Ndosho is a settlement that I've visited before -a settlement that'll be here today, gone tomorrow because it's a site where people decided to spontaneously set up their shelters, rather than a camp authorised by the local government, where organised assistance is being given by humanitarian agencies such as Oxfam. As our vehicle comes to a stop on the fringes of a plain adorned with the hundreds of makeshift shelters made from sticks and banana leaves, my immediate thoughts are of Devota, a mother of three children, whose acquaintance I had made last month. Her husband had fled to another destination near the Ugandan border, leaving her with the children, which means that Devota has been fending for her family all by herself. To this effect, she's a single mother.

I walk along the footpaths that weave around people's homes towards the area where Devota's shelter should be -the site isn't a neighbourhood where each home has a backgarden, and where children play. The ground is littered with brown rocks from the active volcano nearby. Children could easily cut themselves on them, if not careful. Many of the children here walk barefoot.

To my pleasant surprise, she is still here. I find Devota sitting with her children and a couple of neighbours in a small clearing a few shelters away from her own. They are all seemingly in good health. Devota recognises me as I walk up between the shelters towards her and her children, and smiles. Devota is a woman with a calm look, always composed. I greet her first, calling out, "Devota! Hello!" Moments later, we're deep in conversation.

"My husband is here, but he has no job!" Devota immediately tells me, sounding happy and sad at the same time. I listen intently. Then, because I'm a little more concerned to know how she's been living since we last saw each other, I ask Devota how she keeps her family safe from the dangers that unfortunately exist in a spontaneous settlement like Ndosho.

"There's no security," she tells me. "Neighbours help me with food. But I fear being robbed or raped. Neighbours have been robbed of cassava flour, oil, and other things we get from food distributions. At night, it rains, and I don't have a plastic sheeting for my shelter. Some nights we go to bed without eating."

I realise that, to Devota, the word 'safe' means securing food just as well as securing physical safety. "Sometimes I sell parts of our food rations to get income to buy other things," she admits.

Upon hearing this, at first, I'm surprised. I don't quite understand how she can sell food items that have been distributed to her when conditions are this difficult for herself and her family. A number of humanitarian agencies are indeed working in Ndosho, distributing food and providing drinking water, although they seek to persuade people to move into the organised camps, such as Mugunga 1 and Bulengo, where Oxfam and more agencies are at work, and where security is greater.

I soon find out from Devota that the 'other things' she buys are utensils for cooking, clothes and footwear. I look over at her eldest son who is wearing a new blue t-shirt and realise that selling off food rations for other items is perhaps Devota's way of securing what little normalcy she can for her family as a mother: the right to life, the right to dream of a better life.

Devota tells me her own dream: "I want the international community to help ask our politicians to bring us peace. I cannot go home until peace returns."