How does one write an introductory word for a book that relates a pain so familiar to one's heart that it feels as if one is revisiting the demons of one's past? There were many times when I wanted to phone Estelle and tell her that I was not the right person to write this piece as her book was taking me back onto a road I never again wanted to travel. I never wanted to remember my life of an internally displaced 11 year old boy, young sister on my back, carrying a half-full gallon of water, forced to find my way where paths did not exist in the surrounding mountains of Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as we ran away from the 1996 war between president Mobutu Sese Seko and Laurent Kabila's armies in Bukavu. I never again wanted to shiver from the loud silence of fear and whispers from angels of death lurking in the shadows of gun-wielding men ready to inflict the worst kind of pain on innocent souls in my neighborhood and its surroundings. I never again wanted to be reminded of the day I left home without saying goodbye to my family as I headed south of the continent looking for refuge. The scorns in my new home in my adoptive country have left deep emotional scars on me that forgetfulness helps to soothe. Perhaps I am lucky, just like Adolphine in this book, to be a living testimony to the resilience of the human spirit to overcome the brunt of the African continent's tribalism, xenophobia, dictatorship and wars. But how much pain, trauma and loss can a human soul endure before it is completely broken down and it loses faith in humanity?

Estelle's honest account of Adolphine's story gives voice to two tragedies that have engulfed the African continent, but have not received the attention they deserve. Firstly, it is the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with its unimaginable impact on the lives of people in the country and beyond. An estimated 5.4 million people have perished and 3.9 million people displaced whilst many continue to die daily or are forcibly uprooted from their home to seek refuge elsewhere.