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On Wednesday the first confirmed case of cholera appeared; within 24 hours 800 people were dead; then it became too hard to keep count. Aid workers set up isolation tents to control the epidemic, but know they cannot. Every minute another patient arrives, calling for help, for water, and then giving up and settling helplessly on the ground, staring at the few workers who bustle around. At the rate the disease is spreading, between 7,000 and 70,000 are almost certain to die in coming days. "I've never seen anything like it," said Dr. Koen Henckaerts. "But then I haven't seen a million refugees either."
It would take an extra million gallons of purified water a day just to counter the dehydration. Last week about 50,000 gallons a day were arriving. The volcanic soil around the camps is so hard it is impossible to drill new wells or dig latrines without heavy mechanical equipment, which is still days away. "What do you mean, I must make sure to boil the water?" refugee Dafrose Kabutumwa asked a reporter. "Can't you see we're all going to die here?"
Even if the doctors manage to treat the diseases, survivors need to be fed and sheltered. Goma alone requires 600 metric tons of food a day, 1 million blankets, 200,000 rolls of plastic sheeting, 200,000 jerricans, 80 water tankers and 90 to 100 trucks to carry food the 497 miles from the Ugandan capital of Entebbe -- and these numbers are sure to grow. When the Red Cross began its food distribution, a child was trampled when the crowd, desperate that there would not be enough to go around, surged forward. "If it runs out, or if it doesn't arrive soon enough, the violence will follow," warns Red Cross worker Nina Winquist, "and then it is always the weakest who lose out."
The World Food Program was able to fly four loaded planes into Goma during the first desperate weekend. But two more relief planes were turned back because of mortar fire, and, unimaginably, a strike by Zaire air traffic controllers arguing with the French over who had responsibility for running the airport. Zairian officials were demanding bribes for landing rights, and blocked some relief flights so that commercial planes could continue to use the airport.
Relief officials all agree the only real hope for the Rwandan people is for them to return to their country, retrieve their farms and rebuild their homes and their lives. "The longer the refugees stay here, the more explosive it becomes," says the World Food Program's Daan Everts. "It's like a time bomb. The exodus has to be undone." The newly installed government called for all refugees to come home and promised that no revenge would be sought on the civilian population. "I'm not interested in leading a country that is considered a desert," Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu declared. He has only to look around his capital to see the scale of the problem. There is no electricity, no water, no telephones, only soldiers and guns and checkpoints. Even his four little children, who fled with him to Brussels two months ago, do not want to come back.