Single Image Category - LCEA 2013

My photo-project ‘KID's’ seeks to document the humanitarian concerns of child soldiers in DR Congo. I have met three armed soldiers on a barricade, neer Sake town, North Kivu Province, and realised that were actually 13 - 14years old kids. Neither one of them can not read and write or have ever been one single day at school. I’ve promised to come to their village and visit them. But when I arrived, I found only Muhungu Solo saying goodbye to his little sister. The others were taken to another ‘action’ with the army. Solo was just about to go with another unit when he asked me when will I return with the promised soccer ball. I winked as he was entering the truck…I didn’t have a ball with me. That was one of the saddest moments in my life. I have tried to explore what happens to boys-soldiers in the Congo, who are captured or try to escape. ‘The worst cases’end up in jail. When I visited the prison in Bukavu I became convinced that a nightmare for the boys just continues. After a lifetime of war these children are faced with even more violence. They are being visited only by missionaries like nuns, who are trying to help boys and prisoners by teaching them to read and write, and sew on an old sagging machines.