Displacement: losing your shelter
Apr 7th, 2009 by Louise Williams, OCHA
Augustine with her youngest child.
If the Chadians came and shot at you, would you stay here? I think you would choose to run away from your home and save your life. We are re-building our house, we will come back to the village, life is better in the village – we can get a taxi motorbike to the town and get treatment. But the minute there is gunfire, we will go back to the bush.”
Home life in the bush
“It’s been 6 years now, this is the 6th year. We are suffering from the cold and the mosquitoes in the bush – the children have no beds to sleep on. There are lots of children to take care of, it’s hard to get clean water to wash, for the children to drink – everything is difficult for us because we live in the bush. As for food, if the kids get some, that’s the most important thing – God will do the rest.”
Family life in the bush
“For a pregnant woman, it’s really hard. I have 5 children, this is going to be my 6th. My sixth child, my last pregnancy, died in my stomach. It was because there was no clean drinking water. I was taken to hospital, the child was taken out of my belly – I am now carrying my seventh child.”
Putting the roof on Augustine’s house.
Future
“I am a woman, I don’t know the rebels’ business, I don’t know the government’s business – what I do know is that we have been living in the bush and we have been suffering. God was the one who created me, I am not mistress of myself. If he wants things to get better in the future, he will make it so. 
