The Congo is in the grip of crisis. Since August, quarter of a million people have fled from their homes due to fighting between the government army and a rebel groups, adding to the one million people who were already homeless in the country.

Francoise, 32, is newly displaced. She arrived in Kibati camp just three days ago, from Kiwanja, which is at the heart of the fighting, with her one son. She lost her four other children and her husband along the way. Here she tells her story to Rebecca Wynn, from Oxfam.

There was fighting in my town, Kiwanja. “Stay at home, hide under your beds, “said the announcement on the radio. We were hardly going to go out.The fighting was right in our neighbourhood. My children said they heard rockets. I had five children. Now I have one.

After a while, I wanted to get out of the house. It was stifling staying there and the shots were no longer ringing. I said we should head to the MONUC base - the base of the peacekeepers. They are supposed to keep us safe and this is our time of need. Other families had the same idea - we were caught in a throng. But there was this man - he was older and cynical. “We are going into the lion’s teeth,” he said. And he was right. Before we got to the peacekeepers’ base, the shots rang out again.

The shots went right over our heads. The crowd scattered. One moment I was with my husband and five children; the next second they were gone. All except one. Stephen - my six-year-old - was holding onto my skirt. I couldn’t see my husband or other children anywhere. There was a mass of people in front of me. There were thousands, bumping into each other and trying to get away. I knew I had a choice. Run or die. I just needed to get of there. My heart was beating. My face was sweating. I didn’t want to die.

There was a motorbike taxi revving on the corner of the road. I called to the driver, “hey, mister, wait!” He looked up: “You got dollars?” I had fifteen dollars. All I had in the world. “I want to go to Goma”, I said. “Will you take me? I have fifteen dollars.” He chewed his lip. “Goma is twenty,” he said. “Do we have time to haggle? Please mister, have some humanity. I don’t want my child to die.”

I got on the bike. All through the town there were scenes of destruction. Did I see dead bodies? Yes. Not just one, many, many, many dead. Boys and men, their bodies lay on the ground. There were corpses of boys of fourteen - like my oldest son - and men of forty, like my husband. I don’t know whether they were among the dead. I heard screams of women. These armed men rape women and even young girls. Where is my poor sweet 16-year-old girl, I thought. Poor Marie, who cooked and cleaned with me, where is she? I didn’t want her innocence lost.

Other people were leaving too. Some people had no transport and had to walk or run. They had bundles of food and clothes. Some dropped their bundles in the rush and there was no time to pick them up. Your possessions or your life - what are you going to choose? There were old people, young people, pregnant women. Other people had managed to get into the back of trucks - packed tight body-to-body but moving out of danger faster than the people on the road. It was horrible to see my beautiful town in chaos. Kiwanja is a cosmopolitan place. Many people from different areas of eastern Congo go there. My husband and me grew up on Idjwi island on Lake Kivu. We married on the island. We went to Kiwanja for work.

It took me four hours to get to Goma. All throughout the journey, on the bumpy roads, I was thinking am I dead, is this real? I was in such a state of shock. I don’t think my heart stopped pounding the whole way. I held my son close to me.

There is nothing in Goma. No relatives, no friends. I am in Kibati camp, which is in a scrap of land north of the city. I’m living in a tarpaulin hangar, a huge white tent, with around 50 other people. There are clothes and blankets all round. There’s no dignity. No privacy. If I’m lucky, I will be given some tarpaulin and banana leaves and will be able to build my own shelter. That’s what counts as luck now. I have been here for three days. I only had the clothes that I was wearing. The women here have scraped together and given me a fresh skirt and some clothes for my son.

I keep thinking of my four lost children. The doctor has given me medicine to calm my nerves. Every time I think of them, my heart skips a beat. I had two teenage boys - one fourteen and another thirteen. They used to play football outside our home. They could be dead. They could be forced to fight as child soldiers. My husband spoke a lot about forced conscription into the militia groups. It was something that he feared.  He thought it might happen to him too, as well as the boys. I also had a little three-year-old boy. How on earth can he fend for himself? I hope that my husband managed to scoop him up and protect him.

I have dreams, not nightmares. I play that scene again. We are near the MONUC base. This time though I hold on to all of my children, keeping them close to me. Stay with me! Hold your brother’s hand. Keep your sister close. It’s when I wake up that the nightmare starts, because my half-awake mind forgets what has happened and I think that I’m going to wake up and see them again. Then I realise they are gone.

People say that this camp is not safe. Women warn me not to go into the banana fields and collect food because of all the men with guns around. There have been reports of rape and women are scared. But what can I do? My son needs to eat. I can’t eat. I’ve completely lost all appetite. The worry and the trauma eats me. The women here say that I’m getting thin. But my son must eat, if not me - for him I will risk the armed men.

The camp is on the frontline. Before I came, there was a clash between the Congolese army and the rebels close by. People from here fled into Goma town for a night. Some slept in public buildings like schools and churches, but many slept on the dirt roads under the stars. They came back to the camp the day after. A roof over your head is better than a dirt road.

But I’m not scared of the frontline. I keep thinking that I want to cross it and try and go north again. Some of the people from Kiwanja went to Kinyandonyi, which is on the border near Uganda. I want to search for my family there. If there’s a chance to see them again, I want to take it. But it is dangerous. I might get killed. Maybe I should stay here with my only son. What if I lose him on the way?

My life before was good. My husband and I had fields that we cultivated and the children all went to school. Now I have nothing. I have my young son, but no means to support him. It breaks my heart, this war. We want to go home. We want to have peace. Will you help us with that, please?

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