Teresa

By Anthony Barton

‘Teresa’ is a story you want to put down to give yourself a rest and yet you don’t put it down because you want to know what happens next. It reads like an adventurer’s story but with strong emphasis on what abducted children go through. It is gentle yet leads young people to reflect on the role they can play in trying to help their fellow young people who have been abducted and are suffering. Anthony has carefully and beautifully written the story. - Grace Akallo, co-author of CHILD SOLDIER

You know what is going to happen.
They are going to make you kill people.
What are you to do?

This may be the most exciting story you will ever read.

We jumped down into the shed where the school gardener kept his tools. We needed to hide. I saw a flash of brilliant plumage and felt claws in my hair. Turaco! Turaco! A nest toppled. Poor birds! Sorry, no time to stop. We ran behind the school kitchen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthony Barton
• Release date: Oct 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301705665

Anthony Barton

Hi, my name is Anthony, I've been writing books since I was a young man. My works are mostly going to be fictional. I enjoy lots of sci-fi but I'm also known to write a good amount of erotica too. Thanks for stopping by, I hope you enjoy my work.

Book preview

Foreword

This adventure story of Teresa and her friends is set in East Africa, a part of the world I love dearly. It is a region renowned for its warm-hearted people, splendid scenery, and magnificent wildlife. I have friends and relatives there. It may be the place where our ancestors first told stories around campfires.

East Africa is also one of several regions around the world in which child soldiers are active combatants. P. W. Singer, in his book Children at War, describes as a 'child soldier' any person under the age of 18 engaged in deadly combat. This, he says, is the definition under international law, which strictly prohibits child soldiery.

Yet Singer goes on to document child soldiery in more than thirty countries, and his long list includes Myanmar, Bosnia, Turkey, Iran, Algeria, Columbia, the Philippines, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Anthony Barton

Preface

by Grace Akallo

Grace Akallo is co-author of GIRL SOLDIER. She was fifteen when the Lord's Resistance Army raided her school.

The moon is looming, it is bright full in the sky. It is time for grandmothers to tell stories to their grandchildren. The laughter fills the house, there is rejoicing and all lie down to rest, waiting for the sun to rise and begin the new day. Children run and giggle and mothers move with confidence in the field and in the kitchen they make food for their children.

I went to school in a rural village, where children sit on the dirty floor and yet hunger for school. Their parents don’t need to force them to get up and go to school; they wash themselves and get ready eagerly, yet few have the advantage of reaching the high school level. Girls, like goods branded for sale, are forced to marry and bring dowry to their families. They become the property of the men that marry them. Boys don’t have it easy either, for they have no money to pay their school fees and are left to their fate.

I was one of those children. I had little hope of getting an education. I was a girl who was waiting for the right time to be given out in marriage. I was able to complete my primary school, but high school was a dream to me, my father had bought the idea that girls became prostitutes when they got education, and so he did not want to waste his money, at least that was how he put it. But a friend of his at work tried to convince him to take me to high school, and to this he agreed. I was full of dreams; I thought to myself: I will fight for the right of children to have education, especially for the girls that were being sold for cows. I was full of smiles, because I could see my future, bright as a morning star; all my hopes were lifted. I was ready to be the next lawyer or doctor in my village.

St Mary’s College Aboke High School was a place of peace, love and encouragement for the new life that lay ahead of me. A Catholic mission ran the school. The Headmistress, Sister Alba, and her colleague Sister Rachelle provided a safe place, a place where I could feel a sense of strength. She would say 'My children, you are future leaders' and my teachers would say 'Aim high and fall in the middle' which meant we should work hard and aim to pass our exams and not fail completely. It made our teachers proud when their students passed the national exams and were able to go to the University. But for me this sounded like a dream that was impossible, for even if I had just got a chance to go high school, going to university seemed hardly possible for me and yet I still harbored that idea that I might go to university one day.

But all this excitement, speculation and promise was cut short when the Lord’s Resistance Army, a group that formed in the Northern part of Uganda, smashed my dormitory window and pointed AK-47s from the broken windows at me and 138 friends. I thought the end had come. I knew at that moment from the way the rebels had broken in that things were not going to be the same. I saw my life flash right in front of me. I saw my future trashed and my dream violently destroyed. The Lord’s Resistance abducted 139 of us. We were hauled out of the dorm into the cold rainy night, with only our nightdresses and no shoes on our feet. We were marched into a world unknown to any of us. I remember thinking and imagining how my mother would react to the news. Would she survive? What would happen? I did not know. All I knew at that moment was that death was near and it would be hard to escape or cheat death at this point.

