At just nine years old, Juliette fled violence in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), leaving behind her home in Katanga and enduring the loss of several siblings. In Part 2 of her story, she recalls the journey to Goma and the challenges of starting over in a place where her family knew no one.After two days on the road, Juliette and her family arrived in Goma and entered a refugee camp, where they lived in shelters made from plastic tarpaulins. Without beds or furniture, they gathered stones to create somewhere to sit and sleep. Alongside grief, poverty, and illness, they had to find ways to rebuild their lives.Through her memories, Juliette shares what it meant to grow up in displacement, reach adolescence in a refugee camp, and continue her education despite difficult circumstances. Her mother’s determination to earn an income through a small charcoal business helped the family take steps toward a more stable future. After four years in the camp, they were finally able to move into a rented home in Goma.This episode explores childhood displacement, family resilience, community support, and the struggle to rebuild a sense of home after conflict.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

00:38 Juliette’s family journey from Katanga to Goma02:32 The realities of arriving in a refugee camp without family or belongings03:42 Growing up and taking on new responsibilities during displacement04:51 How her mother’s small business helped the family move forward05:23 Returning to education and rebuilding life outside the camp

Why This Story Matters

Juliette’s experience shows that displacement does not end when people reach a place of relative safety. Families must still navigate grief, inadequate living conditions, financial hardship, interrupted education, and the challenge of rebuilding their lives.Her story also highlights the role of community support and the resourcefulness of displaced families. From receiving food and clothing along the journey to finding ways to earn an income in the camp, Juliette’s memories show how assistance, opportunity, and family determination can influence what becomes possible after displacement.At The Refugee Archive, documenting lived experiences contributes to more accountable and people-centred humanitarian responses. Oral histories can complement perception and feedback research, and support evidence-to-action by ensuring that the experiences of displaced people remain part of how humanitarian needs and responses are understood.

About The Archive Speaks

The Archive Speaks is an oral history series by The Refugee Archive, preserving and amplifying the voices of displaced women and female heads of households. Through personal testimony, we document the experiences, challenges, and aspirations of people whose stories are too often overlooked.

Tags: Juliette’s Story, Juliette Part 2, The Archive Speaks, The Refugee Archive, Democratic Republic of the Congo, DRC, Goma, Katanga, refugee stories, childhood displacement, refugee camp, displacement and education, family resilience, women and displacement, oral history, lived experience, humanitarian response, community support, Accountability to Affected Populations, AAP, Community Engagement and Accountability, CEA, perception research, feedback research, participatory research, evidence-to-action, localization, humanitarian policy and systems research

Before displacement rewrote her family’s story, nine-year-old Juliette grew up surrounded by love, open green lawns, and the warmth of a bustling home in Katanga, DRC. But at 3:00 AM one morning in 1993, that peaceful childhood was shattered by sudden gunfire. In this first chapter of Juliette’s oral history, she recounts the terrifying night her family was forced to leap out of bed and flee into the pitch-black forest with nothing but the clothes on their backs. What followed was a 30-day nightmare in the jungle—living without shelter, blankets, or food while hiding from regional conflict. Exposed to the elements, Juliette watched malaria sweep through her family, claiming the lives of five of her siblings in childhood. Returning only to find their home looted and destroyed, her father made a life-altering decision: board a humanitarian truck and escape Katanga forever.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

00:00 Childhood Memories in Katanga03:45 A Family Built on Faith and Unity05:52 The War07:58 Losing her siblings

Why This Story Matters

Juliette's testimony highlights the devastating impact of conflict on children and families, illustrating how sudden displacement and exposure to severe environmental risks turn survival into an everyday battle. Her story is also part of The Refugee Archive's broader approach to participatory and community-based research. By documenting lived experience directly, oral histories can contribute to Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP), Community Engagement & Accountability (CEA), perception and feedback research, humanitarian policy and systems research, localization and locally led accountability, and evidence-to-action.The Archive preserves these experiences not only as historical records, but as sources of knowledge that can help researchers, humanitarian organizations, policymakers, and communities better understand the realities behind displacement.

