In Pictures

CAR refugees’ ‘Most Important Things’

Central African refugees have been crossing into DR Congo carrying only their most-treasured items.

Jean Gerembo recalls Wednesday March 27, 2013, vividly. His wife and two children were staying with his mother-in-law, when Seleka forces entered his village of Batalimo. The Seleka heard from a neighbour that Jean(***)s mother had saved some money, and at 11:45 that night there came a knock at the door. Jean hid beneath his mother(***)s bed and told her to remain silent, and not to answer it. A few moments later, the door was kicked in. One of the soldiers walked over to the bed and slit the old woman(***)s throat. Terrified, Jean stayed under the bed as they looted the home. The next morning, he found eight young people who were, as he said, "brave enough to to help me to bury my mother." After the burial, Jean found his family, gathered a few essentials, and together they fled across the Oubangi River in his small fishing boat. The most important thing that Jean was able to bring with him from CAR was his fishing net. He says that the net allows him to live, and to earn. "Some of the fish I sell, some we eat. I use the money to buy clothes and to pay the local people for plantains, cassava and peanuts," he said. "Many people have suffered. Mine is just one story."

Libenge, DR Congo – More than 60,000 residents of the Central African Republic have fled to the Democratic Republic of Congo since April 2013, when Seleka rebels ousted the government in CAR’s capital, Bangui.

The mass displacement has been happening as rival militia – largely divided between Christian and Muslim groups – attack villages believed to be affiliated with the other. Whole villages have been razed to the ground, as men armed mostly with machetes, but also with firearms, spread a deadly cycle of brutal violence in ongoing tit-for-tat revenge massacres.

Some 30,000 of those displaced live in four refugee camps set up by the UN High Commission for Refugees in DRC. For the majority, there was no time to pack before escaping. They fled extreme violence and chaos and arrived exhausted and traumatised in the DRC. They could take only the most essential and lightest belongings. Those belongings are featured in this photo essay by Brian Sokol, and include a sandal that helped an old woman, a pair of crutches used by a man to reach safety and a boy’s photo of his slain father. Another boy named the family members who escaped to safety with him as his most important possession – and many others would feel the same.

The photos here were taken at Batanga Transit Centre, Boyabo Refugee Camp and Libenge village in August 2013. Many of those in these photographs have since been moved to safer locations, far from the river which divides CAR from DRC.