Isegoria

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Amy Ernst speaks with three “demobilized” teenage soldiers:

Jeremy is clearly the leader of the trio, and he makes me uncomfortable as soon as he starts speaking.  He’s a skinny fifteen year old with patches of facial fuzz and spots of acne.  He started fighting with the Mai-Mai when he was 12.

— Why did you join the group?  Were you forced? I ask Jeremy.

The three boys are sitting on a small wooden bench, all facing me.  I’d rather speak to them individually, but they say they only want to talk if they can stay together.

— I was influenced by my friends, Jeremy responds.  They said it was cool and that I should do it.

— What did you think once you got there?

— I didn’t like it, because I was abused by my Superiors every day.

— Did you engage in fighting while you were with the Mai-Mai?

He chuckles a little.  He doesn’t seem upset or uncomfortable talking about his past.  The boy next to him, Gregoire, is also 15 years old.  He’s wearing a baby blue jacket and he has the bone structure and eyes of a model.  His eyes are soft and pretty.  He doesn’t seem uncomfortable either, but Damien, a 17 year old sitting on the end of the bench won’t look at me.  He’s hunched over, leaning away from Jeremy and Gregoire, looking at the floor.

— Killing wasn’t the problem, continues Jeremy.  That was the job.  I used stones, the machete and knives [to kill.]  If someone hurt me or bothered me in the village, we killed them directly.  That wasn’t the problem.  In full on war I’ve killed women, children, elderly, all categories.  If an old person is a sorcerer, we must kill them.

I was expecting a sense of morality to have motivated demobilization, not this.

— Why did you leave then?

— They were beating me.  It wasn’t because I didn’t like killing, it was because of the superiors.  I wasn’t a superior.

— Were you afraid of being killed?

— No, the tattoos protect against that.

— What tattoos?

He pulls up a tattered sleeve and shows me a small scar on his left hand  It looks like a tiny bundle of sticks etched into his skin.

— With the tattoo, you are safe from bullets.

— Do you believe that?

— Yes, he says with no hesitation.

— Have you ever known someone who was killed who had this tattoo?

— Only if they did something wrong.  There is Mai-Mai law, and if you break this law the tattoo will no longer work.  If you rape someone, it doesn’t work anymore

— So you never raped anyone while you were a Mai-Mai?

— No, then the tattoo wouldn’t work.

He says this forcefully, and for some reason I believe his “no.”

— If you have the tattoo and you don’t break a law, you can get hit by a bullet or a bomb and you won’t be hurt, he continues.

I want to point out the flaws of this belief but there’s no point.  And if the potency of the tattoo actually does prevent Mai-Mai from raping it would be foolish of me to even hint at otherwise.

— If you were given a promotion, so you were a superior, would you go back? I ask, not wanting to hear the answer.

— Yes.  If I was a superior I’d go back, when I’m an adult I think I will go back.  But if I was a regular soldier I’d never go back.

— Does this effect you in a bad way?  Do you have any problems with remembering what you’ve done and what you’ve seen?

— I see people I’ve killed in my dreams.

He looks down at the floor as he says this and for the first time he seems a little uncomfortable.  Gregoire explains his situation to me next.  He started when he was 10, it was voluntary.

— I was curious.

He says he’s killed many people with a gun, other Mai-Mai and villagers.  If someone is a sorcerer or a rapist they must be killed.

— Do you have problems now with remembering what you did with the Mai-Mai?

— I think about them, the people I killed.  But to kill someone is good.  It was their fault for getting eliminated.

Welcome to Africa.

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