Regis, 29 years old: “The day I found out we will have a baby, I was in the seventh heaven! I hugged Nancy, my wife, we sang and danced! I wanted to see my baby right away and not have to wait for another six-seven months. We had even thought about the name: if it was a girl, the name would be a mix of my name and her mother’s: Regiancy.”

“Regiancy Velda was born in exile, in Cameron, and with her arrival, a new love story has begun in our family – as powerful as the love story between my wife and me.”

“I met Nancy in high school. We were both studying Mathematics, then Physics. Little by little, we fell in love with each other but were shy and but neither of us would break the ice or talk to the other. Until one day, when I asked her to be my wife. At first she turned me down, but then I convinced her of my serious intentions.”

“There is one thing, though, I could not convince her of: she prefers football and FC Barcelona while I am a basketball fan. I used to play basketball at home and I still play it here, in Romania. Basketball is great — you don’t need to know people to play, on the contrary, playing helps you make new friends.”

Regis, a political activist, and his wife fled Bangui, Central African Republic, in 2013 when political groups opposing his party broke into his parents’ house and threatened to kill him. His life was spared because he was away on a business trip at the time. He didn’t need two warnings – he took his wife and went into hiding in neighboring Cameroon.

“I never imagined one day someone would want to kill me,” he says from the safety of Romania. “They destroyed my house and threatened my family. I never imagined one day I would have to flee.” In the past, he had planned to study in Romania, so he travelled there in 2014 and sought asylum; he was soon able to bring his wife and daughter to join him.

At the end of this long journey, Regis is thinking of others, not himself: “I would like to help those in need, people that have no voice. If you have faith and capacity, you will succeed. All I need for that is a bit of stability.”

Refugees. Ordinary people living through extraordinary times. Share their stories.