Paul Myhill's Blog

Child Soldier (Longing for Death)

The year I was numbered eight years old, they began to teach me to be tough, to hate, to have a heart to kill my enemies. This was easy. My only family was the army and I hated them too. I couldn't run away, though. There was nowhere to hide. A few years before, many of my friends ran away. I thought I heard the guns barking in the distance but I don't know. Only a few returned out of many ten's of fingers of children that fled.

I began to train with weapons when my instructors decided I was near my tenth year. This was good because I spent less times quarrying rock and my back and legs did not ache as much. Because so many of my friends died, there is a void in my heart.

Some of my friends would go to bed with the older soldiers at night. They escaped the sound of the rope in the morning and, afterwards, there was money in their pockets to buy small things. It frightened me, though, because many of them wept in the days that followed. Some became very sick and if we are sick in that place we most likely die. There is no help and no hope for the sick there. The dark spirits are very powerful.

What is death like? Do I wander around like a ghost or can I just forget that I am alive and sleep a very deep sleep? These are the questions I asked myself sometimes, but most days were too difficult for the lips of my thoughts to speak to me.

View part one of this story here
View part two of this story here

To be continued...

Child Soldier (The Rhythm of the Rope)

My first morning I still remember. I woke that day to the rhythm of the rope upon my body. The song of the rope I know well now. It woke us very early every morning, before the great light had risen in the sky. It struck the flesh of all who were not rising from sleep quickly enough. Most of us did not wake unless we had to. Our bodies ached fearfully and in sleep we could forget. The rope that bit our flesh seldom causes us to bleed but there are times, oh yes, there are times.

We would gather to attention in the courtyard. There we stood and drilled. Every day was the same.

The rope was our companion as we marched out to the fields to work. All of us had to labor in the fields. We also worked in rock quarries, we built roads, we carried the burdens of the soldiers, sometimes many days by foot. If we had ridden on a truck to work, we would be like pigs going to market. And who would want to do that? They would be going to market to be slaughtered. Yes, we learned that we were animals. The difference is we speak and other beasts are dumb.

After a stretch of work in the morning, we would get a break. We were given food in dirty, cracked bowls: rice with some vegetable broth. It gurgled painfully into the knot that lived and twisted in my stomach. I think it was an angry spirit that came to steal what little food I got. At night I was given maybe half a bowl of the same food...if I was fortunate. If we tried to take more, the rope slithered across our shoulders.

The rope's only comfort is that it is familiar.

View part one of this story here.

To be continued...

Child Soldier (Abandoned to the Army)

The story that follows is a compilation that was crafted using the real lives and circumstances of children rescued by our partner who visited us last week. The individual story details are merged together in order to protect the identities and lives of the children involved, but the compilation is an accurate representation of real world scenarios involving non-combatant child soldiers in Southeast Asia:

Abandoned to the Army

When I was six my parents gave me to the army. Early in the morning my father pulled me out of sleep. It was still dark. He packed me on his back down the mountain trail from the village. His long black hair tickled my nose all the way. After we came to the main road I had to walk. We walked most of the day. I had no water and my throat was chalky dry because it was the time of no rain. We walked between the rocks in the red powder of the earth as the red sun beat upon my head.

Finally we came to a cluster of houses. At the side of the road was a tin roofed lean-to. Men with guns sat in the shade of the slanted roof and also some stood in the shadow of a great tree that spread its frog-like limb’s over the road. They looked mean and I was scared but my father walked over to them. He left me near the base of the tree and went to talk with some of the men near a truck. I played with a dung beetle in the dirt.

Father turned away from the men and began walking down the road. He never even looked at me. I thought he had forgotten me. I cried out, "Papa," but he did not turn back. I began to run after him but one of the men in green caught me by the arm and cuffed me. "You stay here," he slurred at me. I was shocked. I tried to lunge away but he struck me again.

That evening they threw me on the supplies that awkwardly filled the truck and told me to hold on or die. We drove all night till my arms ached and my skin stung sore from the dust and wind. In the morning we arrived at a town and drove up to a cement and metal fence. This was to be my prison. I did not know what a prison was. I did not even know what an army was. But now I know because I have lived in this place of no escape. I later found out my parents had offered me for nothing, I was not even worth a few coins!

