For the sake of truth

By China keitetsi

 

Excessive love and unsatisfeable urge for power brings arrogance and carelessness as demonstrated by the language used when talking about me, my kids, and those who try to stand for the truth. This hate came only and after I wrote a book about the wrong and abuse they committed against other child-girl soldiers and boy child soldiers. Before I wrote the book, who ever cared in the NRM government of AfandeYoweri Kaguta Museveni to tell that I, China Keitetsi sold away my own blood: I mean my daughter? Now they can tell you so much about me, but when I was being trained as a child soldier, no one cared to ask about my back ground, or my age. How could they have used a bad soldier as they say I was? How could they use a bad soldier like me with hundreds of civilians that I used to escort everyday from Karuma to Pakwach in the convoys? A good soldier and later a good platoon sergeant I was. But now and today, the whole world is being told that I am a bad former child soldier, and they only could tell you this information now because of the book I wrote. Or who really ever cared if I was a live and living, or dead and forgotten as it has happened to many other former child soldiers. Who ever cared to know if my son was okay since his father is dead, and I was no longer in Uganda. If I died, no one today would have known about me or my name. After my book was launched, then Uganda government hurried out to tell how much it knows about me! I know Afande Museveni will use anything and everything to make me look bad. Who would love a girl who sells kids? Me too I would hate that girl. And that's what Afande Museveni wants you to think about and hate me! 

They have difficulties finding any lies in my book, and that's why they have to use my kids just to hurt me. The only way out is for them to twist the facts in my book. In South Africa and in Europe no one is allowed to sell and buy kids or even older people. It is a big crime and you can't even sell, and buy animals. I think that Afande Museveni thinks that Ugandans are stupid people who don't know the laws of Europe. A country like South Africa their laws is the same as in Europe. These countries are much civilised, and everything that moves are protected, and believe me, NO one will dare to buy a kid. Here they only allow adapting children, and this too takes a lot of time to be proved by the Government. Un like in Congo, and many parts of Africa where Children's lives have become a waste. If you look at Northern Uganda, I am sure that many people there might believe the story about me and my daughter, because of so many deaths of their Children it could seem to them that a child's life is worth nothing to Afande Museveni. 

I am happy to say that my heart is happy, for I have stood and spoken about what happened and what is still happening to thousands of other child soldiers. I am only a girl who has stood firm with the truth, hoping that one day my deceased comrades and those hundreds of girls and boys who I last saw in Bombo women wing, Mubende Casualty wing, will see the light through us who have and will continue to stand firm against those who arm and use children to kill. 

I wish to tell you that I am in contact with the South Africa Embassy who is helping me get my daughter. I never sold away my daughter. Even this sentence to write it down makes my heart bleed. Afande Museveno and his special team appointed to destroy me and my kids seem to take the lives of children so low, they are not even ashamed to lie using my kids in such words that can easily tear apart a mother's heart. Afande Museveni thinks that people are running around buying and selling children, and you can even feel it in the tone of his voice. Recently after 200 were massacred at Barlonyo in Lira, I was shocked to hear him say: The number was exaggerated, it was only 80. What if it was four people killed, does the number really matter. If he can say this about the 200 dead, then Afande Museveni can also say I sold my daughter. It seems to me that Afande Museveni doesn't understand the feelings and limit of pain. Afande Museveni and his committee formed to campaign against me should stop one thing, and that is: leave my kids out, and alone from the media. I ask that nothing whatsoever happens to my kids. Those lies about my kids will in future disturb them, and this in my view is child abuse. My kids have a right to their private life, until they are 18 years! 

I am a lonely mother, but also a child inside. Both my parents died. My mother died in 1998, my father died in 1997, and now they are trying to change the year of my dead father. They know that he is dead, so they can write and tell anything about him, because he can't talk.  My three sisters died, one in 1991, the other in 1994 and the third in 1999. Maggie left three children, and I am proud and happy that I am looking after them, my kids and the children of the world. I am doing everything in my right to see that every child do not go through, nor see what I saw and what I went through. Every plan and future of my kids, I have to make them as careful as I can because I am alone, and this is not easy for a former child soldier girl with two kids living without either father, because their father died while serving in the army. I am so sad that Afande Museveni and his team keep on reminding me of years and dates of my dead family members and those that I loved. The knife that I still carry in my heart is enough to keep the wounds fresh.

I am also so surprised and hurt seeing the government of Uganda use a lot of money and time to make the team fighting me travel around the world, while so many children and women are dying every day of hunger, some in the camps and others kidnapped for eighteen years, but when my book came out, the time and money they have used in an attempt to destroy me would have saved hundreds of children in the north of Uganda. If a government doesn't care about entire district in their country, would they care whether my two kids grow up without both parents? Afande Museveni cannot even use the money he is using to campaign against me to help the 300 girl soldiers who were sent together with their children which they got from the army to Bombo women's wing and to those boys and girls who were sent to Mubende causality wing.  

In the past they called me names such as Sarah which belonged to the child soldier girl who died, they are even trying to rename my father and mother too, going on to change everything of my past including the time and years of my dead families, reminding me the loose of those that I loved but lost. After reading and hearing all that the government says about me, it seems as if Afande Museveni wants you the people of Uganda and the world to think of me as some kind of red eyed hairy elephant with red horns. I am just me, one among the survived former child soldier of Afande Musveni.

I end by saying that I can write many pages, but at the end of the day it is what will come for everyone to see, which will prove the love and the future that I will give to my kids and other kids if only those men who have destroyed hundreds and thousands of children will one day treat every child as their own. Otherwise, no matter what you call me, no matter how many knifes I am going to carry in my body, I will carry on working for children until the last drop of my blood with the memories and the abuse of my past, which has left me feeling like I am a hundred years old, yet when I was ten I already had blood on my hands. How can anyone expect me to stop just like that because of the ugly words used against me? The memory of my past pains me more, than the baseless ugly words used against me. If what they say was true, I would have long time ago given up. It would not be easy to have a stand off with any government when armed with lies. I hardly recognise my self when I saw the Documentary they made about me. They show photos of me in military uniform, but all seem to be computer graphic made up of a China Keitetsi.

For God and my Country

China Keitesi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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