War Child
 |
War Child opens during the start of Sudan's civil war in the 1980s, when Muslim government forces started seizing tribal lands in a violent power play for water, oil and other valuable resources. Emmanuel offers vivid descriptions of how whole villages and towns were besieged by violent attacks and raids from government soldiers and how his family - along with many others - was forced to move again and again in search of peace.
The book recounts the terrible day when, as a seven-year-old, Emmanuel became separated from his mother, whom he later found had been killed during a raid, and was left orphaned and adrift (his father Simon had already become a powerful commander in the Sudan People's Liberation Army and had left the family behind). He describes the horror of the following years: of marching through miles of desert with thousands of other displaced children toward Ethiopia, past the bones of adults and children who had starved and died; of surviving a disastrous boat accident, in which he witnessed hundreds of children devoured by crocodiles and hippos; of his brutal training as a child soldier and how he learned to kill with a gun he could barely lift; of the burgeoning hatred and rage within him that would lead him to savagely attack and to beat opposing soldiers in the middle of combat; of starving to the point of near-cannibalism and coming to the edge of suicide; and of how he miraculously survived and escaped through the bravery and charity of a British aid worker named Emma McCune, who rescued him and brought him to Kenya, where he would learn to pursue music as an outlet for his long-suppressed emotions.
War Child is much more than a simple story of survival. It is a testament to the human ability to overcome the most unspeakable circumstances, as well as an indictment of how inhumane humans can be to one another. Emmanuel Jal is an incredible young man and someone whose voice will be heard for many years to come, both through his music and his humanitarian work.