Some of my friends came here because they were orphans. Some of them were conscripted. Others were abandoned. I was one of the most unfortunate –so I thought. My parents disowned me. I don’t know why. Maybe, as I learn more about my world, I will figure it out. I think there was not enough food and my mother’s stomach was taut with a coming child. Another still nursed at her breast. My two brothers, both older than me, worked hard on the farm. They could help father better than I could –I heard them say it.

To be continued...

My Tears Will Speak for Me

Last week, the founder of one of our partner organizations was in town for a visit. He and his family came over for dinner and shared their hearts concerning their ministry’s rescue of child soldiers in Southeast Asia, especially in the wake of the cyclone that caused so many more vulnerable orphans in the region. Southeast Asia boasts approximately 100,000 child soldiers, with the majority being sold, stolen or tricked into conscription in Burma.

Here is one of the stories that they share, from a young girl who managed to escape the clutches of a militaristic regime:

"Please excuse my tears...they must fall because there are many things I cannot say. My tears must speak for me.

My parents were drug traffickers, but they were addicts, too. I think some of you have seen what drugs can do. They make you a slave to their hunger, and eventually a thief and a beggar...that is what happened to my father. Last I knew, he was begging on the streets. I have been a thief, too, but I am not begging yet.

Having no good place to go as a teenager, I was recruited into the army when I was 15 years old. There were about 200 of us. We lived on a tall hill with gray walls that stretched high over our heads. The barracks were very close to the capital city and a long way from home. There were soldiers that stood guard along those walls. The guards were not there to protect us. They were there to keep us in.

Every day we built guns. At 5:00 AM every day, we did our morning run. By 8:00 AM, we were constructing guns. My job was to clean them. We were a munitions factory. But we were also soldiers. Some of us were very young, very small, even 3 years old. Others had lived there so long that they were over 30 years old. Many of us were girls. "Obey!" our bosses said. We had many bosses. Obedience: that was the motto. If we tried to escape, well, the guards would shoot.

Everybody rotated through guard duty at different intervals through the night. Every night the drill signal sounded and we had to hustle out of bed, rush into our uniform and be in parade formation within 30 seconds. How easy is that? Those who were late were beaten. We hit them too, because if they got there in time, we didn’t have to drill that next day. But that happened about as often as a chicken goes a day without pecking the dust for food. Almost every night we were drilled, so we slept lightly. Sometimes we had to run to a village in the dark of night with guns or crawl through trenches in the mud and rain...everybody 13 and older that is. The littlest kids were our gophers. They ran errands for everybody during the day.

Everybody was under tight security. We were not even allowed to smile or the stick would come down on us. Of course, you learned quickly not to smile. Some felt the stick for other things. I watched people beaten for escaping to make love in the field. I watched others beaten till they bled and died in front of my eyes.

One day I ran away. I was scared, but I did not die. Now I can’t go back to my people. I am so troubled because of the things I have seen and done. 

I can speak no words that shield me from the pain...so I will not speak. My many tears will speak for me."

Continuum of Care (introduction)

I wrote the following entry, and a few that follow, at 4:00 AM as a storm rained down on a tin roof overlooking a courtyard in Bujumbura, Burundi last year. I’m not sure why it took me so long to post them, perhaps because they fall more into a ministry philosophy category than one of in-field reporting. Regardless, we have developed this model considerably further since I penned these initial thoughts based on our discussions. I look forward to sharing more with you on that later...

Continuum of Care (introduction)

True holistic or ‘whole’ ministry not only means providing for all the functional needs of the individual, but possessing all the potential solutions available for that individual. It entails having all the options at your disposal to meet the needs according to a ‘continuum of care.’ Where an individual’s needs and circumstances fall on that spectrum dictates the prospective approaches and solutions. For the potential orphan, it involves first trying to prevent orphaning, second, rescuing the child after orphaning.

More specifically, the rescue and care of abandoned and orphaned children should follow a progressive continuum of options that all involve the coordination and direct involvement of the local indigenous church located in the community.

PREVENTION/DELAY

Prevention involvement should primarily focus on keeping dying families or guardians alive for as long as possible, or by supporting high-risk struggling, impoverished, or single-parent families. In other words, the goal should be to avert orphaning and abandonment, or to at least significantly delay it.

Indigenous churches, as they engage their communities, conduct home care visits and provide much-needed medicines, food and other assistance for this purpose. Naturally, they also have significant additional ministry opportunities into these families as a result.

