Northfield News column: Rwandan speaks to full audience

EDITOR'S NOTE: In June 2004 I began a new venture as managing editor of both Northfield News and Faribault Daily News. This column originally appeared in the Northfield News on Feb. 27, 2007.

NORTHFIELD - Paul Rusesabagina almost looked embarrassed by the standing ovation he received as he took to the raised platform in St. Olaf College's Boe Memorial Chapel Tuesday night. Hundreds of college students and community residents turned out to listen to the unassuming international hero who was the inspiration behind the 2004 critically acclaimed film "Hotel Rwanda." Rusesabagina made the stop as part of an international tour to raise awareness about current genocidal atrocities taking place elsewhere in Africa and the world and to promote his new autobiography, "An Ordinary Man." As Rusesabagina stood Tuesday night before hundreds in the newly renovated Boe Chapel, he smiled shyly as he waited for a chance to speak. The enduring applause seemed almost painful to the man who still says that risking his own life to save the lives of 1,260 others during three months of 1994 was an act that anyone would have done. "Thank you. You and I are going to have a ride and go to Africa to visit a little nation," Rusesabagina said after the applause died down. And then for about an hour and a half, Rusesabagina told the history of his home country of Rwanda and what led up to the genocidal conflict between the Hutus and Tutsies of his nation in April 1994. He told how on the night the conflict began, he started harboring neighbors at his own home when Hutu soldiers started hunting down Tutsies and people of mixed heritage, killing them in the streets. Soon he was harboring more than 30 people in, his modest home and he decided for everyone's safety that it was time to move them all to the Hotel des Mille Collines, a place where he had formerly worked but wasn't currently. At the hotel, Rusesabagina took over as acting manager and in short order he was housing 1,260 people for safekeeping, using a combination of diplomacy, flattery and deception to outwit and outflank the Hutu soldiers who would have with no remorse slaughtered those in hiding at the hotel. Although he has received the U.S.'s Presidential Medal of Freedom and other peace awards, Rusesabagina for the last 13 years has insisted that he did only what others would have done in his situation. And Tuesday night was no different. After his speech, a student asked him where he found the inner strength to endure the trials he went through during those three captive months in 1994. "Actually, what I did was not special. What I did was what everybody was supposed to do," he said, adding that he viewed himself the same way before, during and after the incident ... as a hotel manager. "The best advice is to remain who you are." To which the crowd rewarded him with another standing ovation. Rusesabagina told the college student-dominated crowd that when he agreed to make the film "Hotel Rwanda," he entered into the project with the goal of targeting college-age students because they are the future leaders of the world. At the end of his speech he encouraged the students to make a difference, by talking to their elected leaders and becoming aware. "Tomorrow is yours," he told the students. "You want it to be a better world, it will be. You want it to be a worse world, it will be. ... It is now or never." During a press conference before his public engagement, Rusesabagina said that he will be touring the world much of this year, doing speaking engagements to raise awareness about all of the atrocities taking place in the world, and promoting his book. Rusesabagina, his wife, and their children now reside in Belgium. He said he tried to stay in his native Rwanda after the genocidal conflict and he lasted two more years. But in September 1996 he was almost killed and the family found it necessary to move out. He said during his press conference that it is his wish to one day move back to his "home." - Devlyn Brooks can be reached at dbrooks@northfieldnews.com or at 645-1116.