About The Archive Speaks

The Archive Speaks is The Refugee Archive's oral history series documenting the lived experiences of displaced women and female-headed households around the world.Each testimony gives women space to speak about their lives in their own words — preserving memories of childhood, conflict, displacement, caregiving, survival, and rebuilding.Through this work, The Refugee Archive connects lived experience with research, education, accountability, and humanitarian action.

Tags: DRC, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Merveille's story, Merveille DRC, South Kivu, Goma, Bukavu, motherhood, motherhood without giving birth, female headed households, female headed household, single mothers, women and displacement, women in conflict, women in DRC, oral history, African oral history, displaced women, displacement stories, caregiving, kinship care, raising a child, women resilience, education in conflict, single motherhood, humanitarian storytelling, conflict in eastern Congo, The Archive Speaks, The Refugee Archive, women and war, motherhood and displacement, stories of displaced women

Arriving in Nigeria as a penniless refugee with a six-month-old infant strapped to her chest, Yvonne faced the immediate, terrifying reality of starting from absolute zero. With her home back in Cameroon reduced to ashes and no family to rely on, she found herself sleeping on bare concrete floors in a foreign land. In this third chapter of Yvonne’s oral history, she recounts her extraordinary journey of survival, resilience, and grass-roots innovation. From working as a commercial bus fare collector so she could pitch homemade nutritional supplements to passengers, to saving up her earnings to buy a mattress large enough to shelter future refugees, Yvonne’s refusal to give up turned her personal hardship into a lifeline for others. What began as a single room providing shelter and vocational training to displaced women quickly grew into the Endam Home of Hope. Yvonne's testimony details how she built sustainable social enterprises, earned international recognition—including the UNHCR Innovation Award—and transformed her experience of displacement into a movement restoring dignity, self-reliance, and hope to thousands.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

00:00 The Escape: Fleeing Cameroon with an Infant02:35 Survival in Abuja03:46 The Bus Conductor & The "Soya Moon" Invention04:55 Why She Insisted on Buying a Large Mattress11:07 A Message to Single Mothers & Refugee-Led Aid

Why This Story Matters

Yvonne's testimony illustrates how refugee-led solutions and lived experience can drive grassroots humanitarian action, proving that displaced women are not merely passive aid recipients, but vital leaders of community transformation. Her story is also part of The Refugee Archive's broader approach to participatory and community-based research. By documenting lived experience directly, oral histories can contribute to Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP), Community Engagement & Accountability (CEA), perception and feedback research, humanitarian policy and systems research, localization and locally led accountability, and evidence-to-action.The Archive preserves these experiences not only as historical records, but as sources of knowledge that can help researchers, humanitarian organizations, policymakers, and communities better understand the realities behind displacement.

About The Archive Speaks

The Archive Speaks is The Refugee Archive's oral history series documenting the lived experiences of displaced women and female-headed households around the world.Each testimony gives women space to speak about their lives in their own words — preserving memories of childhood, conflict, displacement, caregiving, survival, and rebuilding.Through this work, The Refugee Archive connects lived experience with research, education, accountability, and humanitarian action.

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Stay connected with The Refugee Archive and follow new oral histories, research, events, and stories from displaced women:Facebook: @TheRefugeeArchiveInstagram: @TheRefugeeArchiveTikTok: @TheRefugeeArchiveLinkedIn: The Refugee Archive

After earning her nursing degree and starting a new life working in Thailand, 26-year-old Yvonne believed she was stepping into a chapter of security and freedom. But when personal choices, cultural expectations, and political unrest collide, her life is radically rewritten overnight. In this second chapter of Yvonne’s oral history, she recounts the crushing social stigma she faced upon returning to Cameroon as a single mother. The public shame forced her into isolation within her own community, but an even greater threat was lurking. Joining what she believed was a peaceful Independence Day march in her village, Yvonne was suddenly marked by local authorities as a political activist. Warned by a friendly officer that her name was on an arrest list, Yvonne was forced to make an impossible choice. When soldiers descended on her compound at night and burned her family’s homes to ashes, Yvonne’s mother handed her a six-month-old baby, a small bundle of cash, and a heartbreaking directive: leave, run, and do not come back. Facing total displacement, Yvonne begins a dangerous journey into Nigeria as a penniless refugee.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

