Author(s): Philip Pitia Lako; Shelagh Aitken

Australian authors | West Australian authors

This book describes what life was like for me as a boy in the village and cattle camp, and some of the brutal cultural traditions of the Mundari tribe, from growing up in an African village, to becoming a child soldier in the civil war zone that was Sudan in the 1990s, to escaping to a refugee camp in Kenya and then ultimately a new life in Australia.

At the age of ten, my childhood was brutally interrupted when the Sudan People's Liberation Army rebels took me from my village under the pretext of education. The removal resulted in prolonged suffering from the rebels and constant attack by the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army. Moving from camp to camp, in poor health and malnourished I wondered how adults could be so cruel, manipulative and unthinking. The practices employed by the army were tantamount to child abuse, deprivation of human rights and liberty. The suffering resulted in trauma which still affects me today.

In 2000, I escaped to Kenya to seek refuge. Although there was shelter, rationed food and basic security in the camp, being a refugee was the defining moment for me - a glimpse of hope was felt. At first, I thought, I had arrived in a place where dreaming could be possible, only to realise that hopelessness and despair were invading my life again. The ordeal lasted for four years at two different camps in Kenya before resettlement. I arrived in Australia in 2004 and my life changed.