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Paoua - A serpentine path between corn and millet fields off a main road in the Central African Republic leads to a clearing, where Abner Marboua and his family have taken refuge since December.Partly razed, phantom villages of huts made from dried mud brick and roofs of straw stand empty on the highway, with not a soul to be seen.Nearly 100 000 people had fled bandits, rebel attacks and army repression since September 2005 in the northwest of the country.Marboua's new home lies a kilometre (about half a mile) from his village on the road between Bossangoa to Paoua, more than 500km northwest of the southern capital Bangui.'We are unhappy here'
Many villagers, including Marboa and his family, fled into the brush when rebels and the government army (FACA) skirmished near his village."The FACA burnt many houses," Marboua, 23, said, telling his story in one of three straw huts that shelter his wife, parents, their 11 children and a number of extended family members, including aunts and uncles.He scratched out a meager living. Sacks of peanuts and chickens were stored in one hut, while a small girl holding a pestle bigger than herself worked the manioc into a fine flour.Suzanne Koutou, Marboua's mother, said: "We are unhappy here. The water is not drinkable, and we can't eat properly, only once a day." Her tired face and body were those of someone who had lived 43 tough years.
Majority of civilians 'feel safer'
At her age, she bordered the life expectancy of a woman in CAR, a mere 45.7 years, while men on average lived to only 40. Malaria and snakebites killed children here, she said.A semblance of safety in hiding was little consolation for hard daily conditions in this part of the landlocked country, one of the poorest in Africa.Marboua said: "The rebels and the FACA don't come here. If there is a skirmish nearby, we can hear it and have to time to flee. We won't go back to our village before we have peace."Other groups of villagers from the area had taken shelter in either Bossangoa or Paoua, two towns and district administrative centres under FACA control, but the majority of civilians felt safer in the outlying scrubland.In Paoua, Faustin Yambele, 38, one of the displaced, had written his own story on scraps of school notepad.On January 25 and February 15 2007, the rebels from the Popular Army for the Restoration for Democracy (APRD) came to take supplies from his village of Lim, 45km south of Paoua, he noted.Then the CAR military attacked and set 10 homes ablaze. Two villagers were killed, their goods pillaged, livestock killed or taken away. After two months of living in the bush, Yambele preferred to take refuge in Paoua.
As in the days of Noah....
