This is Mombai. He speaks English, so I got to speak to him quite a bit while I was visiting the refugee camp outside Nampula.

Mombai left his home in the Congo in 1996, when he was going to school. I could not tell if he was Tutsi or if he just associated with Tutsi people, but nevertheless, the civil war pushed him out of his country. Sometimes walking, sometimes paying for rides, he finally got to the refugee camp in Tanzania with a large group of his neighbors and friends. After a few years, soldiers from the Congo arrived and forced his friends into becoming soldiers and return to Congo to fight. By this time, neither armies were better than the other - both were nothing better than thugs with big guns.

Mombai didn't want to be forced into fighting, so he escaped the camp and arrived in Mozambique in 2003. He is a shopkeeper here, and he is lucky to have his brother here with him since both of his parents were killed in the Tanzanian camp. Luck doesn't go far here, though - he is still at the bottom of the food chain. That 2 liter jug he is holding is for his rations, which were doled out today. He'll get that jug filled up with oil (this time he hopes they'll fill it to the handle, but they probably won't), a kilo and a half of corn meal, a sack of beans, some salt and maybe some soap if its available. This will have to last him for a month.

He is optimistic that he will be able to move to the States, since there have been some talk of opportunities for people in the camp. He hopes so, since there is really no other option for him - he cannot return to the Congo until it is peaceful, and he cannot be integrated into Mozambican society since it is illegal. For the time being, he'll stay in the camp, but he wishes for more complete health care, since the nurses in the camp are poorly trained and refugees are turned away from the hospital in town.

I shared some almonds with him. He had never tasted them. What a pitiful offering considering his circumstances. He asked me to tell some people in the United States about his story, one of 3,000 here.... so here I am, doing that.