Six months ago, he says, the rebels wreaked havoc on the main road and often killed peasant farmers. The peasants, guarded by government troops, can leave their temporary mud homes during the day but must return in the evening. Conditions are abysmal. Hundreds of people are crammed onto a small patch of bare hillside. They lack running water, electricity, schools or health clinics.
Families live in small, mud-walled huts covered by plastic tarps.
In the camp, surrounded by government soldiers and cut off from their crops and homes, it is harder for them to help the rebels, the governor says. But when you're fighting a guerrilla war, you don't win overnight. You can't predict when the fighting will end. Ntamahungiro is talking about Burundi's seven-year civil war, but it well describes all of Africa's wars. But the forces of disorder in Africa once more seem on the rise.