Ethiopia seems to be an oasis in the midst of a region wracked by conflict. However, hosting the largest number of refugees in Africa, especially from South Sudan, remains a challenge and their presence is exacting a strain on local resources.

As a 17-year-old boy, James Gaw Tot fled war in South Sudan to the safety of Ethiopia. Little did he know he would call this country his home for the next 23 years.

Today, still a refugee, Tot lives in a camp with his refugee wife and their seven children. He longs for home.

“I want to return home, but how can I?” he asks, gazing out at the Pugnido Refugee Camp in western Ethiopia.

“There is still insecurity in my country. Before this, the war with the Arabs was about the struggle for independence. South Sudan is now independent but the fighting continues.”

In the camp, Tot works as a social worker, sensitizing fellow refugees on HIV prevention.

Tot is among the more than 665,000 refugees currently living in Ethiopia, making it the largest refugee-hosting country in Africa, passing Kenya in July 2014.

Most of the refugees come from Eritrea, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan.

In mid-December 2013, thousands of South Sudanese were uprooted from their country when President Salva Kiir accused his ousted deputy, Riek Machar, of planning a coup.

The fighting in the world’s youngest nation soon took a tribal dimension between the Dinka ethnic group of President Kiir and Machar’s Nuer ethnic group, triggering a cycle of retaliatory massacres across the country.

“My parents and my wife’s parents were fleeing together. They were killed,” said 27-year-old Biel Jock.