00:31 Life in Thailand and an Unexpected Decision02:15 The Stigma of Single Motherhood in Her Village04:25 Participating in the Peaceful October 1st March05:42 The Tipped-Off Warning and Midnight Gunfire08:06 Houses in Ashes: Her Mother’s Final Choice

Why This Story Matters

Yvonne's testimony shows how quickly safety can collapse in times of political turmoil, and how female heads of household often carry the double burden of social stigma and forced displacement. Her story is also part of The Refugee Archive's broader approach to participatory and community-based research. By documenting lived experience directly, oral histories can contribute to Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP), Community Engagement & Accountability (CEA), perception and feedback research, humanitarian policy and systems research, localization and locally led accountability, and evidence-to-action.The Archive preserves these experiences not only as historical records, but as sources of actionable knowledge that can help researchers, humanitarian organizations, policymakers, and communities better understand the hidden, gendered realities of displacement and flight.

About The Archive Speaks

The Archive Speaks preserves oral histories from displaced women and female heads of households around the world.These stories are shared in women’s own words, without political alignment or editorial interference, so that lived experiences shaped by conflict, displacement, and survival remain part of the historical record.

Before she became a humanitarian and a refugee in Nigeria, Yvonne was a young girl growing up in Kuke Mbomo, Cameroon, in a family where caring for others was simply part of everyday life.

In this first chapter of Yvonne’s oral history, she takes us back to her childhood in a large polygamous household where more than 20 people shared one compound. She remembers village life, her family’s cocoa farm, and watching her mother feed and support people around her — including Nigerian workers and tenants. For Yvonne, those early experiences became the roots of her commitment to humanitarian service.

But her childhood also carried experiences she kept hidden for years. Yvonne speaks candidly about surviving sexual violence as a child and the fear, isolation, and lasting impact that followed. She also reflects on how education, faith, and leadership helped her gradually find her voice and sense of purpose.Her path eventually took her to the University of Yaoundé II to study law, where she faced the challenge of studying in French despite coming from Cameroon’s English-speaking region. After her father’s death, her mother’s advice led her in another direction — toward nursing. She went on to earn her nursing qualifications and later worked in schools and hospitals in Thailand.This is the beginning of Yvonne’s story — a story about the people and experiences that shaped her long before displacement, and the values she would carry with her into the life she leads today.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

00:00 Growing Up in a Large Family in Cameroon01:00 The Mother Who Taught Her to Serve03:22 A Childhood Trauma She Kept Secret06:00 Finding Strength Through Leadership and Faith07:38 From Law to Nursing09:37 A New Chapter Begins

Why This Story Matters

Yvonne’s story reminds us that a commitment to service often begins with the values we learn at home and the communities that shape us. Her experiences show how personal histories can offer valuable insights into the realities of displacement, the importance of community support, and the role of care and solidarity in people’s lives.

By documenting stories like Yvonne’s, The Refugee Archive contributes to Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP) and Community Engagement & Accountability (CEA) by creating space for displaced people to share their experiences, perspectives, and concerns in their own words. These testimonies can inform perception and feedback research, and contribute to humanitarian policy and systems research that takes lived experience seriously.

At the heart of this work is a commitment to localization and locally led accountability—recognizing that people affected by displacement are not simply recipients of humanitarian assistance, but knowledge holders whose voices should help shape the decisions that affect their lives. By connecting these experiences to research and practice, The Refugee Archive supports evidence-to-action, helping ensure that the realities of displaced communities are heard, understood, and considered in humanitarian responses.

About The Archive Speaks

The Archive Speaks preserves oral histories from displaced women and female heads of households around the world.These stories are shared in women’s own words, without political alignment or editorial interference, so that lived experiences shaped by conflict, displacement, and survival remain part of the historical record.

"Every single day is a battle to survive."

