In February 2013 Sepano was involved in a car accident. His car rolled six times. Miraculously, apart from a few injured fingers, he was not seriously hurt. Nevertheless, he was deeply affected psychologically by this near-fatal event. He told his wife and children: “I want to see my country again before I die.” Adolphine declares: “He was in a bad space. I was very uneasy about his plans, but could see my husband had made up his mind.” His mother, father and his eight siblings also died during the unrest of 1996 when Kasaians were targeted with such fanatical fervour, but he still had contact with some friends in the DRC.

His possessing South African permanent residency status made the travel arrangements much easier than if he had still been a refugee. Technically, once a person has been granted protection in the form of an asylum or refugee permit by an adoptive country, such a person cannot legally return to the country from which he or she has fled. They have to rely either on temporary UN travel documents which are not easy to come by, or travel covertly to visit their countries and face security problems, the most obvious being the possibility of being arrested without legal travel documentation.

So, four months later, on a dismal wet winter's morning in June, Sepano said goodbye to his family and departed with his South African passport and some few possessions. He travelled by bus to Johannesburg, then through Namibia and Zambia on his way to Lubumbashi.

Because there was no mobile phone connection after he left Zambia, Adolphine and the children didn't hear from Sepano for two anxiety-filled months. “It was a terrible time for us.” The thought of possible separation haunted her: “I couldn't help worrying that we might never see him again. All we could do was to pray for his safety.”

When he returned one late August evening at dusk, a few days after having contacted them from Zambia, Adolphine and her children were overcome with relief. But he looked stricken and he had lost a lot of weight. “I was shocked at what he told me. There was no joy at all for him in seeing the country of his birth again.