What does life look like when displacement stretches into years?

In the final chapter of Kolima’s oral history, we hear from her as she lives now — inside the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh. Her days are shaped by sickness, ration schedules, paperwork, and the quiet labor of keeping a household together without a husband or extended family nearby.

Kolima speaks about managing illness with limited medical care, repairing her shelter after landslides, standing in long lines for food, gas, and cash assistance, and raising her children while navigating systems that were never designed for women doing everything alone. She shares the work she once did in Myanmar, the work she wishes she could do now, and the small skills she hopes to learn so she can survive through honest labor.

This episode is not about escape or resolution. It is about continuation. About what it takes to endure when displacement becomes routine and when survival depends on patience, faith, and the support of other women living through the same conditions.

Kolima’s story brings us inside the everyday reality of Rohingya women leading households — not as statistics, but as people living full lives inside constraint.

This oral history was recorded live inside the refugee camps in Bangladesh in partnership with the Ziabul Hossain Foundation, whose community-based work made it possible for Kolima’s voice to be documented where she lives.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

00:00 Fleeing Myanmar06:32 The Struggle for Shelters10:34 Living conditions and Rations15:58 Access to livelihood and means for income16:39 Hygiene and Security in the camp21:44 Necessities outside of basic needs23:30 Work for Rohingya Refugees28:10 Registration problems31:20 Open drains and unsafe latrines in the camp31:59 WATER PROBLEMS33:05 Kolima's son, and her problems as a widow

Why This Story Matters

For many Rohingya women, displacement is not defined by the moment they fled — it is defined by the years that followed. Female heads of household often carry the heaviest burden: caring for children, managing aid systems, maintaining shelters, and making daily decisions without income or protection.

Kolima’s story shows how survival is built through accumulation — of labor, patience, and care — rather than through singular moments of resilience. Her testimony helps us understand displacement as a condition that reshapes every part of daily life.

Listening to her is an act of recognition.

The Archive Speaks centers the voices of refugee and internally displaced women leading households—stories often missing from policy, media, and historical record.

These oral histories reflect personal memory, shaped by time, trauma, and survival. The Refugee Archive preserves these stories without political alignment or editorial interference—so women can speak in their own words, on their own terms.

What does it mean to learn survival before you have words for it?

In the first chapter of Kolima’s oral history, we meet a Rohingya woman whose early life was shaped by family, restraint, and the quiet labor expected of girls as they grew into womanhood. Her story begins in Rakhine State, Myanmar, where daily life unfolded inside the boundaries of tradition, poverty, and increasing restriction.

Kolima speaks about growing up, reaching maturity, and how her world narrowed as expectations changed. Education faded from reach. Movement became limited. Skills learned at home—especially sewing—slowly became a way to stay useful, to contribute, and to imagine a future that still had shape.

Part 1 is about beginnings. Not displacement yet. Not the camps. But the first stitch—how women’s work is learned early, often silently, and how those skills later become lifelines when everything else is taken away.

This oral history was recorded live inside the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh in partnership with the Ziabul Hossain Foundation, whose work supports Rohingya women through education, documentation, and community-based programs.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

00:00 Introduction to Kolima00:55 Childhood and family life in Rakhine State17:33 Growing into womanhood19:22 Getting married at 15

Why This Story Matters

Rohingya women are often spoken about only after displacement—rarely before. Kolima’s story reminds us that long before camps, borders, and aid systems, women were already navigating limits placed on their bodies, movement, and futures.

For female heads of households, these early skills are not incidental. They become the difference between dependence and survival. Between silence and self-reliance.

Listening to Kolima helps us understand how displacement doesn’t begin at the border—it begins much earlier, in the lives women are taught to live.

The Archive Speaks centers the voices of refugee and internally displaced women leading households—stories often missing from policy, media, and historical record.

These oral histories reflect personal memory, shaped by time, trauma, and survival. The Refugee Archive preserves these stories without political alignment or editorial interference—so women can speak in their own words, on their own terms.

In Part 2 of Lucille’s oral history, she returns to the morning everything changed in Goma. One moment, the neighborhood hummed with its usual rhythm — children walking to school, women bargaining at the market, the soft echo of church songs drifting between houses. And then, without warning, the city fell quiet in a way only conflict can silence a place.

