Love Made Me an Inventor

On October 25, 1993, Maggy Barankitse buried seventy-two bodies in a mass grave, a day after she was stripped naked, beaten, and tied to a chair-and witnessed the people she was now burying being murdered in a fit of ethnic violence. This first English language biography recounts the extraordinary journey of Marguerite "Maggy" Barankitse, the "Angel of Burundi," a global humanitarian activist and founder of Maison Shalom. Initially her organization provided care for tens of thousands of orphans devastated by the ravages of war and ethnic violence in Burundi. However, after narrowly escaping an assassination attempt in 2015, Maggy's work shifted to supporting Burundian refugees in Rwanda through education, healthcare, and community services.

Her inspiring life and work have been featured extensively in renowned media outlets worldwide including the New York Times, BBC, NPR, The Guardian, Marie Claire UK, The Economic Times, Forbes Africa as well as Catholic media such as NCR and Aleteia. And over the past two decades, Maggy has received numerous prestigious humanitarian awards, including the UNESCO Prize, Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Award, and the Opus Prize, among others