Ntawumbabaye, Clotilde
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Interviewee Age
69
Interviewee Gender
Female
Geographical Location(s) during the genocide
Gitega
Interview Date
2025
Summary of Oral History
Ntawumbabaye said that in 1972, at age 14, she was in her family home in Gishora when she looked out her window and saw a machine digging up the surrounding land in her community. Horror consumed her as she watched a large truck unload dead body after dead body into the hole. The digging created a mass grave that would be utilized as a crude vessel for human remains. Day after day, the same machine would come to dig the land. Ntawumbabaye would watch truck after truck come to dump bodies into the grave. She later found out that her cousin was taken away, murdered, and tossed into one of the mass graves. She watched the perpetrators dig. Her uncle could not do anything about losing his child. Mourning was forbidden and punishable by death. Rather than seek justice and peace, Ntawumbabaye and her family were forced to walk past the mass graves every day as if they were not there.
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Recommended Citation
Ntawumbabaye, Clotilde, "Ntawumbabaye, Clotilde" (2025). 1972 Burundi Genocide – Oral Histories. 38.
https://neiudc.neiu.edu/burundi-oral-histories/38
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