Lucille recounts the moment she knew the rebels were close, how the streets emptied, how families pressed together behind locked doors, listening for footsteps that might decide their fate. She speaks about gathering her children, the frantic choices, the haunting calm that comes right before fear breaks open.

Through her voice, we witness what “the day the city went silent” really means for a mother, for a woman responsible for the rhythm of a home. We hear how displacement begins not with movement, but with sound — its absence — and the decisions a mother makes before she ever steps across a border.

This episode continues our commitment to centering the lives and leadership of female heads of households navigating conflict and displacement.

What does it feel like when a familiar city begins to shift — not all at once, but in small, almost invisible ways? In this second chapter of Lucille’s oral history, we return to Goma with her, to the moment when everyday life began to thin out: the quieting streets, the tense glances between neighbors, the unspoken knowledge that something was approaching.

Lucille describes the days when danger didn’t announce itself with gunfire — it seeped in through rumors, empty roads, and mothers calling their children home earlier than usual. These were the first tremors before displacement, the moments that rarely make it into reports but live sharply in a woman’s memory.

Part 2 carries us through those early signals: the city’s slow unraveling, the fear settling beneath ordinary routines, and the moment Lucille understood she could no longer keep her children safe in the only home they’d ever known. Before flight comes awareness. Before a mother runs, she listens.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode:

01:24 Background And Arrival In Goma04:09 Settling In Goma09:40 Life Before And During The War14:20 Financial Difficulties And Daily Struggle16:29 Human Rights And Women’s Security19:47 Your Voice As A Journalist And Your Courage25:10 Hope, Community, And The Future32:33 The Realities Of The War And Current Living37:23 Female-Headed Household

Why This Story Matters:

For many families in eastern Congo — especially mothers raising children amid decades of militia presence and instability — displacement is not a single event. It begins slowly, in the pauses between normal routines, in the silence that replaces a bustling street, in the whispered warnings passed from one household to another.

Yet these intimate, early chapters of displacement are rarely documented. Lucille’s voice opens that space.

Her story reminds us that internally displaced women carry the memory of a world before rupture and the burden of recognizing danger early enough to protect their children. Part 2 reveals the emotional and psychological landscape that precedes flight — the part of conflict the world almost never hears.

Listening to her story widens our understanding of what conflict does long before a family picks up their belongings and runs — and of the vigilance mothers hold long before the world acknowledges a crisis.

These oral histories reflect personal memory, shaped by time, trauma, and survival. The Refugee Archive preserves these voices without political alignment or editorial interference — honoring the stories exactly as they are told.

What does childhood look like in a place where conflict is always humming in the background?In this first chapter of Lucille’s oral history, we meet a daughter of Goma, North Kivu — a girl raised between volcanic soil, family tenderness, and the constant shadow of armed groups moving across her homeland.

Lucille grew up in a house where her father taught strength through discipline, her mother taught gentleness through faith, and the mountains around them taught unpredictability. Before displacement, before the rebels, before everything changed, she lived a life shaped by sickness, laughter, school mornings, and the warning signs of a country unraveling.

Part 1 brings us into those early years — the foundations of who Lucille became long before she was forced to flee. Her story reminds us that every internally displaced woman carries two timelines: the world she lost and the world she had to survive.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

00:33 Introduction01:25 Early memories of illness, caretaking, and family life06:12 Lucille’s childhood in Butembo11:47 Cultural rhythms of Congolese girlhood17:55 Her Womanhood19:45 The prejudices of society21:56 The concept of displacement for Lucille

Why This Story Matters

For many Congolese women, especially those living through decades of conflict in North Kivu, displacement is not a single moment — it’s a lifetime of interruptions. Yet the world rarely hears from internally displaced mothers, even as they hold entire families together in the absence of stability, safety, and support.

Lucille’s voice brings us into the intimate world before the rupture — the place where resilience is first formed. Her childhood memories are not just nostalgia; they are testimony. They remind us that every woman uprooted by war once had a life full of ordinary routines and small joys that deserved to continue.

Listening to her story widens our understanding of what displacement steals — and what women rebuild anyway.

These oral histories reflect personal memory, shaped by time, trauma, and survival. The Refugee Archive holds space for these voices without political alignment or editorial interference.

The Refugee Archive: Global Center for Displaced FHH is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In the final chapter of Sakena’s story, we return to her quiet corner of Cox’s Bazar, where life moves between memory and prayer.Each morning begins with the call to fajr and ends with the sound of her children’s laughter — reminders that even in exile, life continues.