TRANSITION/RESIDENTIAL PLACEMENT

If orphaning is still imminent, the church already has a history with and familiarity of these children due to its prevention and delay involvement. Requisite trust has been built with the families and the kids. The church prepares the family for death through counsel and practical programs that help to safeguard memories, family heritage and continuity. Meanwhile, the church looks to see what extended family options currently exist or helps to convince and support otherwise uncommitted relatives to step up and take in these children. Again, this provides further inlets for the church to reach and minister to families. The church is given witnessing avenues beyond just the interest in the children.

If these first two options don’t exist or have failed, then the church turns to its own congregation – first to see if church members can raise and care for the children as their own (adoption) or as an intermediate step until another family is found (foster care). The church therefore serves as an integral community-based solution.

If the church’s capacity has already reached its upper limits, then a church-based residential care solution is needed in order to keeps kids off of the streets, herded into institutions, preyed upon by traffickers, or being exploited as domestic slaves in other community homes.

Group residential care, however, still has to be designed to provide a family environment, albeit a large one of fifteen children or so. Church families, that may have existing kids of their own, are recruited to care for these additional children in church-based homes with full funding provided for food, clothing, education and other critical needs. It’s a long-term obligation - a lifelong commitment - to what, in essence, equates to a group adoption.

In these large family settings, widows can complement the live-in care provision. Formerly disenfranchised and ostracized, many of these ladies need a home themselves and a renewed sense of purpose and belonging. They know loss and pain and are therefore uniquely qualified to counsel and comfort children who have lost their parents.

Volunteers from the church body are also on hand to provide assistance, mentoring, and skills development for the children in the group home.

RESCUE

There exist many young children already struggling on the streets and in garbage dumps and brothels. The indigenous church still goes through the necessary steps to find and support extended families for their rescue. But, absent that, these children also need to be incorporated into families within homes overseen and run by the church.

TRANSITION/REHABILITATION

Many orphan care ministries speak in terms of ‘transition’ or ‘reintegration’ concerning children that age-out of the system. For the children in World Orphans’ church-based homes, these words carry less meaning. Under our current ministry model, our children remain fully integrated in their communities and daily experience what healthy families look like. There is no big disconnection between the environment of their upbringing and the next season of life in the ‘real world,’ only the normal anxieties typically associated with making it on your own.

What’s more, these children never graduate from a home, much like we would never graduate from our own families. The families are told that their care for the children is not a 5, 10 or 15-year commitment. It’s a 65-year commitment! These kids are now part of families, families that they will still visit; families that they will celebrate life’s achievements and milestones with; families that will gather together for reunions and holidays.

There are children we serve, however, that can be deemed as in need of transition. These are children in countries that raise their orphans in state institutions, or in countries where circumstances placed them into large privately-run orphanages. They also include latter-stage children that have been on the streets or rescued from other dire circumstances. These kids need comprehensive help through well-designed intervention programs that prepare them for the next stage of life.

In many cases, these children are immediately placed at the mercy of evil forces that prey upon them as soon as they are released from institutional care. If the church doesn’t step in at that point, the kids are soon immersed into a world of drugs, prostitution, slavery, or forced military conscription. Their lives are typically harsh...and short.

To avoid this highly-vulnerable period following institutional release, World Orphans is establishing transition homes, again owned and run by indigenous churches, that take in children before malevolent parties have a chance to grab them. This residential care format provides the necessary training (including social and skills development) to allow the children to better integrate into broader society at a later date.

SELF-SUSTAINABILITY

Whether it’s a child leaving a primary or transitional home, or directly aging out of an institutional orphanage, there is a further opportunity and responsibility for an indigenous church. Much like we would help our own children with ‘next steps’ resourcing and care, so is it with children from any type of residential care program. They need assistance to take the first strides of self sufficiency. That may come in the form of additional training or higher education, but can often mean a simple micro-loan to establish them in a trade, small business, or other income-generating scenario.

Why go this extra mile?

Because it could mean the difference between stopping or perpetuating the vicious cycle of orphaning and abandonment. It’s not just the specific child (now young adult) in question, but also their future offspring. The child needs to have every chance to be successful and self supporting so that they don’t, in turn, abandon children or fall to the ills that take and destroy lives after children are born.

The Great Divide

After twelve years of civil war (officially ending last year but with some rebel holdouts), combined with severe drought and disease, Burundi’s deteriorating civil and social infrastructures are leaving hundreds of thousands of orphans without hope in a country of great division.