Madeleine is a Congolese refugee and single mother living in the Nakivale Refugee Settlement in Uganda, where she is raising three boys on her own. In this chapter of her oral history, she describes the daily struggle of finding work, securing food, caring for her children, and trying to keep them in school.Most mornings, Madeleine completes her household chores before going into the fields to collect firewood. She then heads to the Somali quarter of the settlement to look for casual work washing clothes and cleaning houses. But work is never guaranteed. Some days, she waits alongside many other women and eventually returns home empty-handed.Her situation is made more difficult by her children's health needs. Madeleine describes caring for her eldest son, who has severe long-term complications following an attack he experienced after the family arrived in the settlement. Her youngest son also has chronic health problems that sometimes make it impossible for her to leave home to work.Madeleine says she is usually selected for casual work only two or three times a week. On a typical working day, she may earn around 5,000 Ugandan shillings, while in a good month she estimates that her combined income from casual work and church support can reach around 300,000 shillings. Much of that goes immediately toward food and her children's basic needs.She has also tried to find more stable employment and hopes to earn an income through skills she already has in hairdressing and nail technology. But without the money or equipment needed to start, those skills remain difficult to turn into a livelihood.Beyond work and food, Madeleine speaks about childcare, housing, safety, education, documentation, and access to humanitarian services. She describes the difficult choices she faces when she has to leave her children at home to search for work.She also shares allegations of corruption, discrimination, and barriers to medical referrals and refugee resettlement. These accounts are presented as Madeleine's personal experiences and observations.Despite everything, Madeleine's hope remains centered on her children.She wants them to stay in school, gain an education, and eventually build a future beyond poverty and displacement.This is Madeleine's story from Nakivale, Uganda.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

00:00 Life as a Single Mother in Nakivale03:00 Her Son's Health and a Traumatic Attack10:00 Finding Work and Surviving Day to Day18:00 Child Safety, Food, and Healthcare35:00 What Single Mothers Need Most

Why This Story Matters

Madeleine’s story begins with displacement, but it does not begin with the moment she became a refugee.

Her testimony shows how the experiences that precede displacement—losing parents, interrupted education, domestic work, economic vulnerability, and the search for stability—can shape the decisions young women make throughout their lives.

By listening to Madeleine’s story from its beginning, we can better understand the life that existed before displacement and the circumstances that eventually brought her to Uganda as a refugee.

About The Archive Speaks

The Archive Speaks is an oral history series from The Refugee Archive, documenting the lived experiences of displaced women and female-headed households around the world.

Each testimony is preserved as part of a wider record of displacement, conflict, caregiving, motherhood, and survival, allowing women to tell their stories in their own words.

Tags: Uganda refugees, Congolese refugees in Uganda, Nakivale Refugee Settlement, refugee women, women and displacement, female-headed households, DRC refugees, South Kivu, Bukavu, Goma, Rutshuru, refugee oral history, African oral history, women in conflict, displacement stories, The Archive Speaks, The Refugee Archive.

Madeleine walked by foot from Goma to the Settlement in Uganda…

In Part 2 of Madeleine's oral history, a Congolese refugee currently living in Uganda recounts the night armed men attacked her village in Rutshuru, North Kivu, and set her home on fire.Madeleine was already a mother of two when the attack happened. In the chaos, she escaped carrying her one-year-old baby, only to realize that her four-year-old son was still inside the burning house. Other people fleeing with her returned and found him badly burned, carrying him out to safety.The family fled to a Catholic church, where they spent about a week sleeping on concrete floors alongside other displaced families. Her injured son needed medical attention, while the family survived with help from church workers, volunteers, and humanitarian organizations.With the violence continuing, Madeleine made the decision to leave the Democratic Republic of the Congo. With very little money, she and her children walked for approximately two days toward Uganda. The journey was exhausting and terrifying, and they encountered dead bodies along the road.At the border, Madeleine told officials she needed to take her injured child to Uganda for medical treatment. When they saw the severity of his burns, they allowed the family to cross.The family eventually arrived at the Nakivale Refugee Settlement in Uganda, where Madeleine's son received medical treatment. But arriving in a place of safety brought a new set of challenges. She was given a small plot of land and basic materials to build a shelter, but as a single mother without her husband, constructing a home was extremely difficult.Madeleine describes the poverty and hunger she experienced in Nakivale, as well as the difficulty of paying school fees for her children. By 2019, desperation for food and education led her into a relationship with another Congolese refugee who promised to support her family. She became pregnant with her third child, but the father abandoned her.The pregnancy brought another devastating chapter: Madeleine and the child's father tested positive for HIV. She ultimately became a single mother of three while managing her own health and caring for her children in the refugee settlement.This is Madeleine's journey from violence in eastern DRC to refuge in Uganda—and the beginning of her life as a single mother in Nakivale.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

00:00 The Attack: Madeleine's Home Is Set on Fire03:00 Fleeing to the Border With Her Children07:00 Crossing Into Uganda and Seeking Medical Treatment10:00 Life Begins in Nakivale Refugee Settlement13:00 Hunger, Pregnancy, and Becoming a Single Mother of Three

Why This Story Matters

Madeleine’s story begins with displacement, but it does not begin with the moment she became a refugee.

