28 September 2006 - After spending almost a week together with Michel Fontaine and his son Sylvain, I got some really interesting days in the tiny country of Burundi. The country is surrounded by Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda and borders to Lake Tanganyika. Its setting is idyllic, its miniature Swiss alps, green forest and it is sadly that Burundi doesn't have a happier story to tell after the long awaited independence in the sixties. Four different wars (1972, 1978, 1984 and 1993/94) has made it impossible for people to contain a normal life the last thirty years. Civil war, genocide, unrest and hatred has shaken the country back and forth the last 30 years. More than half a million people have lost their lives in this meaningless warfare because of tribe differences. The genocide in Rwanda was triggered by the one in Burundi, but didn't reach the scale of the neighbours with almost 800.000 casualties.

Today Burundi, with its six million people is a very poor country which is in desperate need of international help. You would think that the country has enough challenges on its own, but they provide shelter for more than 30.000 refugees within its borders. We visited a refugee camp together with Isidore from WFP press office in Bujumbura and seeing the help provided by international humanitarian aid is amazing. There are still 380.000 Burundians living as refugees outside the country and it might take decades before the situation in Burundi would be normalized. The country should have been targeted as a tourist destination due to its nature, scenery and Tanganyika lake (third biggest in Africa and the second deepest in the world).

There are no tourist in Burundi today, except for those that either has relatives here or are visiting friends or family. We thought that it was possible to find a camping around the capital Bujumbura, but we were told that the tourist highway was doing a huge loop around this country. Hopefully this will change in the coming years, because Burundi is in need of foreign capital. Coffee export stands for most of the countries foreign income, followed by tea, cotton and other vegetable and fruits. WFP believes that the situation in Burundi are not to change substantially the next years and the country is extremely dependent on rainfall and results from successful crops.

In 2006 the approved distributions for WFP are 79.000 metric tonnes which will be slightly reduced in 2007. We were invited to a "seed protection" distribution on Thursday 28 September together with WFP sub office in Ngozi. They distributed almost 60 tons to protect the seeds given out by FAO. People are so desperate for food that the seeds intended for the next crop season are used as food. 43 percent of the population suffers from malnutrition.

We went to three different distribution sites around Ngozo district and seeing all the people lining up to receive their monthly ration of food was an exceptional experience. The NGO Care and Red Cross was involved in the same project and about 1900 families got relief that day. What touches you the most was how the people crawled around picking up every single bean that has fallen out of the bags. An old lady came toward us bleeding from the head, possibly due to argument over rations or because she has tried to take something that wasn't hers. We really don't know how they cope in their daily life and this is bloody serious for all the families lining up with their coupon to receive a small portion of food.

Take a look at some of the pictures from the food distribution by clicking here.