Burundi has a population of just 7.5 million, yet there are 620,000 orphans. Almost 10% of the population is orphaned! Over half of the population (53%) are children and therefore can’t be considered part of the rescue and care mechanism for these children. What’s more, that means that 18% of the country’s children are orphans!

Can you imagine if almost 1 in 5 children in the US were orphans?

If your child is in a kindergarten or Sunday school class of 25 children, what if 5 of her classmates were parentless?

In Burundi, that wouldn’t be the case, though. Instead of being in school, many of these children are victims of the streets or are exploited as domestic slaves, forced to serve in combat or as young ‘wives’ for soldiers, trafficked to richer nations to become the sexual property of others, or shuffled into the growing industry of child sex tourism.

Deep ethnic schisms further spur this activity. People that normally wouldn’t use or deal in the flesh of children, rationalize that the child of the enemy is less-than-human, a ‘cockroach’ to be abused, bought, sold and disposed of. The children become the smallest victims of the ethnic discrimination and severe poverty that define their world.

And they receive their death sentences from AIDS.

The very poor security situation in Burundi also assists the travesties. Violations against children occur with impunity. Sometimes, those entrusted to care for the children are the perpetuators themselves. They don’t fear ramifications and start to view the children as personal property to be used for their own devices.

Although there are pre-existing laws against child prostitution in Burundi, there are no laws on the books against trafficking in persons. Weak laws and weak enforcement bodies mean that hundreds of thousands of orphans are literally sitting ducks in a country full of people itching to find resources for personal pleasure and gain...especially at the expense of the rival ethnic group.

Burma's Little Soldiers

I made two trips into Burma (Myanmar) last year - one to the capital city, Rangoon (Yangon), the principal site for all the current protests, and another into Shan state, just across the border from Thailand in the Golden Triangle zone.

I saw the children jumping into the river to flee to Thailand. I saw the abandoned and orphaned huffing glue on the border bridge between desperation and hope. While in neighboring Thailand, I also saw the kids that had run away from forced service in the Burmese army. Many were now being raised in one of our homes there, a home specifically set up to care for youngsters that had escaped lives as child soldiers and prostitutes.

Once a wealthy and vivacious country, Burma has suffered deeply over four decades of military rule. It is now extremely depressed and is recognized as one of the least-developed nations in the world.

The Human Rights Education Institute of Burma (HREIB) reported last September that:

"As the economic situation in Burma continues to deteriorate, the burden on children intensifies. They are put to work begging on the streets, in teashops and other business establishments, and forced into working in economic grey areas (prostitution, drug trafficking/smuggling, domestic servitude, etc.). They are exposed to severe physical and psychological trauma."

And then there are the child soldiers...

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports:

"Throughout Burma (Myanmar), children as young as eleven are being forcibly recruited into Burma's national army, the largest user of child soldiers in the world. Without their parents' knowledge or consent, they are sent to military training camps where they are routinely beaten, and brutally punished if they try to escape. Once deployed, they may be forced to fight and carry out human rights abuses against civilians, including other children."

HRW has estimated that 70,000 or more of Burma’s 350,000 soldiers are children.

Judit Arenas, spokesperson for the Coalition to Stop Child Soldiers, recently told CNN:

"While some children are recruited voluntarily for Myanmar's armed forces, others, especially orphans and street children, are vulnerable to what is called ‘forced recruitment.’ Under this scheme, local authorities in Myanmar are required to provide the government with a certain quota of recruits and are fined if they fail. A lot of these children are street children. They won't stand up and complain"

As you watch the events in Burma continue to unfold, please remember these children, children who are now forced to point guns at protestors that seek freedom for their country.

World Orphans Weekly! - Child Soldiers

Dear Friend of the Fatherless,

I have just returned from ten days in Africa. It appears that our accounts of a former child soldier in northern Uganda have received a tremendous amount of online traffic. Thousands of people have been checking in to read them.

You can see what the fuss is all about by using the links below:

A CHILD SOLDIER’S STORY...

Abduction and Programming – Four years of terror is about to begin.

Brutal Acts - "Anybody you want, you may have. Cut or kill the rest."

Catch and Release – Child soldiers risk it all to see sex slaves escape.

Children killing Children – Three year-olds falling at the hands of a ten year-old?

