If you talk to members of Gilbert Tuhabonye’s running club in Austin, Texas, they’ll tell you about his broad smile or easy laughter, or the way he can turn a 5:30 a.m. training session into a dance party.
“If you say the name Gilbert in Austin, ‘joy’ is going to be in the first three words of describing him. He just wants to spread joy,” says his friend Elissa Jackson, a former member of his club. “You would never, ever know what he’s been through.”
That painful history, however, is written in the scars that mark Tuhabonye’s right arm and leg and snake across his back. Faded but still conspicuous, they tell a story of a horror that could have destroyed him, but instead became his inspiration to live with love.
But 28 years later, as the coach ofGilbert’s Gazelles, one of the largest running groups in Austin, and the founder of theGazelle Foundation, a charity that brings clean water to more than 115,000 people in Burundi — Tutsis and Hutus alike — Tuhabonye, now 46, has embraced hope and forgiveness over anger and vengeance.
“I believe God gave me another chance to live,” Tuhabonye tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “That’s why I’m dedicated to making a difference and preaching peace.”
Gilbert Tuhabonye.Holly Reed Photography
Growing up in ruralBurundi, running was a way of life. Raised on a farm in the mountainous country, where his parents grew corn, peas and sorghum, Tuhabonye would run miles in the mornings to fetch water before running six more miles to school. He’d run to the market and he’d run in the fields, herding cows.
“Whenever my mom or grandma needed anything they’d rely on me,” he says. “I’d say, ‘I can go!’ I was fast and I loved it.”
Gilbert’s Gazelles runners training with Gilbert Tuhabonye.Holly Reed Photography
For eight hours, Tuhabonye braced himself against the bodies, protecting himself from the heat as best he could. In the midst of the horror, he remembers hearing a voice in his head that calmed him: “Son, nothing will happen to you.”
Severely burned, Tuhabonye managed to climb out a window and make it to a hospital. Doctors told him he might never run again.
“I thought my life was gone,” he says.
For more on Gilbert Tuhabonye’s incredible journey, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribehere.
After three months in recovery, “trying to understand how people that were your friends can be so evil,” he says, “I needed to find a way to move on.”
He turned to the Bible — and thought of the voice he’d heard in the building.
“I realized vengeance isn’t the solution,” he says. “It’s a cycle that never ends. I chose to forgive.”
By 1995, he was competing again, and in 1998, he earned a scholarship to run at Abilene Christian University in Texas.
“People were drawn to him,” says his Abilene coach, Jon Murray. “You feel like you can be a better person just talking to him.”
In 2010 Gilbert Tuhabonye (with his wife, Triphine, and daughters Grace and Emma at his naturalization ceremony) became an American citizen.Courtesy Gilbert Tuhabonye
After graduating and marrying his wife, Triphine (the couple have two daughters, Emma, 20, and Grace, 15), Tuhabonye moved to Austin to work in a running shop. By 2002, he’d formed Gilbert’s Gazelles. Among his runners was a college student who also happened to be the daughter of the president.
Tuhabonye, who had no idea who she was at the time, made a lasting impression.
“You’d think he should be bitter and angry,” she says. “But he channeled that through running and teaching. To me, he embodied pure love and grace.”
For Tuhabonye, who’s also head track coach at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Austin, that’s proof that sharing his painful story is worthwhile.
“I want people to know that we live in a world where bad things happen,” he says. “But you figure out a way to move on.”
Since Tuhabonye cofounded the Gazelle Foundation in 2006, the group has built 60 water systems, bringing clean water to more than 115,000 people in Burundi.Spencer Selvidge
“Part of the healing is bringing the community — Hutus and Tutsis — together to share water,” says Tuhabonye. “My hope is they think about sharing and not killing each other.”
“I almost died that day and I lost friends and classmates. On that day each year, I think about how lucky and blessed I am to be alive,” he says. “It puts me in a happy place knowing that we’re helping people.”
source: people.com
