ChildFocus: Charles

Charles Opiro was born into a time of turmoil. The dark cloud of war hung over Acholiland, and its boys and girls were under siege by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Charles is emblematic of that time, a boy who suffered the horrors of an unjust war and still bears the scars of it.

When he was 10 years old, Charles and some friends were walking home from school, meandering through the waist-high elephant grass and dodging bicycles on dirt paths. In a sudden, mad rush, the boys were engulfed by rebel soldiers, captured, and swiftly led into the bush - another group of children swallowed up by the LRA. At gunpoint, Charles and his friends marched for weeks toward Sudan. There, they were trained to become soldiers and indoctrinated with the rebels' mission and brutal methods.

To build fear in the children and assert control, commanders forced the new abductees to kill. In that instant, the rebels erased the essence of childhood. In their new camp Charles was summoned by his captors and, under the threat of death, ordered to kill one of his own friends, beating him to death with a stick. Charles's small, weakened body could barely accomplish the deed, and his 10-year-old mind couldn't fathom it. Somehow Charles mustered the courage to mask the terror he felt, for any show of tears meant he would be killed as well.

Inside his tightening chest Charles's heart screamed for answers, but none would come.

Days melted into months, months bled into years. Fear and pain and mistrust became life's only constants. During that time, Charles made frequent forays into Uganda, where the rebels attacked villages and abducted school children in order to add to their number. Charles marched those hundreds of miles with bare feet - unless he had the fortune to stumble upon a dead body. From dead government soldiers could be poached clothes, supplies, and boots. A mere boy, Charles always found boots that were too big for him; to make them fit, he stuffed shreds of clothing into the toe of the boots. In his pack he hauled guns, grenades, and other materials for his commander - along with whatever treasures he could keep from village raids.

Often those attacks were the only means of acquiring food and drink. Across the sun-blistered expanse of southern Sudan and northern Uganda, Joseph Kony's army of stolen children dragged their starving bodies, void of energy and absent of spirit. So desperate were they for the temporary sensation of a full stomach that they sometimes swallowed handfuls of dirt. Meat was a rare luxury reserved for the commanders, and it occasionally came in the form of a warthog or hippo - even a leopard. Boxed in by government soldiers and caught without access to a water source, Charles and his peers might go days at a time without water. Some boys begged to drink the urine of others. No food, no water - fueled only by a longing to regain their lives - the boys did all they had to do in order to survive.

Years into his ordeal, Charles suffered a gunshot wound in the leg and spent a month in a field hospital to mend. It was during this time of misery that he began to seriously consider a way out. Charles yearned to escape, but he was fearful of the rebel leaders' assertions that the government soldiers would show him no mercy, that they would torture and kill him for what he had done. What's more, the rebels were known to kill children who tried to flee, and no one - even those thought to be friends - could be trusted to help.

Charles locked his thoughts inside his head and waited.

It was three more years before the moment came. Hour upon hour, day after day, the tension that kept him on edge, the fear that stirred his dreams, the broken heart and crushing guilt, the hunger that shook his body, the fierce desire to return home - all of it took a toll. Not a boy anymore, Charles now had a man's courage. He was determined to leave.

The day he crawled out of camp and headed toward his home village, Charles knew there would be trouble. The LRA is notorious for doggedly hunting its former captives. Escapees often suffer from lingering paranoia, even years later walking through crowds with a wary and suspicious eye. True to form, the rebels trailed Charles, but he made it home first. The rebels came through and torched the village, but they found no people. Charles had led them to safety.

It's been years now since Charles left behind life as a child soldier and began rebuilding himself. He is a student in technical school and is working to get his driver's license. His father lost to the war, Charles is left as the provider for his mother and younger brothers. And yet he cannot live with them - he is essentially banned from his home village. Typical of the resentment some Ugandan communities bear toward their returning sons and daughters, Charles's village did not welcome him back, scornful of what they perceive as his misdeeds in the bush.

Charles came to the United States in 2007 and again last summer to participate in awareness and fundraising campaigns to support ChildVoice International. During his time here, Charles has shared his story with dozens of church, business, school, university, and community groups in Iowa, New York, New Hampshire, and Maine.

When delivering his presentations, Charles maintains a level of stoicism that belies the anguish they stir up. Indeed, Charles relives the pain of those stories with every retelling. Every night after doing a presentation, Charles suffers an onslaught of nightmares that send him into a screaming fit and then, eventually, a string of sleepless nights. And yet he persists in giving these talks - in spite of the pain they renew - because he believes so fervently that it's his duty to the thousands of children enslaved as soldiers in his country.

For what he has survived and what he has become, Charles is a hero. Years of his childhood were irretrievably lost. The innocence of his youth was obliterated and replaced with daily horror. And yet Charles's profound resilience - that he could rediscover himself after years of being lost - is remarkable. For all children enslaved as soldiers as he once was, Charles speaks.