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Louis Manirakisa was once a prosperous mechanic in the Rwandan capital, Kigali. Now, after a treacherous monthlong odyssey, he is simply a survivor in this wretched, remote encampment, which appeared out of nowhere last week on the Tanzanian plain, a spontaneous massing of Rwandans running for their lives.
It has become the newest stop on the refugee trail, a spot on the map that almost overnight became a small city, but without food, shelter or medical care. Its only advantage is that it is not in Rwanda.
Fleeing the political and tribal violence pitting the Hutu-dominated army against the rebels of the minority Tutsi tribe, Mr. Manirakisa, a 28-year-old Hutu, left his neighborhood near the Amahoro Stadium on April 15 because it was about to fall into rebel hands.
He chose to go east, toward Kibungu, because he was afraid that if he went south to Burundi he would be persecuted by the Tutsi military there.
"For three days we waited in our house for the Rwandan Army to come rescue us, but they never came," Mr. Manirakisa said. "So I told my family, I have to leave. I will not sit and wait for death to come. I got into my car with my wife, who was pregnant, and with the help of some military friends I managed to get out of the city."
Continue reading the main storyOn the outskirts, a mortar round sent shrapnel into his car and killed his wife. He continued on foot, but each time he stopped in a town hoping that his flight was over, the rebels attacked and he moved on. In Kibungu, he joined thousands of other Hutus on the move.
"The incontanyi kept on following us," Mr. Manirakisi said, referring to the Tutsi rebels called "invincibles" by the Hutus. "They cut the road so we were forced to go through the fields and swamps."
In Ntobeye, he sold his radio and then his spare clothes for food. He is better off than most because he had things to sell and now still has enough to eat for a few more meals. Aside from his bicycle, his clothes, his identity cards and a crucifix he wears around his neck, all he has left of his life in Kigali is a small black and white photograph of his wife.
"How are we supposed to survive?" he asked.
Panos Moumtzis, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, had few answers.
"It's impossible to bring trucks with food down here," he said. "There are no roads. The nearest road is four hours by foot up the hill. They have been here for seven days with no food and little possessions.
"It's a desperate situation where we don't know what to do. Very few people are moving. They are waiting for us to tell them what to do. They will have to move to the main camp."
The Ntobeye refugees are the latest wave in a vast human migration that began two weeks ago as a quarter of a million Rwandans fled into Tanzania, afraid of the advancing rebel army. But while the first 250,000 Rwandans came across the border on the main paved road, the latest arrivals, trickling in by the thousands every day, are fleeing through swamps and countryside, crossing the Kagera River into remote areas of northwest Tanzania.
Ntobeye is a two-hour ride by four-wheel-drive vehicle from the vast refugee camp at Ngara through dirt tracks obscured by elephant grass higher than the windshield. Paths and roads are impassable in the rain.
The discovery of the camp was accidental.
United Nations officials had heard that refugees were avoiding the main border crossing. But they had no idea that 14,000 Rwandans (the number has now grown to more than 20,000) had reached Ntobeye until officials driving on back roads on a scouting trip encountered a band of refugees searching for the larger camp. Camp Too Difficult to Reach
Ntobeye is so difficult to reach that supplying refugees there is almost out of the question. Relief workers said they hoped to bring in high-protein biscuits until they could arrange for a caravan of trucks to take the Rwandans to the main camp. But even at Ngara, relief agencies have still not acquired sufficient food for those already there.
When relief workers first arrived here, they found the Rwandans numb and bewildered. They had little food and only grass huts for shelter. Inured to battering rains, sick women and children lay shivering on the muddy grass, covered only with cotton cloth. Crowds of refugees massed around this small village's only brick building, so densely packed that Ntobeye was nothing more than a sea of heads.
Again and again the refugees turned to relief workers who had just begun to arrive and asked for food, waiting like small children for someone to tell them what to do. Gradually, they learned that no one really knows.
The civil war in Rwanda beganApril 6 when its President, Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, was killed in a plane explosion.
The refugees in Tanzania are almost all Hutu. Earlier, tens of thousands of Tutsis fled to Burundi and Uganda. In the first week of the carnage, tens of thousands of Tutsis fled persecution in Kigali and tried to escape toward Burundi. So far hardly any have made it to the border, relief officials say.
Most of the refugees in Ntobeye are from southeastern Rwanda. When the first arrived, the village chief counted them and helped them organize. The villagers also shared their food with them.
But there is hardly any food left, and the Rwandans now forage for miles, looking for bananas and anything else edible. Day by day they sell their few possessions for something to eat. There is no sanitation.
"It's an epidemic waiting to happen," said Francis Mwanza of the World Food Program.
Continue reading the main story