SOUTH SUDAN: CONFESSION OF CHILD SOLDIER

By GABRIEL KUCDIT, Juba, South Sudan

Hear our sad tale O you our country peoples;

Young or old; poor or rich; learned or illiterate

It’s a lamentation about our own life in the bushes

where we had to befriend the natural human fiends

in order that we unfriend our natural human friends;

where the buffaloes of ignorance smashed our heads

where snake’s saliva of treachery poisoned our hearts;

Where wolves and hyenas bite us with teeth of greed;

where the monkeys of fear not only squashed our balls

but dragged us with ear into a colonial dung-heap pit.

We were during war conscripted as minors;

who were weak, full of innocence and fear;

We were taught to obey our commanders

and hate their enemies of whom we fought

like lion’s cubs protecting mother’s carcass.

Yet with buffaloes’ horns of ignorance on our heads,

we could not know & tell our enemies from friends.

First, we thought the enemies were Arabs from North.

But worse feuds erupted among our diktor & generals,

some of whom were political pimps bedding both sides

politically inter-coursing from the behind and the front.

We had to do whatever we were told to do;

We may be told to shoot & see a friend die;

then we were told we were becoming men;

So we sorrowed & rejoiced as we with water,

kits, light-arms and flags followed the guerrillas

before we started to parade and train to endure

sufferings from hungers, thirsts,  suns and rains.

We became immune to dread of death or pains!

The war flowered into days and nights and years;

But it was not clear to all what we were fighting for:

As money was unknown, was it country or power?

We were possessed by personality-cult mentality;

There were centres of power in the movement

commanded by ‘diktor’ or other big generals;

Ideally, we belonged everywhere and nowhere

but when our ‘diktor’ or our ‘generals’ disagree,

One had better be somewhere with their gun

or ends up becoming a victim of anywhere.

‘No great enemy nor great friend,’ we were taught

But ‘your great enemy is enemy of diktor or general!’

Tempering or respecting the interest of diktor or general

was measure of what was great evil or great good.

It was clear ‘our man’ was measure of everything!

For them & their interest, we lay down our lives

Hoping we could get some cramps of bread

and some bones of our country for us to lick.

But as they constantly fight over the tables,

we under the tables ends with deadly kicks.

so we only have to lick stray foot on the boot.

In the bush, gun is your father, mother & friend

so we mainly survive on shooting and looting;

‘We hoped to study when the war will be over;

when peace will back to our dear motherland.

But the war over food on the tables is unending.

The strong of us join the grabbing on the table.

This is how they looted our past & now our future!

O how it pains our heart! O how it pains our heart!

The poet, Gabriel KUCDIT, is a concerned South Sudanese citizen who can be reached via kucdidgab@gmail.com

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