When a refugee camp closes – where do refugees go?

It wasn't just the rain that beat down on the morning I visited Mtabila refugee camp, turning the roads to muck and leaving chickens shivering in little huddles under the eaves of the mud-brick houses. Even in the blazing heat of the afternoon before, the camp was a depressing place.

The reason – besides the desperation and need in this camp of 40,000 Burundian refugees near Kasulu, Tanzania – is an exodus now underway. The Tanzanian government, in recent decades one of the most generous hosts of refugee populations in Africa, is nearing the end of a two-year effort to shut down its camps. All Burundian refugees – some who fled ethnic violence in their homeland in 1972, others when it erupted again in 1993 – are scheduled to be sent home by July 1, by force if necessary.

Among them are some close friends of Bill's family from their former camp: father Jean-Paul Rukundo, mother Marcellina Hatungimana, and their eight kids – including Bill's old soccer buddy Jean-Jacques, and two teenage girls who were friends with his sister Neema.