In a land of bloodshed and war, where ethnicity can be the difference between life and death, Christophe Chahani is caught in the middle. The 34-year-old Burundian engineer is part Hutu part Tutsi, and he is scared.
"I am at risk from both sides and I am so afraid that I will be killed with my children. You don't know who is your enemy and who is your friend," he said.
"It is the way Burundi people are. You see both sides drinking beer together in the day and then at night they kill each other."
Burundi's six-year civil war, which pitches Hutu rebels against the Tutsi-dominated government, has taken a sickening new turn. Faced with ever increasing attacks, aid workers believe more than 800,000 Hutus have been forcibly herded into squalid "regroupment" camps.
Critics call them concentration camps, while the government says they are for the people's own protection. What is not in doubt is that the camps are breeding grounds for disease, malnutrition and ethnic hatred. Hundreds of internees have already died.
The latest wave of clearances began in September as 300,000 people in the hilly province surrounding the capital Bujumbura were rounded up following rebel attacks on the city that killed scores of residents.
Isale camp is just two weeks old, but already holds 14,000 people in forlorn shacks made from branches, grass and leaves. Conditions are appalling. Though it is just a few miles from Bujumbura there is no water, clinic or school. An army barracks guards the only road to the camp.
"We have nothing here. How are we to live?" said one old Hutu man, who, like many in Burundi, was too frightened to give his name because of possible reprisals from both sides.
Like neighbouring Rwanda, where almost a million people died in 1994's genocide, Burundi is run by Tutsis, who make up just 15 per cent of the six million population but hold most important political and economic jobs.
From her mud hut, Sylvie Niragira (24) can still see the lush green valley where she used to farm before the soldiers moved her, her husband and two young children to Mubimbi camp, perched on a hilltop on the edge of the rebel-infested Kibira jungle.
She longs to go back, but knows it is impossible. "We cannot go there. The rebels often come and they would take our food and could kill us," she said.
However, it is not just fear of attack that keeps people in the camps. The Tutsi-dominated army wants to deprive the Hutu rebels of their support base and, if Ms Niragira were to try to leave, it would be a Tutsi soldier's bullet that would stop her.
All over Mubimbi the signs of hunger and sickness are obvious. Children with stick-like limbs and distended bellies crowd around makeshift mud huts. The air is full of the sound of infants crying and the smell of raw sewage.
Part of the reason for the poor conditions is the fact that for almost two months the camps have not been visited by foreign aid workers. In October rebels appeared to carry out their threat to target expatriates by shooting and killing two United Nations workers in a camp in the south of Burundi. Since then the countryside has been a virtual no-go area for foreigners.
The 30 km-long thickly forested road from Bujumbura to Mubimbi is a terrifying drive past scores of army machine-gun nests. Many of the camps are still off limits to anyone but their inhabitants and the army. Rebel attacks are frequent.
However, the camps have achieved their most immediate objective as the rebel assaults on the capital have dropped. But the city still has its own brand of terror, especially for Hutu men, hundreds of whom have disappeared in recent months.
In a forbidding, grey concrete building at the edge of a plush suburb is the headquarters of a sinister army unit, the Groupement d'Intervention de Bujumbura. Nearby residents claim Hutu youths are taken inside and at night screams of pain echo over the walls.
Amnesty International has condemned the building as a secret detention centre, but no outside observers have been allowed in.
Few who endure Bujumbura's nightly curfew or hear the gunfire rolling down from the hills at night are optimistic about the future. The camps, they say, are brewing an ethnic rage among the Hutu population that may trigger the genocide the government says it is striving to avoid.
The picturesque ex-Belgian colony has a tragic history of misrule. In the 1990s, two presidents were killed, the first in 1993 which started the war. The current leader, Maj Gen Pierre Buyoya, has led two successful army coups.
"We are in a funnel and we can't get out. As it gets narrower and narrower the more desperate it becomes," said Carl Johnson (84), an American missionary who has lived in Burundi for almost 50 years.
The only ray of hope seems to be the appointment of the former South African president, Mr Nelson Mandela as mediator in Burundi's stalled peace process. Under the late Tanzanian leader, Julius Nyerere, talks repeatedly failed as some rebel groups were barred. However, Mr Mandela has called for all parties to attend.
Foreigners are prepared for the worst. American expatriates are a closely-knit group, constantly in touch by radio in case a sudden evacuation is needed.
Sitting in his office and barred from travelling to the camps because of the dangers, David Rothrock, local head of the US aid agency Catholic Relief Services, sums up the situation.
"On the map Burundi is shaped just like a human heart, but, God, it is a suffering heart, I'll tell you that," he said.
Jean-Pierre Campagne adds:
The closing year saw wars, coups and rebellions in more than 20 countries throughout Africa. The latest conflict was last week's coup in the Ivory Coast, where the military ousted President Henri Konan Bedie.
The largest conflagration was in Democratic Republic of Congo, with troops from Rwanda and Uganda backing rebels and Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia on the side of President Kabila. Uganda and Rwanda, both with minority Tutsi leaders, have been accused of seeking to create a Tutsi empire in central Africa.