays a vivid picture of postwar reconstruction difficulties, both physical and psychological, the power of seeking spiritual light in times of heartrending distress and above all a victims sheer will and deliberate thought out weakness and determination to forgive and met out atonement to all and Sundry who erased her entire family from the surface of the earth. In fact, it became an ironic twist of tale that she sometimes covets the times of solitude