This is why she chose to stay.

In this final chapter of Ruth’s oral history from the Democratic Republic of the Congo 🇨🇩, she reflects on life in Goma under rebel control, raising a young daughter alone, and surviving a conflict that has shaped nearly every stage of her life.

Ruth remembers fleeing violence in Walikale as a child, only to experience war again in Goma years later. Today, she lives in a city where insecurity remains part of daily life, opportunities are scarce, and many families stay not because they feel safe—but because they have nowhere else to go.

As a single mother, Ruth speaks candidly about judgment, poverty, interrupted education, and the challenges of caring for her daughter while trying to finish university. She shares what it means to build a future when survival itself requires constant effort.

This episode is a story about conflict, motherhood, faith, and the determination to keep moving forward even when the future feels uncertain.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

00:00 Transition to Womanhood02:45 Relationships and First Love06:30 Love, Pregnancy, and Breaking Point14:40 Facing Single Motherhood18:20 Birth and Early Motherhood21:10 Learning to Be a Mother25:15 Social Perception and Identity28:45 Emotional Journey of Motherhood

Why This Story Matters

Displacement is often described as a single event. For Ruth, it has been a recurring reality.

Her story reveals how conflict reshapes not only where people live, but how they study, work, parent, and imagine their futures. It also highlights a reality faced by many female-headed households: survival depends on balancing caregiving, education, income generation, and emotional endurance all at once.

By listening to Ruth, we gain a deeper understanding of what life looks like for women raising children amid ongoing insecurity—and what remains possible despite it.

About The Archive Speaks

The Archive Speaks preserves oral histories from displaced women and female heads of households around the world.These stories are shared in women’s own words, without political alignment or editorial interference, so that lived experiences shaped by conflict, displacement, and survival remain part of the historical record.

What happens when the future you imagined for yourself disappears almost overnight?In this second chapter of Ruth’s oral history from eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo 🇨🇩, she speaks about becoming a young woman, experiencing love for the first time, and the events that led her into single motherhood.What began as a relationship built on trust slowly became isolation, abandonment, and survival. Ruth reflects on pregnancy outside marriage, family rejection, domestic violence, and the emotional weight of raising a child largely on her own while trying to continue her education and survive financially in Goma.She speaks openly about fear, shame, motherhood, faith, and the complicated reality of rebuilding life after disappointment.This episode contains discussions of domestic violence, emotional abuse, and reproductive pressure.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

00:00 Transition to Womanhood02:45 Relationships and First Love06:30 Love, Pregnancy, and Breaking Point14:40 Facing Single Motherhood18:20 Birth and Early Motherhood21:10 Learning to Be a Mother25:15 Social Perception and Identity28:45 Emotional Journey of Motherhood

Why This Story Matters

Across many conflict-affected communities, women often carry the consequences of abandonment, stigma, and economic instability alone.Ruth’s story shows how quickly education, identity, and security can become fragile—and how motherhood reshapes survival itself.Her testimony also reveals something rarely documented with honesty: the emotional and social realities faced by young single mothers navigating family rejection, violence, and financial hardship while still trying to build a future for their children.

About The Archive Speaks

The Archive Speaks preserves oral histories from displaced women and female heads of households around the world.These stories are shared in women’s own words, without political alignment or editorial interference, so that lived experiences shaped by conflict, displacement, and survival remain part of the historical record.

How would you look back on your childhood after living through war and displacement?

In this first chapter of Ruth’s oral history, we meet a young woman from Walikale in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo who remembers life before conflict altered its course. Today, in Goma, where insecurity continues to shape daily life, Ruth sits with us and returns to memories of family, faith, school, and the small routines that once made the world feel stable.

Ruth grew up in a household of eleven children led by parents who worked constantly to keep the family together. Her father farmed, preached in church, and prepared his children for school each morning. Her mother ran a small home business while caring for the household. Much of Ruth’s childhood was shaped by church life, shared meals, games with neighbors, and learning how to contribute to the family from a young age.

As she grew older, education became central to her ambitions. She developed a love for mathematics, finance, and business, eventually dreaming of earning a doctorate in economics. But moving to the city brought financial strain, instability, and obstacles that slowly interrupted the future she imagined for herself.

This episode stays with the years before displacement fully takes hold. It is a story about memory, aspiration, and the ordinary life that existed before survival became the center of everything.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

00:56 Birth and Family Background06:42 Childhood in DRC09:00 Education, Talent, and Aspiration

Why This Story Matters

Stories about conflict often begin after violence arrives. But for many displaced women, there was a full life before displacement—filled with ambitions, routines, relationships, and plans for the future.

Ruth’s memories remind us that internally displaced women are not defined only by survival. They are also daughters, students, creators, and people whose lives once moved with stability and possibility before conflict interrupted them.

Listening to these early memories helps us understand not only what war destroys, but what women continue carrying long after displacement begins.

About The Archive Speaks

The Archive Speaks documents oral histories from displaced women and female heads of households across the world. These testimonies reflect lived memory shaped by conflict, migration, poverty, and survival.

We preserve these stories without political alignment or editorial interference, allowing women to speak in their own words.