I joined NRA rebellion aged 7

The area was sparsely populated and ideal for cattle herders like my father. Life in Lukola was not easy. We depended entirely on dairy products. We would get maize flour and beans every once in a while.
Soon after settling in the area, war broke out and my family paid the price. Our animals were taken in broad daylight.
One incident I will never forget was when my young sister was raped before my eyes. Whenever I recall her crying helplessly for mercy, the spirit of revenge takes over me.

Becoming a Kadogo
Because of the war, any herdsman in Ngoma was associated with Yoweri Museveni, then the NRA rebel leader.

One day, soldiers drove a truck into our compound and chose as many cows and goats as they wanted and bombed the rest. We were left homeless. It was neighbours and friends who donated cattle to us to start a new life.

However, a few months later, as we were starting to pick up the pieces, we were attacked again. This time I was a bit older; seven years.

On that fateful evening, I had just returned home with the animals. I was very hungry.
I went to the cooking place and asked my mother for some of the beans she was boiling. Suddenly, I saw soldiers surrounding our house, with guns pointed at us.

“Lala chini! ‘Tumbo chini (lie down, stomachs down),” shouted one of them.
“Tukozeki (what have we done)?” I asked curiously.

It was at that point that a soldier swung a gun butt to hit me, but he missed. I then jumped into the nearby shrubs and ran for dear life. He shot at me, but by God’s grace, he missed again.
I ran deep into the bush for about 5 to 8km, thinking someone was following me. When I stopped to catch some breath, it was already dark and I was exhausted.

Fearing to go back, I rested on a raised shrub where I spent the night. That night I was sleepless as hyenas below me were groaning, trying to reach me. I chased them like one chasing chicken from eating grain.

The next morning, I tried finding my way back home. But the more I walked, the more I got lost. I then started crying, hoping someone would hear me.

‘Maamaa, Maama, paapaa, paapaa,’ I called out.
I cried until my throat dried up. I was both hungry and thirsty. I had not eaten anything.
At around 4pm, while walking through a thicket, I found a pond. I lay down on my stomach and started taking water like a dog, using my mouth.
As I sat up, I noticed footprints on one side of the pond and saw a pair of rugabire (sandals made out of tyres).
Then I heard dried leaves cracking, like someone was walking. I then turned to the direction of the sound, hoping to see an animal, only to see a man dressed in rags with a gun. He asked me in Luganda, “Oyagalaki, okolaki (what are you doing here)?”

I told him what had happened and begged him not to kill me. He assured me that I was safe and led the way to concealment deep in the forest. It was a camp that we headed to.

On reaching the camp, he presented me before the commander, who I later learnt was Paul Kagame [now Rwandan president].

The commander asked for my name and afterwards told me I will be protected, but will have to play a role in my protection and that of others.

The same commander told me there were other children under their protection. Those were the circumstances that led me to become a Kadogo aged seven years in 1984.

Life as a Kadogo
We were less than 10 Kadogos when I started training. I learnt how to hold a gun and assemble it, on top of other military tactics for about three months.

I cannot recall everything, but one thing I recall in the early days of my joining the Bush War was our leaders emphasising that our cover was never to be exposed.

Life in the camp was not easy; food and water were a luxury. Sometimes good Samaritans would donate maize and beans for us to have empemgere as food once a day. Other days we ate leaves.

One day during the training drills, I sneaked beyond our defence as I went to ease myself. I wondered further to look for wild fruits.
I found wild mushrooms, picked and kept them.

When I returned to my position and told a few of my fellow child soldiers that I had got wild meat, they got excited.

That evening, we made smokeless fire as we had been trained. We roasted the mushrooms; it was a heavy meal for us. What we had done was illegal but hunger had driven us to break the rules.
That night as we prepared for the night activities – night time was the most active for our missions – I started feeling my stomach bulging and paining. I started vomiting.
I was taken to the sickbay; two of my comrades were brought in worse conditions. We were asked what we had eaten and we said we didn’t eat anything. But they went ahead and gave us some canes and we admitted having eaten wild mushrooms.

I don’t know what medication I was given, but I regained consciousness after three days. The pain made me wish I had been shot dead.

The conditions of living were harsh; no clothing or what to sleep on, or cover in the night. For sleeping I would coil myself like a centipede on bare ground.

I was rescued by a lady commander called Stella who gave me her spare blouse. Had it not been her, I would have died in the bush. She became my mother.

As I gained experience, I was assigned different missions. Among those I recall is laying land mines in the areas of Semuto, Kakiri, Kalasa, Kapeeka, Matuga and Bombo.

One incident at Lukumbi, on the road to Ngoma, I saw a truck full of government troops go up in pieces as it drove over a land mine.

On another mission, I was sent by now retired Gen [Benon] Biraaro to collect now General [David] Sejusa from Bukomero.

