Looking Into the Eyes of a Boy Soilder

I love personal stories. I think my favorite part of meeting new people is knowing where they have come from, their journey, and then being a part of that as long as circumstances allow. There is so much we can learn merely by listening to one another.

A few years ago I was devouring memoirs written by Africans usually about some significant, traumatic experience in their life: boy soldiers; lost boys from South Sudan; a young girl forced into slavery in North Sudan, then Europe and finally freed; and genocide survivors. Reading those books in the comfort of my safe world, completely removed from the context of the written pages, my imagination could only create a few details and the rest remained incomplete, void. In my opinion, I feel as though the western world romanticizes such experiences because we don't quite know how to react any other way. Yes, it is horrific but because it isn't a part of our intimate known world, we cannot fully relate. In an effort to not down-play such a real life horror story, it is then deemed as something heroic, but it also much more than that! Majority of the time the closest the western world gets to such atrocities is 10 feet between their chair and the nightly news and even then there is an option to merely turn the channel and pretend such things don't happen. I am guilty!

There were many times when reading those books that I cried, felt sick, and even wanted to stop altogether because it made me uncomfortable. But then I realized, the least I can do is give the author the voice they so freely deserve and share in their journey, even if it is only for 300 pages. As incomplete as my perspective was, I think reading these books have prepared me for the present. I never imagined that I would meet victims of rape, boy soldiers, or refugees outside of a paperback.

During my graduate program, I did an extensive research paper on rape as a weapon of war. I found that even though such a practice has been taking place since biblical times, there is very little recognition of the topic or research done. For a 30 page paper, I exacerbated the few resources I could find. DR Congo is claimed to be the present-day rape capital of the world. I guess you could say that I have stopped watching the news and am now living in it. I am in no way living or working on the front lines, but now the majority of the people I come in contact with have a story including many of the things I have only read about.

During my town orientation, I was told that the majority of local enforcement officials are ex-militia or ex-boy soldiers. It is actually quite obvious - a hardened expression can only mask the face of an adolescent so much. On the outskirts of town, internally displaced people still live in camps. Medair runs programs specifically targeting sexual and gender based violence victims and issues. It is very different experiencing this with your own eyes instead of an author's description. As a result, you are assured while looking into the eyes of solider, a woman, a child, a camp resident that each individual is not a statistic or a number but they are flesh and blood real along with a story, a name, and a life that deserves so much more than their past has given them.