I Was a Child Soldier. The Shocking Story of an African Childhood

Usually, when a child rattles a machine gun, he is playing -- and the gun is plastic.
But Lucieb Badjoko's gun is real, and it can really kill. Because this little Zairean boy was recruited, along with tens of thousands of others, into Laurent Désiré Kabila's army, which tried to overthrow the Mobutu dictatorship in 1996. To fight and perhaps die. His friends died alongside him from bullets or landmines.
Demobilized five years later, he can finally talk about the hell he has lived through and bear witness to the untold tragedy that has shattered the lives of more than 30,000 children who were brutally used as cannon fodder.

Lucien Badjoko is now eighteen. He is studying law at the University of Kinshasa.
Kaita Clarens, who wrote this child soldier's gripping memoirs, is a journalist.

Original title: J'etais enfant soldat. In Estonian

Keywords:
wars
children
soldiers
civil wars
French
Badjoko, Lucien
wars
child soldiers
soldiers
civil wars
DRC
memories
documentary