Former child soldier speaks out

"We walked from south Sudan to Ethiopia and it took us 15 days to arrive. I was four years back then. Though I did arrive at the training camp in Ethiopia, some of the children didn't as they died of diarrhoea and cholera along the way," says Kon Kelei, a former child soldier.

Kelei, who was in Gaborone to attend a seminar on child soldiers last week at the University of Botswana, says at the height of the Sudan war, together with 20,000 children, they were tricked into military training by the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M), a predominantly southern Sudanese rebel movement and political party. He was simply told that they were being taken to an academic school in Ethiopia, only to find that they had actually been duped into military training. In Ethiopia they found a jungle with no sign of civilisation. The only place inhabited by human beings lay far off, in a town called Pinyiudo.