91 Days in a Bathroom

The role played by clergy men and women is one of the more shameful -- if that's even possible -- stories of the Rwandan genocide, as an ungodly number of clergy men and women were directly involved in the mass killing. But the pall cast over the church in Rwanda does not, of course, tell the whole story.

Pastor Simeon Nzabahimana hid seven women in a tiny, little-used bathroom in his home for 91 days, managing to hide the women from his own unsympathetic family, as well as from several searches by militia suspicious of his secret. In an unbelievable stroke of luck, the militia never opened the door to the bathroom. The pastor told an interviewer in 2006, "I thought that if they had seen them they would have forced me to kill them or they would have killed me and killed them as well."

Among the women saved by Pastor Nzabahimana was Immaculée Ilibagiza, now a tireless advocate for remembrance and justice for the genocide's victims, and for genocide prevention. During one of the militia raids, she heard one of the men call her name: "I heard somebody calling my name. He said, actually that, 'I have killed 399 cockroaches' and he wanted me to be the 400th."

I saw Immaculée speak on the tenth anniversary of the genocide in 2004, and though she had, by that point, retold the story of her survival numerous times, it was clear that with each retelling came a reliving -- of the fear, of the pain, of the shock ... and a quiet gratitude for the pastor.

Photo credit: deepakkt