From her vantage point smack in the middle of a civil war refugee crisis in Zaire - a half a world away from her home on the Plateau - it's so hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys that she doesn't even try.

"Logistically, it's very difficult here. It's punishing, " Taillefer said in a satellite phone interview from the northeastern city of Kisangani yesterday. "It's better to dwell on the positives."

And for the 34-year old CARE Canada field worker, the positives are the incremental successes of aid groups working to improve conditions for the Rwandan refugees bring herded into the region by rebel forces.

"There are still many obstacles to overcome," Taillefer said. "But in the past three or four days, it's improved. It's not back to normal, but it's acceptable."

Tens of thousands of Hutu refugees have arrived in Kisangani in recent weeks after being driven out of camps in the north of the country where they have lived since 1994's genocide. Laurent Kabila, whose Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo now controls more than three-quarters of the country, has given the UN less than two months to repatriate all of them to Rwanda.

Taillefer, who arrived in the region last week, has already seen her share of misery. On Sunday, she helped unload the bodies of the 91 people who suffocated or were crushed to death when rebel forces packed thousands of refugees into Kisangani-bound railway boxcars.

Taillefer said humanitarian groups are still having problems getting to the main refugee camps, which are located in Biaro, 40 kilometers south of the city across the Congo river, through dense jungle and rebel checkpoints along mud-choked roads. But she said conditions in the camps, which were chaotic when aid first arrived last week, have improved greatly since food and medicine started to flow.

"Yesterday, the people were a lot calmer and everything was better organized," Taillefer said. However, she stressed that sickness and malnutrition continue to claim victims.

The Montreal connection to relief efforts in Zaire goes far beyond Taillefer. Local food-manufacturer VitaPro has donated four tonnes of its soya-based meat substitute - enough to provide high-protein meals for 150,000 people.

"We had this food ready to go out to Rwanda and Zaire three months ago," VitaPro CEO Yank Barry said from his Montreal offices yesterday. "We just couldn't find someone to take it."

Barry, the former lead singer for The Kingsmen of Louie, Louie fame, teamed up with Muhammad Ali's Champions for Children and UPS to deliver the food to CARE workers in Zaire.

And it's not the first time that the dehydrated all-vegetarian powder, which is produced in plants in Pointe Claire and Lachine, has found its way to hungry people around the globe. Barry said past relief efforts in Indonesia, Liberia and Bosnia have fed more than 7 million people, and that his company is committed to increasing that number to 100 million by the end of 1997.

"The only catch is feeding people", said Barry, whose company doesn't accept donations to offset the cost of its charity work. It's worth is because we all feel really good about it."

Barry credits Ali, whose greatest boxing triumph took place in Zaire when he defeated George Foreman in 1974's Rumble in the Jungle, with opening the necessary bureaucratic and governmental doors.

"At the beginning when we tried to give away food, no one wanted it," Barry said, "But now people are seeking us out."

And today in Zaire, many people are grateful that Barry was so persistent.

"If you talk to him (Barry), tell him we're very happy with the food," Taillefer said, "He's wonderful."