Sakena reflects on what it means to raise her children alone, to live in a tent that has become home, and to keep faith alive after everything she’s lost.Through her words, we hear the strength of a Rohingya mother whose love outlasts displacement, and whose prayers still reach the soil she once called her own.

This episode holds space for reflection — not on politics, but on the resilience of women who hold families, stories, and hope together when the world looks away.In Sakena’s voice, we hear something sacred: the belief that faith and love can still build a home, even when the ground beneath you isn’t yours.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

* Sakena’s life after years in Cox’s Bazar

* How faith and motherhood shape her sense of home

* The memory of her husband and the weight of loss

* Finding peace in prayer, and passing hope to her children

* Her reflection on what “home” means when return feels impossible

Why This Story Matters

Female-headed households like Sakena’s make up a quiet majority in displacement.Their stories reveal not just survival, but the invisible labor that sustains entire communities — the love, endurance, and faith that keep life moving forward.

To hear Sakena’s story is to witness history through the eyes of a mother — one who still believes that “where there is hope, there is life, and there is peace.”

The Refugee Archive: Global Center for Displaced FHH is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In this chapter of Sakena’s story, we return to Cox’s Bazar — a place where survival is measured in queues. Every morning, women like Sakena rise before dawn to stand in line for water, for food, for the small things that keep life going. These lines, long and winding, have become more than just systems of aid — they are places of quiet resilience, where mothers trade stories, laughter, and the strength to go on.

Sakena shares what daily life looks like in the world’s largest refugee camp — how she keeps her home clean, her children learning, and her faith intact, even when the waiting never ends. Her story turns the mundane act of standing in line into something sacred — a reminder that survival itself is a form of resistance.

📌What You’ll Hear in This Episode

01:19 The daily rhythm of life in Cox’s Bazar refugee camp30:11 How women sustain their families on limited aid47:57 Sakena’s memories of her husband and the home she lost01:07:37 The small rituals that keep dignity and hope alive

Why This Story Matters

Behind every ration line is a community of women who hold their families together. They wait for food, for safety, for answers — but they also wait with faith. “Lines That Feed Us” is not just about scarcity; it’s about how women like Sakena turn waiting into a shared act of care, endurance, and love.

The Archives Speaks is by The Refugee Archive

The Refugee Archive documents the oral histories of female heads of households — women who carry families through displacement. These stories are told with dignity, neutrality, and deep respect for the voices that have too often been left out of history.

When danger came to Gudusara, Sakena’s home in Northern Rakhine, it didn’t arrive all at once. It came in whispers first—then in fire, and footsteps, and the sound of people running.

In this second part of her story, Sakena recounts the night her family fled Myanmar. The smoke behind them, the river before them, and the choice no mother should ever face: to leave everything behind and carry only her children forward.

Through her voice, we walk the same roads—the forests, the long crossings, the silence of loss. We hear about her husband’s final words, the fear that turned into endurance, and the long road that led her to Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar refugee camp—now home to nearly one million Rohingya.

This episode preserves a memory shared by many, but rarely told in full. It’s not just about crossing borders—it’s about the moments between them: a mother’s breath, a child’s question, a prayer whispered over dark water.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

* The night Gudusara burned and families began to flee

* Sakena’s final conversation with her husband before their separation

* The physical and emotional journey to Bangladesh

* How she kept her four children alive on the road

* Arriving at Cox’s Bazar and beginning again as a mother alone

Why This Story Matters

The Rohingya crisis remains one of the largest ongoing displacements in the world. More than a million people—mostly women and children—now live in camps along the Bangladesh border. But beyond the numbers are the stories of those who carried families across rivers, through smoke and fear, with nothing but faith.

Sakena’s story is a record of that journey, and a reminder that displacement begins long before a border is crossed—and continues long after.

Sources

* UNHCR. Rohingya Emergency Factsheet, 2024

* Human Rights Watch. “All of My Body Was Pain”: Sexual Violence Against Rohingya Women and Girls in Burma, 2017

* Médecins Sans Frontières. Rohingya Refugee Crisis Overview, 2023

* The Refugee Archive Oral History Collection, 2025

Before displacement. Before the border crossings. Before the word “refugee.”There was a girl named Sakena, in a small village called Gudusara in Arakan State, Myanmar — where blue skies meant freedom and family filled every room.

