Maureen Connelly of the UN High Commission for Refugees was not expecting anything unusual when she made a routine monitoring trip to the border late last week.
But as she drove through the lush, green, rain-soaked hills near the Rusumo Falls frontier crossing point at the muddy Akagera river, she realized what was happening was anything but routine.
“All we could see were people, coming all the way across. Streams and streams (of people)... people all the way down the hill, walking fast, fast, fast, fast.”
That human mass, an estimated quarter million or more strong, stretched some 16 kilometers and turned out to be what the United Nations now describes as the largest and fastest exodus of refugees ever recorded anywhere.
The Rwandans, 80 to 90 percent of them members of the Hutu majority, had been bottled up on the Rwandan side of the border by government troops, who told them there was no reason to flee since the government, Hutu-led, was in firm control of the area.
But when those troops fled ahead of an advancing force of soldiers from the mainly-Tutsi rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front, the refugees, fearful of rebel reprisals, swarmed across the single bridge that marks the frontier.
Many of the refugees had traveled for as long as three weeks to reach the border. Despite their ordeals, Ms. Connelly says there was no sense of panic among the refugees.
“People went up onto the hillside and the (Tanzanian) customs people said 'you are not to go any further,' and they sat down. I mean it is unbelievable when you consider what has been happening to drive people out and the gentleness that we have seen with this population. But even the people behind just stopped. There was not mad panic...”
As they came across, Tanzanian border guards took one precautionary measure. They disarmed refugees carrying machetes, axes and large knives.
Ms. Connelly says those weapons, so associated with the slaughter that has been going on in Rwanda, will now be put to a more peaceful and beneficial use.
“We are now being allowed to use these to ensure that we dig pit latrines, because we have not got enough tools to do it.”
Relief workers estimate they need to dig at least 10-thousand such latrines to meet the needs of what has become, overnight, one of the largest population concentrations in Tanzania. They also estimate they will need 100 metric tons of grain a day to feed the refugees, along with 30 tons of beans, 60 tons of oil and one ton of salt.
The figures are stunning. But relief workers say they had already prepositioned several days worth of supplies in the area in anticipation of a sudden surge of refugees. They acknowledge they did not expect this many, but say additional food and other aid should be arriving shortly -- enough to feed the refugees for months.
Relief workers say one thing is working in their favor as they scramble to cope with the situation. Most of the refugees appear to have been prepared to flee for some time and managed to escape with some of their possessions -- including cows, food, mattresses, blankets, pots and pans. Many came with motorcycles or bicycles. A few came with cars.
But aid officials are concerned about health and sanitary conditions. The refugees are concentrated in a 20 square kilometer area of hilly grassland allocated to them by Tanzanian officials. But there are no facilities there, and the refugees must hunt for the makings for rudimentary shelters as well as for firewood and water.
One Tanzanian relief worker says it is already overcrowded.
"Before there is bush here, but now you can see only the people and not the bush. That means there is too much people.”
A health clinic has been set up. Aid workers say they are already seeing patients with an assortment of diseases, including diarrhea, malaria, bronchitis and pneumonia. Only a few suffer from machete or gunshot wounds.
How long will the refugees have to stay in Tanzania? No one can say for sure. One told reporters that, given the bloody violence in Rwanda, he prefers to remain a refugee. But another said he wants to go back as soon as he can because, in his words, the conditions of life here are horrible.
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