All's quiet in Western Tanzania.

• Position: First Person

7:45 a.m.: "November Hotel 1-6-4, this is November Hotel 2-1. Move to channel 7." This is the start of another busy day in the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Afriline residential compound, located on top of beautiful Ngara Ridge, surrounded by barbed wire and sometimes above the clouds. A driver responds to the radio call, and in no time he is in front of my yellow container house. "Rafiki, pipi!" (Kiswahili for "Friend, give us candy!"), yell the local children as they run near our vehicle as we make our way to the UNHCR sub-office.

Admirela Balic

8:00 a.m.: "Would you like to have a grasshopper?" devilishly asks our field assistant as he places a bag filled with grasshoppers on my desk. "Thankyou. But I already had breakfast." Grasshoppers are a delicacy for certain tribes in this area. They taste like prawns.

8:30 a.m.: Together with a national staff lawyer from the Protection Section, we are headed for Mbuba Transit Center, more than half an hour's drive from our sub-office. Today our special interest is the "Makanaki" (recycler) problem. People are lined up in front of the Center which receives new arrivals from Burundi and Rwanda. There, they are interviewed and prepared for transfer to a refugee camp, where they stay until conditions in their countries are safe for repatriation. Once admitted as refugees, some try to return to the Center claiming to be new arrivals--these are the recyclers. If their story is accepted, they will again get a new food ration card, plastic sheeting and other non-food items. Since the 20-per cent food cut last year by the World Food Programme, the total number of people attempting to recycle has increased drastically. We are told that the cut is caused by reductions in donor funding.

9:30 a.m.: A two-year-old child runs towards me with a huge smile and embraces my legs immediately upon entering Mbuba Transit Center. She is beautiful, but her face is covered with flies and she has an open wound. She has lust arrived from Burundi. I feel touched, moved and an increasing personal drive to change the existing health conditions in the Center. We are hoping to receive a consignment of blankets and clothes to shelter asylum applicants until they are admitted. It is all so frustrating! I Wish I could do more!

10:30 a.m.: On the way back from the Transit Center, where we run into monkeys crossing the road from time to time, we see a human leg, detached from rest of the body, right in the...