The Hutu and Tutsi tribes have been rivals for centuries. But only in the past two generations have things gotten brutal, in Burundi and nearby Rwanda. In Burundi, the aristocratic Tutsis ruled over the working-class Hutus for more than 500 years. The tribes coexisted in relative peace until the Europeans came. Burundi and Rwanda were incorporated into German East Africa in the 1890s; Belgium took over after World War I. Says Gilbert, "The Germans made the differences between Tutsi and Hutu into law: Divide and govern."
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Burundi became independent in 1962, with Tutsis controlling the army and the government. Just before and after independence, ethnic violence flared. In 1972 an attempted coup led to the slaughter of some 150,000 Hutus; many Tutsis were killed, too, including three of Gilbert's uncles.
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As a freshman at the Kibimba school, Gilbert won an 8K race running barefoot. The next year, a coach told him that if he worked hard, he could make the Olympics. By his senior year, in 1993, his goal was to get a scholarship to an American college, get an education and return home. It seemed possible. Burundi appeared to have turned a corner: The latest Tutsi dictator had called the first-ever presidential election. Not surprisingly, a Hutu won. Four months later, though, Tutsi soldiers assassinated him.
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On the morning of the massacre, Gilbert says, he turned on the radio and heard nothing.
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"I thought the battery was dead," he says. "I went to class. A friend said the president was dead. There weren't many Hutus around, but I saw one, my teammate. He showed me a machete, ran it along his throat, and said, 'Tonight is the night I'm gonna cut your neck.' I said, 'Why?' He said, 'Because you guys killed our president.' I thought he was joking. By ten, a mob had gathered at the school -- Hutus with machetes. They took away a Tutsi professor and said, 'We're gonna kill all these Tutsis.' "
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"Around noon, we went to the principal to ask for help, and he told us, 'You killed the president, and you have to die.' Everywhere we looked, there was a Hutu with a machete, a bow and arrow, or a spear. All of a sudden, a woman took a spear and threw it into the crowd. And they attacked us -- cutting people, their ears and noses, so they'd know who was a Tutsi.
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"I was so scared. They took us to a gas station owned by a Hutu, a guy I knew. When we got there, they took our clothes. All I had on was underwear and a shirt.
"There were more than a hundred people in a room this big." Gilbert points to the kitchen wall on the far side of his 40-by-25-foot living room. "Just after I got in, they poured gasoline in through the windows. I got it on my shirt, so I took it off. Then they threw in branches that were on fire."
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Gilbert caught fire, and decided to let them kill him. He went through the window.
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"As soon as I landed, I couldn't see clearly," he says. "I just started moving and got around the corner. I heard someone shout, 'Gilbert is coming!' All of a sudden I fell into a ditch filled with rainwater. It put out the fire on my back. I heard this one guy coming, and he fell into the ditch. I was leaning against the side, and he had a spear in one hand and a machete in the other. I killed him."
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Gilbert pauses. He puts one hand on his chin and the other on the back of his head, jerking and twisting hard, as if breaking someone's neck.
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"I got up again," he continues. "I was so thirsty, so dehydrated. I started toward the hospital, about a half-mile away. Every step hurt. I could barely stand up. My feet, I could see, were like meat. My right leg was so bad I could see the bone."
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Still, he kept running. It was all about form -- the years on the track, keeping his knees up and his arms back, pushing himself when he thought he was going to die. He stumbled into the hospital.
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"When my mother came to the hospital, she said, 'If it wasn't for God, you are dead.' " But what about the others? Surely they were also children of God. Why weren't they spared? "That's the thing I didn't understand. Afterward, I asked myself, 'Why me? Why did I survive?' "
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