From Captivity to Captivity – Sometimes capture means freedom.

Redemption and Testing – Forgiveness and a cruel twist?

Last Acts and New Beginnings – From making coffins, to preventing them.

OTHER REFLECTIONS FROM AFRICA...

Lifeblood – Blood is spilt here. Blood is infected here.

Outside the Gates – Potent words from a missionary family’s deceased daughter.

Ethiopia Calling – Five million orphans. Five million active church members. A good combination?

Ethiopia Answers? – They used to be somebody’s pride and joy. Now they are beaten and bruised.

Aversion – When is a good time to jump into oncoming traffic?

Tears into Smiles – The HIV prognosis for many orphans is bad. But a simple gift warms their hearts.

Thank you for your heart for these precious children!

Please forward this to those who share your passion for ‘the least of these.’

Until They All Have Homes,
Paul

A Child Soldier’s Story (Last Acts and New Beginnings)

Jeffrey was in the depths of despair. He couldn’t spend another four years or more raping and killing. He couldn’t orphan any more children. He knew that he would have to die instead.

But...

...On the third day he rose again.

Freedom amazingly came just three days later as government troops encountered the militia and quickly routed them. This particular LRA group wasn’t aware of Jeffrey’s past abduction and service. They had therefore pressed him into carrying bulky supplies instead of a weapon. The Ugandan forces, knowing that this forced labor was part of the early indoctrination process, emancipated the young slaves.

Jeffrey enjoyed carpentry, but he now knew that God wanted him to directly engage this evil head on. His second capture was the reality check, the wake-up call, he needed. He could no longer ignore those who were suffering so greatly around him. He enlisted in the Ugandan army to apply his LRA knowledge and training for good, for God.

After all, carpentry meant making coffins. Military service meant preventing them.

Now, ten years later, Jeffrey has completed his service to the country and is employed as a private security officer. In that role he has prevented would-be thieves and trouble-makers from encroaching onto the property of a missionary family in southern Uganda.

Jeffrey lives in a slum, but knows that he is blessed beyond measure. Material things are of little or no consequence any more. He is happily married with two young children – a boy and girl. He is building a family instead of ripping families apart. He is fathering children instead of orphaning them.

(HOME SWEET HOME. Jeffrey and his wife in their small slum abode)

Jeffrey’s devotion to the Lord is great and he is actively involved in his local church. He knows that he is a new creation and that God has forgiven him of his past acts of horror...as a child and against the child.

It took ten years for Jeffrey to tell this story, partly out of fear of retribution and partly out of a desire to keep it bottled up and silenced. Even here, many details have been intentionally left out. One can only take so much grief and gore.

But there are many stories like this, stories that need to be told. Only by exposing the truth can we truly understand and confront the evil.

(Images: Children living in Jeffrey's slum community)

This concludes the Child Soldier series

A Child Soldier's Story (Redemption and Testing)

Quite unexpectedly, Jeffrey was released from prison in Kampala after just three months. Three months in exchange for four years of terror.

While he was serving his sentence, Jeffrey told the establishment what he knew: that support and weapons were flowing in from Sudan; that Kony had a tight grip on thousands of children serving in LRA militias as soldiers or slaves.

Encouraged by Jeffrey’s cooperation, the Ugandan authorities tried to recruit him into the national army. Jeffrey’s constant reply was that he simply wanted to go to school to learn to be a carpenter. Perhaps his continued rejection of military service helped to convince his jailers that he had no further thirst for blood.

Although his family was dead, Jeffrey headed back to the only home he ever knew, Gulu. There, he kept encountering missionaries and evangelists who had flooded into the region to provide love, assistance and counsel. Jeffrey initially rebuffed their advances, but God kept tugging at his deeply-broken heart.

When Jeffrey became a believer, he stayed in Gulu to continue to learn the same trade as his Savior. Now blades were used to shape and create, not tear down and destroy. As Jeffrey worked the wood, he must have looked at those tools in his hands and thought of the weapons he used to hold...and thought of how much he had been forgiven.

One evening, Jeffrey entered into the village of his upbringing, the place where his father, mother and brother were all murdered on separate occasions by LRA troops.

He heard the rustling in the bushes but had no time to react. Besides, he no longer had a weapon to defend himself. As the LRA rebels flooded into the village again, he prepared himself for what was to come.

Jeffrey was once again a captive of the Lord’s Resistance Army.

To be continued...