François Todjibe parked his bicycle in front of his mud brick house in the village of Betiboinda, pushed aside a barrel that served as a front door, and collected a tool box from inside. After laying out his spanners on a piece of green plastic sheeting, he sat down on the front step to wait for customers.

He didn’t have to wait long.

Within minutes three travelling salesmen, pushing bikes piled high with cardboard boxes rode up and stopped. One of the machines needed repair.

“I’ve walked seven kilometres since my bike broke down,” explained Jean-Claude Beatem, “and I have another 40 to go to reach my destination. Can you help?”

Mr Todjibe laid the bike on its side and got to work. He took off the pedals and chain, greased the joints, and since he didn’t have the necessary spare part fashioned one out of a piece of circular yellow rubber. After a little trimming, it fitted perfectly.

Such has been the rhythm of life along forest roads across the Central African Republic for many years. As travelling salesmen rode back and forth between towns and villages selling a plethora of household commodities and clothes, medicines and other commercial items, the services of men like Francois Todjibe, a trained mechanic, were indispensable, for the unmade roads took a heavy toll on their bicycles.

Today, thousands of families from villages around the northern town of Paoua have abandoned their homes and are living a precarious existence in the bush. Mr Todjibe fled with his wife and four children ten kilometres into the forest when his village was attacked earlier this year.

Even though they have little food, poor security, can seldom find clean water and their health is at risk, people say they are too scared to return home until the stand off between the government and the rebels is resolved.

With extraordinary resilience the displaced have continued to cope. Most families have set up makeshift shelters of straw matting and grass in the bush, close to their fields, and are living on a poor diet of manioc tubers and leaves, fruits and other wild food.

But the interaction of village life that knit whole communities together in the past has broken down. People say they feel isolated, and can no longer rely on each other in times of lack, for in the bush everyone is living on the margins of survival.

After several months of such conditions, Mr Todjibe decided he could no longer keep going if he didn’t work. He returned to his abandoned village to assess the situation, and decided to risk reopening his roadside repair business.

It was a shrewd decision. Apart from the occasional military truck and humanitarian vehicles, the only traffic on the road from Paoua to Betiboinda these days are pushcarts and bicycles, people on foot and the occasional bullock cart. Mr Todjibe soon had plenty of clients.

He now pedals to the village from his forest retreat every morning, spends the day working in front of his house and returns before dark. He doesn’t yet dare stay at home overnight.

Three times a week he bikes long distances to inhabited villages where people come flocking to barter and trade on market days. He has become well known to the travelling salesmen, which has also helped boost his roadside business at home.

“There used to be repair shops all over the place,” explained Jean-Claude Beatem’s companion as he watched Mr Todjibe at work on the bike. “But now that people are in the bush and don’t want to come out, it is difficult to track them down.”

“It’s only thanks to people like Mr Todjibe, who have the courage to come back that we can keep going,” he added.

The repair complete, the three men mounted their bicycles and set off again on their long journey over the slippery, unmade road, their saddle bags piled high with the cartons of soap they would sell when they reached their destination.

It was now late afternoon, and the sky was leaden with approaching rain. Mr Todjibe packed up his tool box, put it back inside his house, pulled the barrel across the door, and set off on his own ten-kilometre trek into the bush. The 500 CFA (one US dollar) he had earned for his labour was safely in his pocket, witness to what was once a thriving, interactive support network that kept the local economy afloat, and which is now hanging on by the merest thread, if at all.