A PLACE TO CALL HOME

Refugees and the homeless are London's two most disadvantaged groups. Our Winter Appeal, in collaboration with Comic Relief which has pledged £500,000 to get us started aims to help them

- DAVID COHEN

Claude was four years old when he was led on a forced march to a clearing that would later become known as the killing fields of Rwanda. "It comes back to me in flashes," he says. "I was living with my mother and father and two younger siblings and I remember hiding in our home for a few days before my parents decided to try find a way out. We were captured by Hutu militia with machetes. We were made to walk for several days until eventually we got to a large open space crammed with people where my dad and I got separated from the rest of the family."

Claude takes a deep breath. "My dad and I were in the middle. I heard people screaming and crying and begging for their lives. They started hacking at them with machetes, working from the outside in and getting closer and closer to us. My dad lay on top of me and told me to be very quiet and pretend I was dead. People were standing on us and shouting. At some point, there was no movement from my dad. It became dark. I was terrified. I didn't know what to do. After a while I heard my mum call out for my siblings. And then for me. I was the only one to answer. I started to try to find her. I was stepping over bodies in the dark. I walked for a long time. I found my mum and lay down next to her.

No words passed between us." In the morning, Claude saw that his mother had suffered terrible injuries, with deep gashes to her face and hand. "White soldiers with blue berets -who I now know as United Nations peacekeepers - arrived and took my mother away for medical treatment," he says. "I was so scared to be separated."