You're a vicious, vicious little bastard. You killed without compassion. You killed for fun. You murdered your own family. You tortured children and babies. Most of the time you were high. Civilians hate you and you hate them. You grew up away from villages and towns and the city. You grew up in a camp full of brutal commanders and fellow, brutalised children. You were 5 years old when you made your first kill. You're 16 now.

But the war is over. Well, that's the official line.

Some man from the United Nations wrote your name in the book. You told him your name was Major Handcutter. That is your name. He took your weapon and took a note of it. He gave you some money, a package containing food and a change of clothes. He also gave you a ticket for the coach. Unlike your friends you took it.

The coach takes you to the north east of the country. This place is alien to you, but they thought it might be best since you never burnt any of these people's houses down or raped their daughters or decapitated their grandfathers.

There is no real work going. You are sent to the fields. You are expected to grow a cash crop, but you have never farmed in your young life. Your older brother taught you to hate those who worked on the land. You used to sneer at villagers, working in the fields. You would come to them at harvest time and leave them with barely enough to survive. You were brought up on action, and comraderie, and glory, and valour, and taking what you wished.

Working on the land is demeaning. You used to wear an expensive watch, drive the stolen UN jeeps, watch the latest dvds...you're nothing like the older generations. You're nothing like they want you to be.

As the mud splashes on your Tupac t-shirt you feel lost. You wonder why you gave your gun up so easily. Why you didn't just stay with your friends.

So later you leave the village, where everybody hated you. You meet a man in the city who promises you easy pickings. At the border there are many undefended villages. There are alluvial diamonds to be found, and a roaring trade in arms and drugs. All the san san boys are there. You feel at home again. Now that you hold your AK-47 by your side, now that you kill again and take what you please, you are respected. You are no longer an animal. You are living, once again.


This, my friend, my foe,
actually matters.