Democratic Republic of Congo République démocratique du Congo.
Ex-Zaïre. Refugee camp. 1995
Amidst the turmoil caused by the exodus, 27,000 children were left on their own. UNICEF and the Red Cross decided to launch an image-based search program to reunite families. The people who entered the tent seemed captured by those thousands of staring faces. I remember the heart wrenching case of that grandmother who had lost her whole family, except for one of the baby twins born by her daughter, who died during the exodus. Nearly a year later she visited the tent housing the portraits, in the hope of finding the other twin. Within a few months, the baby had changed. However, she pointed her finger to a face, left, and came back with a baby sweater: it was the same as the one that the photographed child was wearing. When there was peace, she had knitted two of them for the twins.