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By Root 890 0

man and this child decided to leave this morning even though I had told them it was dangerous. The man insisted that he didn’t want to be a part of our war, so I gave him his wish and let him go. Look at what happened. The rebels shot them in the clearing. My men brought them back, and I decided to show you, so that you can fully understand the situation we are in.” The lieutenant went on for almost an hour, describing how rebels had cut off the heads of some people’s family members and made them watch, burned entire villages along with their inhabitants, forced sons to have intercourse with their mothers, hacked newly born babies in half because they cried too much, cut open pregnant women’s stomachs, took the babies out, and killed them…The lieutenant spat on the ground and continued on, until he was sure that he had mentioned all the ways the rebels had hurt every person in the gathering.

“They have lost everything that makes them human. They do not deserve to live. That is why we must kill every single one of them. Think of it as destroying a great evil. It is the highest service you can perform for your country.” The lieutenant pulled out his pistol and fired two shots into the air. People began shouting, “We must kill them all. We must make sure they never walk this earth again.” All of us hated the rebels, and we were more than determined to stop them from capturing the village. Everyone’s face had begun to sadden and grow tense. The aura in the village rapidly changed after the speech. The morning sun had disappeared and the day became gloomy. It seemed as if the sky were going to break and fall on the earth. I was furious and afraid, and so were my friends. Jumah looked toward the forest with his hands behind his back, Moriba was holding his head, Kanei stared at the ground, Musa wrapped his hands around himself, Alhaji covered his eyes with his left hand, and I stood akimbo to stop my legs from shaking. All women and girls were asked to report to the kitchen; men and boys to the ammunition depot, where the soldiers watched their movies and smoked marijuana.

As we walked toward the building, a soldier who carried a G3 weapon came out and stood at the doorway. He smiled at us, lifted his gun, and fired several rounds toward the sky. We dropped to the ground, and he laughed at us as he went back inside. We walked through the door and came upon the tents inside the building. The building was roofless except for the tarpaulin that covered the boxes of ammunition and guns stacked against the wall; and in the only common space, a huge television screen sat on top of a dilapidated drum. A few meters away from the television stood a generator, along with gallons of gasoline. The soldiers came out of their tents as the staff sergeant led us to the back of the house, where none of us had been before. There were more than thirty boys there, two of whom, Sheku and Josiah, were seven and eleven years old. The rest of us were between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, except Kanei, who was now seventeen.

A soldier wearing civilian clothes, with a whistle around his neck, stepped up to a rack of AK-47s and handed one to each of us. When the soldier stood in front of me, I avoided eye contact, so he straightened my head until my eyes met his. He gave me the gun. I held it in my trembling hand. He then added the magazine, and I shook even more.

“It seems that all of you have two things in common,” the soldier said after he had finished testing all of us. “You are afraid of looking a man in the eye and afraid of holding a gun. Your hands tremble as if the gun is pointed at your head.” He walked up and down the line for a bit and continued: “This gun”—he held the AK-47 high up—“will soon belong to you, so you better learn not to be afraid of it. That is all for today.”

That night I stood at the entrance of my tent for a while, hoping my friends would come out to talk, but no one did. Alhaji stepped out and looked in my direction for a few minutes, but he then turned and just stared at the ground. I was about to walk toward him