Former child soldier Sacré lives in a two-room concrete house in outer Bangui with four friends his age, and four children under ten. Now, he’s trying to make a new life for himself, learning skills to lead a violence-free life. But with no jobs available for the thousands of young men like him, the road ahead won’t be easy. When the torrential rains come – several times daily in the wet season – he tells the children to climb onto the table and starts to bail out the flooding floor, using plastic mugs to catch the rivulets pouring from the leaky roof. 10-year-old Adorée, her little brother and her two little sisters live with Sacré and his friends. The four of them sleep curled up on the main room’s bandy-legged sofa. She says their mother, sister to one of the older boys they live with, disappeared earlier this year. They don’t know when, or if, she’ll come back.

-Leila Molana-Allen