Her testimony shows how the experiences that precede displacement—losing parents, interrupted education, domestic work, economic vulnerability, and the search for stability—can shape the decisions young women make throughout their lives.

By listening to Madeleine’s story from its beginning, we can better understand the life that existed before displacement and the circumstances that eventually brought her to Uganda as a refugee.

About The Archive Speaks

The Archive Speaks is an oral history series from The Refugee Archive, documenting the lived experiences of displaced women and female-headed households around the world.

Each testimony is preserved as part of a wider record of displacement, conflict, caregiving, motherhood, and survival, allowing women to tell their stories in their own words.

Tags: Uganda refugees, Congolese refugees in Uganda, Nakivale Refugee Settlement, refugee women, women and displacement, female-headed households, DRC refugees, South Kivu, Bukavu, Goma, Rutshuru, refugee oral history, African oral history, women in conflict, displacement stories, The Archive Speaks, The Refugee Archive.

She believed that marriage was her only way out…

Madeleine is a Congolese refugee currently living in Uganda. In this first chapter of her oral history, she takes us back to her childhood in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, where she grew up without her parents and was raised by an elderly woman in Kadutu, Bukavu.

Her earliest memories include playing by the lake, attending school, helping care for the woman who raised her, and dreaming of becoming a doctor. For a time, she remembers feeling safe and cared for, even though she did not know what had happened to her parents or whether she had siblings.

After the woman became ill and passed away, Madeleine’s circumstances changed. Without a family of her own to rely on, she left Bukavu for Goma at around thirteen, hoping to find work and a better life. Her education was eventually interrupted, and she entered domestic work while still very young.

As a teenager, Madeleine experienced increasingly difficult and unsafe working conditions. She eventually began to believe that marriage might offer the stability and protection she could not find elsewhere. She met a young man who delivered milk to the household where she worked, and after months of a secret relationship, she left Goma with him for Rutshuru Center.

At around sixteen or seventeen, Madeleine began a new life as a wife. In Rutshuru, she found a caring husband and began building a household of her own, contributing through small businesses while her husband worked selling milk.

Today, Madeleine is living as a refugee in Uganda. Her story begins long before displacement, with the childhood, choices, relationships, and circumstances that shaped the woman she would eventually become.

This is the beginning of Madeleine’s oral history.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

00:00 Childhood, Orphanhood, and Life in Bukavu

09:00 Moving to Goma and Starting a New Life

17:00 Marriage, Family, and Violence in Rutshuru

18:00 Childhood Dreams and Education Interrupted

22:00 Domestic Work and Growing Up Too Soon

28:00 Why Madeleine Began Thinking About Marriage

33:00 Leaving Goma and Beginning Married Life in Rutshuru

35:00 Building a Home and Starting a Small Business

Why This Story Matters

Madeleine’s story begins with displacement, but it does not begin with the moment she became a refugee.

Her testimony shows how the experiences that precede displacement—losing parents, interrupted education, domestic work, economic vulnerability, and the search for stability—can shape the decisions young women make throughout their lives.

By listening to Madeleine’s story from its beginning, we can better understand the life that existed before displacement and the circumstances that eventually brought her to Uganda as a refugee.

About The Archive Speaks

The Archive Speaks is an oral history series from The Refugee Archive, documenting the lived experiences of displaced women and female-headed households around the world.

Each testimony is preserved as part of a wider record of displacement, conflict, caregiving, motherhood, and survival, allowing women to tell their stories in their own words.

Tags: Uganda refugees, Congolese refugees in Uganda, Nakivale Refugee Settlement, refugee women, women and displacement, female-headed households, DRC refugees, South Kivu, Bukavu, Goma, Rutshuru, refugee oral history, African oral history, women in conflict, displacement stories, The Archive Speaks, The Refugee Archive.