But to my surprise I saw Sister Rachelle coming after us. She was half running and walking. The rebels pointed an AK-47 at her and yet she kept coming as if she did not see the gun. She was ready to die for us. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying.

When I saw Sister Rachelle coming, my own tears rolled down for the first time since the abduction had taken place.

The rebels threatened to either rape or kill us in front of Sister Rachelle.

The rebel commander, Lagira, in charge of our group, ordered us to stand still.

As soon as Sister Rachelle reached us she started to ask us if the rebels had hurt us. She was concerned and was afraid of the worst. She started to plead for the release of her girls. The rebel commander promised to release us, but told Sister Rachelle to walk with us to what he called a safe place, away from the Ugandan Government Army.

Sister Rachelle walked with us and at the end of the day she entered into negotiations with Lagira and rescued 109 of my friends, but as a part of the bargain she made, 30 of us, myself included, were retained by the rebels. I felt as if the whole world had collapsed on the thirty of us.

After one month in the deep bush of northern Uganda we were marched into southern Sudan where the northern Sudanese Government led by Al Bashir gave the Lord’s Resistance Army a safe haven. In this place of death, children as young as seven were brought for training to become soldiers. There was no food or water; we had to fight to take food and water from the people in southern Sudan. After reaching Sudan the Lord's Resistance Army started training me and my friends and other children who had been abducted along the way.

The rebels gave us AK-47 rifles and taught us how to dismantle, clean and assemble the gun.

We were told hunger would teach us how to shoot the gun. I had never even touched a gun in my life. I was afraid of soldiers and yet at this time they were giving me a gun to fire. But for my survival I had to hold this gun and I had to fire at some one. I blocked the thought of killing someone, because I did not want to think about it. I was in a world where human life did not matter. Human life was like disposable trash. In the camp abducted children were dying and some people were shooting themselves with the guns given to them to go and kill someone else. I was sent to fight the people in the Southern Sudan, and was made to force them to leave their homes so we could

loot their food. For us girls not only were we required to become soldiers, we were also required to become wives to the commanding officers. Girls as young as ten years were made to become wives of the commanders, and in the end bore children for the rebel commanders, and, even when they escaped, found their future destroyed completely because they could not go back to school.

Fortunately I did not get pregnant.

After seven months of suffering and not knowing whether I would survive, the Sudan People's Liberation Army together with Ugandan Government soldiers attacked the camp I was in. Many people were killed. Children, mothers and those who were wounded from previous fighting were left to die. I was tired. I had lost hope of ever seeing my parents again. I had lost hope in life, and knew only death could ease my pain, but death had refused to take me. I had been buried alive. My friends and other children could not escape. I tried to shoot myself just like other people who had done so before, but every time I tried somebody came and took my gun away from me.

I did not run when the camp was attacked. Everybody was running towards Juba but I sat under a tree in the camp and waited for either a stray bullet to hit me or for someone to kill me. Nothing like that happened, so in the evening of the 9th April 1997 I left the camp, not knowing where I was going. I moved into the bush. I spent three days with no food and no water, by myself, surviving on leaves and on dew in the morning. The fourth day I met a group of children who were running for their lives from the very camp I was from. They were stranded in the bush and they were determined to go to Juba where everybody else was running to. I was not going to Juba, for I had made up my mind not to. I was going to either to die in the bush or go home to Uganda. When I told the group this they wanted to kill me, but they thought it would be a waste of a bullet and of their time, considering that I was going to die in the bush anyway. They left, but one girl in the group returned to make sure I meant what I was saying and that I was going to Uganda. She sat near me but did not ask a question. Only her eyes talked, but her mouth did not open as if she was afraid to break the silence that had engulfed the scorched grass and trees. After several minutes, seven more of the girls came

back to where I was sitting, and they too had questioning eyes but said not a word. All of a sudden I started thinking: Where are these girls going, and why have they decided to come back to me and yet dare not ask me a question? I was dead if they did come back to me, so I started moving quietly. They