I was born in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but I didn't really grow up there. My father was a civil servant at the Ministry of Health. We had to travel a lot for his job and we lived in many different parts of the country. The last province we lived in was Bandundu, which was my father's home province. In December 2018 a massacre happened in a place called Zumbi. I don't want to go into too much detail, but my father was killed during this massacre. We had to flee, and while I was running away I got lost from the rest of my family and from my husband. We went on different paths.
With a group of people, I fled, through the forest, in the direction of the Congo River. We managed to reach a place called Brazzaville, but a lot of people died on the way. The government welcomed us in Brazzaville, but the whole journey had been really difficult. I was pregnant and my health condition had worsened. I ended up falling ill with anaemia.
People in Brazzaville supported me to escape and seek refuge in Brazil. Yet life here has proved difficult as well. I can say that I am still going through difficult times. In Brazil, my first struggle came from having to face rejection. I was constantly rejected by people. When I arrived I lived in a shelter with Venezuelan immigrants, and they rejected me a lot because I am black. They said that blacks were dirty among many other sad things. I lived in this shelter for two months before they sent me away for no reason.
