Ex Child Soldiers, Obama, and 50 Cent

On Sunday morning we headed up to a neighborhood in the mountains on the periphery of Bujumbura (the capital and largest city) to meet with some former child soldiers. I was with Fatima and our driver, Fabrice. Because of the absolutely insane drivers, road conditions, and security issues, the office has a car and driver. Fabrice is 26, super friendly, has a big smile, and loves Tracy Chapman, Bob Marley, M.I.A. and Beyonce. Needless to say, we get along great. Check out Fabrice's picture with this post and Fatima is the young woman with glasses talking to the group of former child soldiers in the photo posted below.

The goal of the project I'm working on is to provide services and legal representation for kids and young adults who were child soldiers in Burundi's bitter civil war to help them reintegrate into the community. The war, which lasted more or less from around 1993 until 2005/2006, was fought along the same ethnic lines as the war in Rwanda - Hutus versus Tutsis. I'll write more about the political situation and the war in another post.

Many children were recruited to serve in both the rebel and government forces. Lots of those kids were actual fighters, while others were porters, cooks, etc. Many young girls were also recruited and used as "wives" or concubines for the soldiers. Children as young as eight were taken away from their families and forced into service. For those of you who haven't read Ishmael Beah's memoir "A Long Way Gone," about his time as a child soldier in Sierra Leone, I highly recommend it. It is a harrowing account and a hard read, but his graphic descriptions really capture the horror and trauma that many kids around the world have gone through. The war, of course, impacted many children. By some estimates there are 800,000 orphans in Burundi. While all kids are exposed to trauma during war time, child soldiers, for obvious reasons, tend to be the hardest hit and are faced with anger, mistrust, and stigmatization from their communities when conflict ends.

The project, funded by the American Bar Association, is just getting going here and there are two staff attorneys and I working in the office at the moment. We are in process of reaching out to non-governmental organizations here to find out who is already working with child soldiers and how we can partner with them and avoid duplication of services. One challenge of the project is how to identify former child soldiers that may be in need of assistance. During our outreach we met Emmanuel who works for a non-profit that assists a group of former child soldiers. Fatima and I really wanted to have a chance to talk to some of the youth and young adults to find out what they thought would help them and what they they think the project should look like. Emmanuel told us we could meet the group of kids he was working with.

I was a little bit nervous as we headed to Sunday's meeting. What would these kids be like? How would they react? Were we causing more problems asking questions about their past? Who were we to be asking about such personal things? The kids were in the classroom you see in the photo below when we walked in. The boys speak primarily Kirundi and Swahili but most speak some basic French. I found out after the meeting that some also speak English pretty well.

Fatima and I introduced ourselves and Fatima began to ask the boys some questions in Kirundi. As we went along she translated for me. Most of the boys really just wanted to complete their education. Some had changed their names and gone to private school for fear of being target or re-recruited. Others had done some vocational training but hadn't finished. One boy showed us his skinny, slightly deformed leg. He had broken it fleeing during an attack, had it repaired in a hospital, but then was sent back to the front lines and broke it again. Since then he had not had proper medical care. The project hopes to do a media campaign. We asked the boys if they would help create the messages for the campaign and, if so, what they would like to say. Their response was they just wanted people to treat them as human beings. As I tried to keep it together, I was struck by how polite and attentive the boys were and how serious they were about sharing their thoughts with us. I really had a hard time getting my mind around the fact that these young guys had been at war.

At the end, we asked if they had questions. They sure did. Where did I live? Was I married? Did I have kids? Was it my first time in Burundi? Did I live in a house? Was I going to come back? I talked about my apartment and the big buildings and the millions of people. I mentioned that I had lived in Alaska and one kid proudly piped up that it was near Canada. I was impressed. I drew a map to show where I live now and where I lived in Alaska. I pointed out that one kid had a New York Yankees hat on, even though I don't think he knew what the NY meant until just then.

As we concluded the meeting and took pictures, the real teenagers came out in them as they swarmed around us. Where were the presents for them? Did I like 50 cent? Could they email me? Two parting comments were the best. One kid asked in English if I voted for Obama. I said I sure did. Then he said, "Do you think he'll do a good job? I said, "I hope so and I think so. He is a good man and a smart man." The young man replied, "I hope so too. " Another young man, with his baseball hat cocked at angle, said, "When you go back to America, tell 50 Cent that Eric says hello. I really like him."