Michel Chikwanine has always loved soccer.
Michel Chikwanine visited the Performing Arts Center at 8 p.m. Oct. 25 to tell his story about being a child soldier for two weeks. When he was five years old, he and his 12-year-old friend Kevin went to play at the local field. Kevin passed him the ball, and he shot it in the net. He started celebrating, but then he was stopped. (Collegian photo by ReAnn Arcand)
“I never saw them stop at a soccer field,” Chikwanine said. “As I turned around to scream, ‘Goal,’ I heard a gunshot.”
Rebel soldiers had arrived, and they forced all the children into their trucks.
“They grabbed my left arm, and they grabbed a knife and slashed my wrist,” Chikwanine said. They then put a mixture of cocaine and gun powder into his open wounds to make him become crazy and follow their orders, which involved killing other children.
“I looked in front of me and I saw my best friend Kevin lying in a pool of his own blood,” he said, adding that he was holding an AK-47 in his hand.
Chikwanine was a child soldier for two weeks, to which he said he was “very, very lucky.” He managed to run away, but “many child soldiers spend their whole lives as soldiers,” he said.
According to a BBC News article, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has an estimated 30,000 child soldiers. Chikwanine, now 23 years old, is from Beni in the DRC, and he has seen extremes of both evil and kindness. Now, he talks about these experiences at locations across North America.
His most recent location was SDSU. At 8 p.m. Oct. 21, hundreds of students filed into the Performing Arts Center to hear Chikwanine tell his story.
Chance Nkundimana, a freshman political science major, sat two rows from the stage. Like Chikwanine, he is from the DRC, and he his memories have scarred him as well. He witnessed the Gatumba Massacre, a mass killing of more than 150 people. Nkundimana said he and Chikwanine “connected.”
“He talked to my heart,” he said. “My tears were rolling down.”
Chikwanine gave a brief summary of his life story, which included the importance of his family.
“The thing that I love most about the town of Beni is this man,” Chikwanine said as he brought up a picture on the screen, “My father.”
Chikwanine’s father, a politician in Beni was a human rights activist, which caught the attention of rebel soldiers.
“The rebel soldiers hated my father,” Chikwanine said.
He went on to describe an experience he had as a 10-year-old in 1998.
“I remember it was a Friday afternoon when I was doing homework,” he said. “I heard gunshots.”
At the time, his dad was away from home.
“I remember I told my dad that if he left at anytime I would stand up and be the man of the house,” he said.
So he left his bedroom to check on his mom and sisters downstairs.
“I was 10 years old and I was forced to watch my mom and sisters raped right in front of me,” he said, explaining that one of the soldiers threatened to shoot him if he closed his eyes.
It became too much to watch, though, and Chikwanine ran at one of the soldiers, who ended up slashing his face with a machete.
“I fell to the ground,” he said. “And with a bloody face I heard my mom screaming for help.”
It was these memories he shared that left the audience members shocked and horrified. But, people did not leave the PAC describing the presentation as negative.
“I’m very hopeful,” Chikwanine said. “It’s very easy to be cynical, and it’s very easy to be angry. Being angry and sad will never take m
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