Déplacé

Déplacé is the begining of a photojournalistic project focussing on the Demorcatic Republic of Congo and the thousands of children who have been internally displaced with or without their families.

This project aims to highlight the possibilities and the obstacles the youth in the DRC face, but most of all it will be an intimate portrait of what it means to be a child in times of conflict.

In the first chapter of the project I visit Rose, who is 14 years old and lives with her parents, 5 sisters and 2 brothers. She lives in a house on the top of a hill overlooking the green valleys and the dark water of Lake Kivu. Rwanda is on the other side of the lake but crossing the border between the two countries is like crossing a whole continent. Rwanda's poetic landscape, the quiet lake and the clean streets are replaced with paved roads, garbage, stools in the river and a visible and devastating poverty. Though the conflict is always nearby, there has been no actual fighting on the island for several years and the children here have indeed experienced violence but never war. Their father Manda Balekage made sure of that, when he fled his position in the military in order to regain a quiet life with his young wife. Idjwi has become Rose and her family's hiding place.