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For several months, bewildered, scared and with thoughts of death, Agnes Uwamahoro walked across the harsh land from the Congo to Uganda. She and the other refugees with her walked blindly without water, without food.

When it rained, she turned her face upward and opened her mouth to absorb the precious drops.

“I could not even move,� Uwamahoro said.

She had lived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in central Africa, for two years. She fled there in 1994 with her mother and four brothers from their native Rwanda, where genocide marked a brutal civil war during the early 1990s.

But in the Congo violence found them. Her mother and four brothers were killed there, forcing Uwamahoro, once again, to flee. In the following years she would be forced to find refuge in another country, and death would take another loved one from her.

Friday, surrounded by dozens of people sporting hammers and hard hats, I met Uwamahoro, 41. She also was wearing a hard hat. A carpenter’s cloth utility belt was wrapped around her waist.

She had taken a break from nailing together wood studs to frame a Habitat for Humanity house in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥.

Habitat for Humanity began erecting four homes in a Sunnyside neighborhood on Friday. It was Habitat’s annual Building Freedom Day to commemorate the U.S. loss of lives on Sept. 11, 2001.

Since 2002, more than 7,000 ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Habitat volunteers have gathered on this day of service.

“It’s really exciting we’re able to sustain this,� said T. VanHook, Habitat’s chief executive officer, speaking in the midst of the hammering and sawing in the Copper Vista II subdivision, near East Drexel Road and South Park Avenue.

Habitat, the first affiliate of the national group to locate west of the Mississippi River, is celebrating 35 years in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥. In that time it has built nearly 400 homes, VanHook said.

Families selected to become homeowners are required to contribute “sweat equity,� 250 hours in helping construct a Habitat home. Future homeowners are also required to make a down payment and take homeownership classes before they take on mortgage payments.

Uwamahoro, who has invested about half of her sweat equity, hopes that one of the four homes will be for her and her two young children.

“In my prayers I asked God to give me a stable place to live,� she said.

It was on Sept. 4, 2013, when Uwamahoro and her two children arrived in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ from Malawi, a small country in southeastern Africa. Catholic Community Services of Southern ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, through its refugee resettlement program, relocated the family here, ending her 19 years of flight.

She and her children were refugees in Malawi, where she had no work permit, no legal rights. In Malawi they also were without a husband and father.

After Uwamahoro made her harrowing escape to Uganda, she continued on to neighboring Kenya in 2000. A year later, in Kenya, she married a refugee from Malawi. He worked for a United Nations’ refugee program in nearby Tanzania and they moved there.

Uwamahoro’s husband returned to Malawi to continue his work with refugees. A month after their son was born in January 2005, she made the three-day trip with their two tots to join her husband.

But when she arrived in Malawi’s capital city, her husband was dead. She said his death was suspicious. She didn’t know his cause of death. There was no investigation, no autopsy.

Again, Uwamahoro’s refugee life continued. She and the children lived a life of uncertainty in a camp. While in Malawi, she applied for relocation through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which helps resettle refugees from global conflicts, like the current crisis in Europe.

“I know how hard it is to lose a home and country,� she said.

After an eight-year wait, the U.N. agency approved her relocation to the United States. She and her children boarded an airplane and landed in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥. She had spent half of her life as a refugee.

Uwamahoro and her children live in Pio Decimo transitional housing, provided by Catholic Social Services, in Barrio Santa Rosa south of downtown. The children, now 12 and 10 years old, attend Safford K-8 and Drachman Montessori K-6 magnet schools. Their mother has two jobs as a caregiver and dreams of becoming a nurse.

Above all, she has faith in God after surviving her long and arduous ordeal. She laments the deaths of her family and husband, but she and the children have a future. They have something to hold on to.

“I do not have to lose hope,� Uwamahoro said.