In this first part of her oral history, Sakena, a Rohingya mother and widow now living in Cox’s Bazar, takes us back to the world she knew before exile — the scent of turmeric in her mother’s kitchen, her father’s laughter, the games she played in the fields, and the faith that shaped her heart.

As one of the world’s most persecuted minorities, the Rohingya have faced decades of exclusion and statelessness under Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Law. Yet through Sakena’s voice, we hear the quiet strength of a woman remembering what it meant to belong — before loss, before flight, before the world turned away.

Her story reminds us that displacement doesn’t begin at the border. It begins with a home that once was whole.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

* Life in Gudusara village — home, family, and faith

* Sakena’s memories of school and her dream of becoming a teacher

* The role of women’s work and early marriage in her community

* How her family’s love shaped the woman and mother she would become

Why This Story Matters

Stories like Sakena’s challenge the way we think about refugee lives. They are not only about loss — they are about memory, identity, and the early worlds that built these women long before war took them apart.

In The Refugee Archive, we listen closely to female heads of households — women like Sakena — whose voices carry the continuity of families, faith, and survival across borders.

Listen to Part 1: “The Days of Blue Skies.”And stay with us for the next chapter — where Sakena recounts the night her family fled Northern Rakhine, and how she carried her four children toward a new, uncertain home in Cox’s Bazar.

The Archive Speaks feature lived memories and stories of resilience and survival from places of conflict like Gaza, told by refugee women and female head of households, and preserved by The Refugee Archive.

Female heads of households are often the invisible backbone of displacement. They carry a heavier weight in society. Raising children, holding families together, and nurturing the next generation even while enduring loss themselves. Their voices are rarely heard, yet they shape the future in profound ways.

Noor’s story is one of them. Across three episodes, we’ve followed her from her roots in Gaza, through October 7, the death of her husband Khaled, and the crossing into Egypt with her son.

In this final chapter, Noor shares her present reality: starting over in Cairo, navigating judgment as a widow, and finding strength in motherhood and faith. Her voice reminds us why listening to women like her is not optional — it’s essential.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

* Noor’s first days in Cairo as a refugee mother

* The challenges of beginning again after displacement

* Judgment and stigma faced by single mothers and widows

* How she finds resilience through faith and motherhood

Why This Story Matters

Noor’s voice brings us into the lived reality behind the headlines. Her story reflects the experience of countless Palestinian women who, after displacement, find themselves as the sole providers and protectors of their families. Female heads of households are rarely centered in policy or media, yet they carry futures on their backs. Noor’s testimony preserves that truth.

Noor’s journey doesn’t end here. You can stand with her family as they face the daily reality of survival in Gaza and beyond.Help Noor’s family survive starvation in Gaza here.

The Archive Speaks feature lived memories and stories of resilience and survival from places of conflict like Gaza, told by refugee women and female head of households, and preserved by The Refugee Archive.

In Part 3 of Noor’s 4-part series, we follow her through the most difficult turning point of her life: leaving Gaza.

After losing her husband Khaled in the bombings of northern Gaza, Noor became the sole head of her household. With her son at her side, she faced impossible choices — surviving without clean water or electricity, navigating family negotiations about evacuation, and gathering the funds needed to leave through Rafah.

Her words say it all: “It was really enough for us.” A phrase that carries the exhaustion of war, the grief of loss, and the resilience of a mother who has to keep moving forward.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

* Noor’s grief after Khaled’s death in northern Gaza

* The daily struggles of survival inside Gaza: food, water, electricity, and dignity

* How her community abroad helped raise the funds to evacuate

* The emotional weight of deciding who leaves, and who stays behind

* Noor’s final journey through Rafah with her son, and their first moments in Cairo

Why This Story Matters

Noor’s voice brings us into the lived reality behind the headlines. Her story reflects the experience of countless Palestinian women who, after displacement, find themselves as the sole providers and protectors of their families. Female heads of households are rarely centered in policy or media, yet they carry futures on their backs. Noor’s testimony preserves that truth.

Noor’s journey doesn’t end here. You can stand with her family as they face the daily reality of survival in Gaza and beyond.Help Noor’s family survive starvation in Gaza here.

The Archive Speaks feature lived memories and stories of resilience and survival from places of conflict like Gaza, told by refugee women and female head of households, and preserved by The Refugee Archive.