One Day the Soldiers Came - Charles London [84]
As long as war continues, armies will need young people as fodder for the cannons. Those who choose to exploit children in this way must be punished. The companies that trade with these armies must be punished. The cost in punishment for using child soldiers or supporting those who do must become so astronomical that it is no longer worth it. More important, children must be given other choices by the adult world. As they all said, they would like to go to school instead of fighting.
School. Over and over again they said it. I want to go to school. I want to study. From orphans the world over one hears the phrase: education is my mother and father. School is the great creator of childhood, the defining space in which the pupil’s relationship to the world is clear: he is a student; he is a child. In choosing school, in longing to be part of that space, that world, these former soldiers were choosing to change their relationship to society. Regular schooling for adolescents is still elusive in the eastern Congo. Young people are needed to contribute to the family economy or must fend for themselves for survival. They are in competition with the adults for what little money there is. This is a region where one in four children die before the age of five. I am reminded of the medieval concept of childhood—don’t get too attached to the young, because they probably will not survive. If they do, then they work when they are able.
School, however, provides another option. In the West, children stare past the windows of their schools, longing to get out. In much of the rest of the world, children stare into the windows of the schools, longing to get in. The alternative to schooling is the harsh world of adulthood, the fierce game of survival. School not only creates opportunity for these young people; it creates their childhoods.
The former child soldiers I met had thought as adults and fought as adults, ruled over adults by force, and now they wanted to put away adult things and become children once more. Perhaps the new government in the Congo can foster peace and stability, can deliver on the promises of politicians for more schools, schools for everyone, can give these little grown-ups the chance to turn into children.
Without the chance to go to school and become children again, without hope, without opportunities, Paul, Musa, Xavier, Sakundi, and myriad other child soldiers all over the globe, despite wanting very different things for their lives and coming from very different backgrounds, are all left with the same option: to pick up a gun and to fight.
SIX
“Surviving the Peace”
Coming of Age in Post-War Kosovo and Bosnia
How do you know a Serb from an Albanian?” I asked, kicking the ball gently to Katja, who sailed it back to me, right through my legs.
We had finished our history lesson, our story of the Battle of Kosovo, and I wanted to learn more about how these kids, five years after the war in Kosovo, three months after the riots, thought about ethnicity. Slobodan Milošević was on trial in the Hague; a referendum would soon be considered on whether Kosovo would achieve independence from Serbia. These were Serb children with whom I played; children who were frightened of being cut off from Serbia, children who were penned in to ethnic enclaves for their own protection from the dominant ethnic group, the Albanians. I wanted to know what they thought of all this ethnicity. How do you know who’s who?
“They have a different language,” Katja said when I returned with the ball, having chased it almost to the main road out of Lapjo Selo again.
“And they hate us,” Marko