Victor Saa Luciny pulls out a photo of his wife and baby boy and begins his tale. "The rebels came to our house and wanted food," he says calmly as he sits in the shade of a mango tree in the southern Guinean town of Kissidougou.
"We only had rice. They said they wanted meat. They held a gun to my wife and made her kill and cook our boy in the pot. Then they ate him in front of us." It is a story he tells to anyone who will listen. There is no way to find out if it is true. But, given the barbarity that prevails in this part of west Africa, it probably is.
Victor is from Sierra Leone. He and over 300,000 of his compatriots fled a brutal civil war in their country and took refuge in Guinea. Around 100,000 Liberians are also here for similar reasons.
They had been living peacefully in refugee camps for several years. But war has pursued them across the border. The United Nations says Guinea has now the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
Since last September over 1,000 people have been killed in attacks launched by rebels based in Sierra Leone and Liberia. The attacks are usually claimed by the dissident Rally of Democratic Forces. But most believe they are carried out by Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels from Sierra Leone.
The RUF claims to be fighting to end government corruption, but appears more interested in revenues from the diamond mines it runs. It controls about a third of Sierra Leone, and its tactics include hacking off villagers' arms and legs, murder, rape and looting. The UN says the rebels are backed by Liberian President Charles Taylor.
There is a fragile truce in Sierra Leone, watched over by an 11,000-strong UN peacekeeping force as well as a few hundred British troops. The rebels appear to have turned their attentions to Guinea. They have not succeeded in capturing any territory, but their assaults have been devastating. Several border towns have been destroyed, and tens of thousands have fled their homes or camps near the frontier.
Victor had been teaching in a school he set up in Gueckedou, four kilometres from the Liberian border. But the town was razed by fighting in January and the entire population fled.
Victor moved his Golden Centre Children's Centre to Kissidougou. He now teaches his children under mango trees as he waits to move into a building the local authorities have promised. Victor also runs a school in Kountayah refugee camp, about an hour's drive north of Kissidougou.
Two months ago there was nothing there, just another stretch of forest deep in southeast Guinea. Today it is like a small town, with its rows of tents, a football pitch and a makeshift marketplace. The camp houses nearly 20,000 Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees. One part is the education sector. The trees there are tall and thin and provide little protection from the burning sun for the groups of children huddled beneath.
Kountayah, which is run by the UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, is expanding rapidly. Several times a week UNHCR convoys head into the Parrot's Beak, a strip of Guinean territory jutting into both Liberia and Sierra Leone, to pick up refugees. At the moment they are going no further than a transit camp called Katkama, just north of Gueckedou, because the area beyond that point is deemed unsafe.
There is little hope of any imminent improvement in the refugees' plight. The rebels have promised more attacks. And tensions are increasing between Guinea and Liberia, with each accusing the other of harbouring rebels that launch attacks into their respective territories. On Monday, President Taylor of Liberia ordered both the Guinean and Sierra Leonean ambassadors to leave his country.
Many refugees in Guinea have decided it is better to face war at home than in a strange land. Thousands have travelled hundreds of kilometres to Conakry, the Guinean capital. There they wait for the ferry to Freetown. But once back home they are usually unable to return to their villages because these are still under rebel control.
So they will have left overcrowded refugee camps in one country to go and live in overcrowded refugee camps in their homeland.