Clipped the following from here.
TANZANIA - We are starving, help us! - Burundian and Rwandan refugees call
Ngara (Fides/ANB-Bia) - A desperate call has reached Fides from Burundian and Rwandan refugees who are close to starving in Ngara camp in Tanzania, where food rations are ever scarcer. The World Food Programme and the UN High Commission for Refugees have already made several appeals for humanitarian interventions. "We are refugees from Burundi and Rwanda living in Ngara camp at Lukole in Tanzania. After the last census in this Ngara camp on June 16, 2000, Lukole camp authorities reduced our food rations, by 40 percent officially but it appears to be more like 50 percent. Before the change every two weeks each refugee was given 4 measures of maize, sometimes a little flour, and a 1 full measure of peas. Now we only get 2 measures of maize, equal to 3 kg., and not even a full measure of peas. The quantity of oil has also been reduced and instead of receiving soap twice a month for washing, it now comes once a month.
We were told that the food supplies will run out before the end of this year. But we think that in five months the stock could have been replenished. In the meantime nothing has changed in our poor food rations, and the number of undernourished among our children is increasing rapidly. The camp hospitals are filled with people weak from lack of food.
We ask you to tell people about our situation. We are not sure why the rations have been reduced. It would not appear to be due to a lack on money since all sorts of buildings have gone up round the camp recently, something which never happened in all the seven years we have been in here, since 1993. Moreover solid bridges with much cement have been put up at the entrance of Lukole A camp and in the valley between Lukole A and Lukole B camps. Recently they began to build brick homes, never seen before in this camp.
But we also want to thank the authorities for the new schools they are building for our little children in various points of the camp. The Norwegian People's Aid organization continues to build workshops and help us to learn sewing, carpentry and brick-laying. We thank them for this but we would have preferred to see them help the abandoned children here, or the orphans in non state schools.
But in the meantime we are very hungry. The manioc we had planted and then dug up to eat has all gone and now we have only the rations coming twice a month from the camp authorities.
All this, while more refugees who arrived in their thousands in October were moved to a new camp a Kitali, more than 60km from Lukole, and this must have cost a lot of money!
This then is our situation, the conditions we live under as refugees. We hope you can help us." Signed, "a group of refugees in Lukole, Tanzania." (15/12/2000)