Emmanuel Jal - Warchild

Emmanuel Jal, a powerful rapper born in the village of Tonj in southern Sudan (he thinks in the year 1980 - he's not sure), was a little boy when civil war broke out and his father joined the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). After his mother was killed when he was seven years old, he left for Ethiopia with thousands of children who had been told that they could be educated there. However, when Emmanuel got to Ethiopia with the other children, they were taken to a military training camp by the SPLA. The camp was disguised as a school in front of UN and international aid employees. After fighting as a child soldier in Ethiopia and later in Sudan, he was discovered by a British woman, Emma McCune, who convinced him to let her adopt him and smuggle him to Kenya.

In this song he says:
"I believe I survived for a reason: to tell my story, to touch lives. To all the people down there struggling: storms only come for a while, and then after a while they're gone."

Listen to the lyrics.




And here's Emmanuel talking about arms control in Africa. He calls on the international community to play a bigger role in the import and control of arms into Africa.