Teddy (SL)
"When the RUF entered the town they started shooting at that time I was a small boy and I saw youth with sticks with nails and they started to capture some of the RUF and beated them with stick til the end of their own life at that time my mother and father were at the village. My sister said that I should go to my mother and father at the village so I was with them in the village for one to two years and on one day we were hearing rumour that the RUF has written a letter that they are coming to the town but at that time we felt it was play. So at night we heard gun shot from the next village and I told my mother and father that this is the RUF attack and my father said that we should stay in the town and we were there when the RUF entered our own village.
My mother said to my father that we had to leave the town to the bush, but on the way going we started to see corpses , so I was in fear for my own life and my family. We were in the bush for one week and two days when we finally came across the fighter and they captured all of us. We were large in number, so we were with them for a day and night so my father escapes from the fighter, so the commander asks all of us that where is our father and we told him we didn’t know and the commander told us that we are going to suffered for the missing of our father. They took us to their camp. On the way going to the camp my elder brother wanted to hide and they saw him and when they saw him he was captured and they cut off his head in front of me and my mother.
The commander told us that they have done that to tell us that they are not joking. We were taken to the camp. They told us we are going to join the force and if anybody refused he will be killed as a hen, so all of us at the scene agreed to join them and they started to train us how to fight and how to use the weapon. We were trained and qualified and they gave us gun and weapon and at time we have to leave the camp to the bush to go and hunting some animal and some time they have to lead us to other villages and we have to attack them, kill them, bound their properties and some of our commanders rape some of the women and we capture some people to our camp. So one day we were in the camp when the government armed forces came and attacked us and we exchanged gun shots with them for one whole day and we retreated and escaped from the government armed forces and just after the gun shots my mother was no where to be found.
We went to another village and when we were with our commander they used to give us drugs so we can be able to perform any type of work or operation. My commander loves me so much because I operate with no fear. He believes in me so much. … "