Gilbert Tuhabonye

Tuhabonye was the 1999 Lonestar Conference Champion in the 1500 meters and the 8k Cross Country Meet. Tuhabonye competed internationally in Europe and represented Burundi at the 1999 Chiba Ekiden Relay in Chiba, Japan.

By 1996, his running skills took him to the United States as part of an Olympic training program. He obtained a track scholarship at Abilene Christian University and was a national champion runner. Tuhabonye is the award-winning coach of Gilbert’s Gazelles Training Group in Texas. In 2006, he co-founded the Gazelle Foundation, a non-profit organization whose mission is to improve life for people in Burundi without regard to tribal affiliations. Today Gilbert is a US citizen and lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and children.

Tuhabonye is a survivor of the massacres during the Burundian Civil War of the early 1990s. In October 1993, members of the Hutu tribe invaded Tuhabonye's high school and captured more than 100 Tutsi children and teachers. Most of the captives were killed with machetes; the rest were burned alive. After spending nearly nine to 10 hours hidden beneath the burning corpses of his classmates and suffering burns over much of his body, Tuhabonye managed to escape and seek medical attention. He published his account in This Voice in My Heart: A Genocide Survivor's Story of Escape, Faith, and Forgiveness (HarperCollins Publishing, 2006).

Gilbert Tuhabonye (born November 22, 1974) is a Burundian long-distance runner, author, and motivational speaker. He was born in Songa, a town in the Commune of Songa, Burundi, where he survived a massacre during the Burundian Civil War. He moved to the United States and wrote a book about his survival. He is also married to Triphane and has two daughters named Emma and Grace.