'Now I know how it feels to cry'

A CHILD wanders down the road, lost and bewildered, until she sees a bright light shining up ahead. 'It could be my salvation,' she thinks, her brave heart filling with hope, and although her legs are weary, she pushes on towards it.

She is met by a group of men, dirty and in torn clothes, who ask her who she is and what she's doing. Relieved that they speak her language, she tells them in her small voice that she's looking for her mother. They offer her a bed for the night, and the next morning, she is awoken by the sound of a man shouting: "Left right, left right." Her eyes widen when she sees children like herself marching by, proud in their uniforms and with guns on their shoulders. Excitement grows in her stomach as she imagines marching with them, thinking that this is the start of a brand new game.

This was how China Keitetsi, aged only eight, began her life as a child soldier in Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Army (NRA) in Uganda. She could not have known it then, but the chance meeting with the guerrilla soldiers was to change her life irrevocably, robbing her of her childhood and leaving scars that will never heal.

China was one of hundreds of children recruited by the NRA in its campaign to overthrow Dr Milton Obote's government in the 1980s. Lacking in men and poorly resourced and disciplined, the rebels were eager to take on anyone who could follow orders. Those too small to carry an AK-47 gun were made to move equipment and were often used as decoys in attacks. It was in this capacity that China had her first taste of fighting.

She says: "It wasn't quite as I had been told. The sound was terrifyingly loud and everything on the road seemed to splinter into pieces as the rocket-propelled grenades hit the trucks. I was more frightened than ever, and about to run, when the grip from one of my comrades held me down behind a tree."

The rebels won, stripping the enemies' bodies of their uniforms and putting them on. But China was left grappling with confusion, having never imagined fighting for freedom to include stealing from the dead. "My excitement turned into sadness, as I saw the wounded enemy scattered around crying for help," she says. "Those who had surrendered had their arms tied behind their back, in the most painful way, but when I looked around at my comrades, and saw that everybody seemed to enjoy themselves, it convinced me to believe that there was nothing on earth man liked more than to torture and laugh at their prey."

China learned that the only way to survive was by doing as she was told, no matter how abhorrent the act. A culture of bravado existed among the children and she, like the others, would do anything to avoid being considered a coward. Their superiors took advantage of this, preferring youngsters as their bodyguards because they were more malleable and therefore more loyal than adults.

But for China, who could not harden herself to the killing, life became unbearable. She remembers seeing one of her tiny friends being shot down, his cries for help going unheeded as the battle continued, saying: "Though I knew he was dead, I could not cry... in fear of breaking down. I had crossed the line, where I had used up both hands to count my fallen friends. Now it was time to decide, from being a broken, but kind and unselfish individual, to being a strong, full-blooded killer, if only I could."

Unlike many of her fellow child soldiers, who were orphans with no one to care for them, China had run away from home. Her father was a lawyer who owned a banana plantation and who often beat her savagely, and she suffered similar abuse at the hands of her grandmother and stepmother. When she was eight, just before becoming a soldier, she finally met her real mother but was, by then, too scarred to be able to love her. She stole some money and ran away.

Having fought a bloody battle to install Museveni as president in 1986, only to find herself re-deployed to another war zone, China deserted the army. "I hadn't seen anyone relieved from duty so far, and I sensed that if I wanted another life, I had to give it to myself," she says. But when she arrived back at her mother's house, she found she couldn't readjust to civilian life. "Suddenly I realised that I would have to start all over with my life. I hardly knew anything but the ways of a soldier, so I decided to restart, as a recruit."

The NRA welcomed China back with open arms, promoting her to lance corporal, and she began earning money from smugglers' bribes at a border checkpoint. But despite her rank, she was still subject to the institutionalised sexual abuse endured by all female soldiers, regardless of age. She remembers being called to different officers' quarters nightly at 9pm and dreading the hour all through the day.

After being singled out by the influential Minister of Records, Ahmad Kashilingi, China was promoted to sergeant and Kashilingi's chief escort. At first she saw him as a benevolent father figure, someone who understood her and could read her thoughts, but he too abused her. She left Kashilingi just as he was suspended for treason, joining the military police.

The one glimmer of light in China's life was her relationship with Lieutenant Colonel Moses Drago. She came to know him as a charismatic 24-year-old without the mad bloodlust of his fellow officers. "I was beginning to enjoy my life, because of the friendship I had gained with Drago. He made me feel safe and relaxed, in a way no other man had done before him," she says. In March 1991, when she was just 14, China gave birth to Drago's son.

A chance meeting with Paul, a white American working with the World Food Programme, planted the seed of the idea of leaving Uganda. In August 1995, following a Herculean effort to obtain documentation, she arrived at the American Embassy in Nairobi, planning to resettle in the United States. When her visa was cancelled, China contemplated suicide, but found the strength to carry on, ending up in South Africa. There she gave birth to the daughter of an army rapist and was terrorised by a gang, culminating in her being stabbed with an ice-pick.

A ghost-like shell with her spirit broken, she got to the South African United Nations building and in June 1999, arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark, for the start of a new life. Looking back on her lost childhood, China, now 27, feels an immense weight of sadness, not only for herself but for those who perished.

Now a kindergarten assistant, China loves being around children, learning about a different kind of childhood. With the publication of her book, which has been translated into several languages and was a bestseller in Germany, she has attracted international fame, being invited to speak at major conferences and meeting influential figures like Nelson Mandela and Bill Clinton.

It's become her mission in life to highlight the suffering of child soldiers, of which there are an estimated 300,000 in the world, and she is building a house in Rwanda for girl victims of abuse. But, like any mother, the main focus of China's life is her own two children, who she was forced to leave behind in Uganda and South Africa. She will be reunited with her son and daughter, aged 13 and eight, when they come to live with her in December. It's a prospect that fills China with excitement and joy. "I'm dreaming about my daughter's face," she says.

While she knows that her pain will never end, the faces of those who haunt her dreams never disappear, she is determined to go on, for the sake of her children, if for no other reason. Having endured all she has, I wonder if she thinks of herself as brave, but she cannot accept this, saying: "I don't feel like a strong person because I cry when I'm at home alone."

After fighting for so long, China now has the freedom she sought, but says she's still coming to terms with what it means. "I think that to know freedom, you should be born with it. To get it when you are older, after damage, takes a long time to know it and feel it."

Yet however hard her struggle, her extraordinary will to live remains strong. "To say I'm not happy wouldn't be right. Now at least I can die knowing how it feels to be protected, how it feels to cry and to feel; how it feels to taste freedom," she says.

* Child Soldier by China Keitetsi (Souvenir Press, £18.99).