Child Soldier: Fighting For My Life (2005)

by China Keitetsi

Jacana Media

This is the account of the author's terrifying journey out of her family home and into the world of bloody warfare. Set in Uganda in the 1970s, China runs away from abuse at home at the age of eight and gets drafted into Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Army (NRA), fighting to depose Milton Obote's regime. Caught up in a horrifying guerrilla war, China grows to become bodyguard to an important commander to escape the terrors of army life but he too treats her mercilessly. China eventually flees to Johannesburg where, for a time, she inhabits the Hillbrow underworld, all the time searching for a way out. Finally the United Nations relocates her to Denmark where she has been living ever since.