Thank you all who contributed so generously to the emergency feeding distribution here in Burundi!

We just arrived back from Muyinga province where the third distribution was given.Muyinga province is in the north east part of the country near the Tanzanian border. The population is quite small and very poor.

Fifty nine tonnes of food was given this time, thirty one tonnes of maize and 28 tonnes of rice. Usually we have given beans but now the bean harvest is producing adequately. We saw many plants drying on fences, roofs etc. and Dr. Aline said that soon they will ready. We also saw that beans are growing well along the areas we visited. Because the dry season is arriving the people have cultivated along the valleys which have more water but the areas cultivated are small and the tools they use are quite primitive.

The commune we distributed food covered more than 1,300 family groups of around 6 to 10 in a family.

The people who were included in this feeding were Batwa (pygmy),aproximately 600 Tutsis, who are displaced (meaning they are not able to live on their land so are in basic dwellings protected by military),and Hutus who have been repatriated from Tanzania, but unable to bring anything with them, and as a result are also struggling a lot.

Some scenes that stood out to me this trip:

One….I saw a young woman with a small baby on her back bent over carefully picking up kernels of maize that had fallen from some tears in the sacks. She was dressed in dirty rags as was her baby. At times she scraped dirt and kernels into a pile to gather as much as she could. I was overcome with emotion of which I can’t even process. All I had was a plastic bag to give her and as I handed it to her she didn’t even look at me but scooped as much as she could into it as she crawled around between soldiers legs and people lined up for food. I wasn’t sure if she got any sack of food but after that I didn’t see her again, so I pray she had enough.

Two….As people received their sacks of food many were laughing with joy as they struggled to carry them away. As we drove into the night, with a full moon shining, it was wonderful seeing miles and miles of people walking with white sacks on their heads highlighted by the moon’s light. Many shouted “Urakoze” (thank you) to us as we drove by.