One Day the Soldiers Came - Charles London [65]
Figure 14. Aung Su’s full-color drawing of Spider-Man.
Figure 15. The harrowing journey of the Lost Girls of Sudan has become a modern-day epic in the oral history of those in Kakuma Refugee Camp.
This group of girls living in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya came from southern Sudan, where the long war has robbed them of their parents. Unlike the famous “Lost Boys” these girls have little hope of resettlement in the United States, and many face forced marriage and a life of servitude, in spite of their ambitions to become doctors, nurses, and teachers.
Nicole, a shy girl living in Kakuma Refugee Camp, loves to play Monkey-in-the-Middle. Even though she is very young, she has witnessed a great deal of violence and has lost much of her family.
Figure 16. Nicole’s drawing of her favorite game, Monkey-in-the-Middle.
Figure 17, 18. Robert, a street child, drew his dream of a house and of safety, though he also drew a kung fu fight, in case anyone wanted to mess with his dream house.
Figure 19. Musa’s drawing of a soldier shooting a man in the back of the head.
Figure 20. The generic images of weapons are far from generic to the former child soldier who drew them. They each represent a specific weapon or aspect of his training.
Figures 21, 22. The children of Kosovo look at the country as it is, and put all their hope in independence to give them a brighter future.
One of several outdoor schools in Lugufu Refugee Camp when I visited in 2001. The war still raged in the eastern Congo and new children arrived in the camp every week. Resources were always in short supply for the children who wanted to learn.
Figure 23. Bujana’s house, ringed in barbed wire, reflected the feeling common among Serb children in Kosovo that they are trapped, penned in, and in danger from the Albanian majority.
walking the whole way. It was a long journey and we were very tired. I led my little brothers here. When we got to the city we wandered the streets and met some people who told us about a center where they helped children. That is where we went, and they found people for us to live with. Strangers.”
“Do they take care of you and your brothers now?”
“One of my brothers went to another shelter, but I am still responsible for all my brothers. I feed them and raise them because there is no one else. I have big problems. I worry that we will have no place to stay; that the strangers will not take us into their home anymore. We have no place of our own and I have to care for my brothers somehow. I learned how to write, but would like to learn more skills. I want to make dresses and earn a living, to care for my family.”
“How do you earn a living now?” She looked down at her feet, the same way she did for the other two questions, but the answer came up short and slow after a very long wait.
“I get money here and there. I get help from the center, some.” She closed her mouth and did not speak anymore.
“What do you want for yourself for the future?”
“For me? I only want to make dresses and earn a living.”
An aid worker told me later that many young girls in the city who are trying to make a living and stay off the streets will become prostitutes, selling themselves to men for, in some cases, as little as a small meal. When I told the aid worker about Furaha she told me that the sweet and well-spoken fifteen-year-old I met was probably selling her body to survive, though she could not be certain. For children in the war-strangled city, this is one of the few options open. A local NGO representative listed the choices facing children in the eastern Congo: “to join the military, to become a street child, or to die.”
I spoke with a large group of street children at another children’s center one rainy afternoon. They were brought to me from the market by a man who runs an organization that tries to look after their needs for schooling and clothing. He told me it would be too dangerous to go to the market myself to find the kids.