I disguised myself as a schoolboy and went to Bukomero market where Sejusa was in a bar. I had been given a photo of him and when I walked into the makeshift bar; I went to him and told him ‘Ssebo waliwo abalalo abakwetaga’.

He followed me out and I showed him the photo I had. He asked me what I wanted to eat and bought me pancakes. We then went to our base.

I also went on recce missions. On one such mission, I pretended to be selling jackfruit to penetrate the enemy detach.

Commander Kamwanamwana sent me to see how many soldiers were there and the type of guns they had. I did not know the different types of guns, so I would only describe how it looked like.

I went with a jackfruit, calling out for buyers until a government commander called me. He asked me how much I was selling it, I asked for I think Shs5. He doubted me, but paid for it. He then called a soldier to cut it.
As I waited for the money, I was taking count of how many they were and what kind of guns were in sight. I went back and reported. That night, I guided the group during the attack.

One day while on such a mission, we fell in an ambush. The locals had tipped off government troops. I was badly injured, some others were killed.

A colleague carried me because I could not walk. Using banana fibres, he improvised a bandage and took me to a nearby home where he left me. He told them that I had fallen off a bicycle and he was going to call an older person to carry me.

The occupants of the home where he left me were curious. To avoid their many questions, I pretended to be insane. Whoever would ask, I would just say ‘ohhh Shhhhhh Mamaa I’m dying’.
The next day during lunch, a man arrived at the compound riding a bicycle. He was a comrade who had been assigned to come for me.

Visit by commander in chief
One day, we were visited by the commander in chief, Mr Yoweri Museveni, who gave us a talk on the progress of the war and the way forward.
My attention was on the young boys of my size who were escorting him, especially the late Kayanja. He convinced me that they at the high command were well off in terms of logistics.

As the commander in chief addressed us, we young ones were made to stand in front because we were short.

At one point, he called me forward and asked for my name.

‘I am Kinywamacunda (one who drinks a lot of yoghurt -my bush nickname),’ I told him.
He laughed and said, ‘These kids will have to go back and study after the war. These are the future revolutionaries that we have together in the struggle.’

He was saying all this while touching my head, as if I was getting baptised by a priest.
While in the bush, I was an escort to a number of commanders, including Kamwanamwana, the late comrade Kamomo, late comrade Stanly Muhangi, and late comrade Rwigyema Fred, among others.

Those days, most commanders wanted Kadogos because they were quick in executing orders. I was the youngest escort of the late Rwigyema who had nicknamed me Sharpie.
One day, he pulled out a Shs1,000 note and asked me to read the wordings on it. I could not.
He then said: “Do you want to remain blind after this war? Make sure you go back to school after this struggle…you can’t make it in this world without education.”

Unfortunately, when I got injured during the Kabamba II attack, he left me at the sickbay and proceeded to the western axis.
I re-joined him later in 1987 in northern Uganda and he introduced me to commander Salim Saleh as his son. Afande Saleh gave me cigarettes and money, making me the happiest that day.
I immediately went with a colleague called Kato to kiosk near the gate and bought Kwete (a local brew). I got drunk and blacked out.

The next day, I realised the rest of the money I had been given was stolen by the colleague I had bought drinks with.

I went out looking for Kato. I almost killed him, but he was wise to tell me that he would give me all his monthly salary of the next month.

If he had become stubborn, I had planned to shoot him and then I shoot myself.

Coming to Kampala
Kampala was captured at a cost of blood, right from the western axis. By then I was under Afande [Matayo] Kyaligonza and our assignment was to cut off Mubende Road.
When we came to Kampala, it was deserted with very few people. We crossed Kampala and went up to Kololo.

Kadogos were very active in action. I recall there was an enemy on a machinegun at Mulago Roundabout terrorising us.

I crawled with my gun through a sewage channel and came out behind the enemy line and neutralised the man on the machine gun and two of his cover-ups. That’s when my group managed to break through and went up to Kololo.

Soon after the fall, I was taken to Makindye barracks where the commander, the late Potel Kivuna, told me to take charge of the prisoners. I was one of the toughest Kadogos at that time, aged 10. People arrested in Kampala were brought to Makindye where they were screened from.

After four months, I followed the rest of the group and went towards the north. I went up to Bibia. The northern part of the war was the worst, it claimed many colleagues.

It was a smooth run all the way up to Karuma Bridge and corner Kamudini. The enemy had occupied all the ground of tactical importance. Here we lost many of our colleagues. We went all the way to Kitgum via Lira.

Going to school, first army salary
I was in the 47th Battalion based in Dokolo, resting ahead of a move to Kitgum to reinforce our troops, when a directive for all Kadogos to be sent to school came.

Before setting off, I got my first army salary, which was Shs900. I did not know what to do with the money. I bought bread and soda, poured the soda in the bread and started eating.
When the orders for us to go to school came, many of us asked lots of questions.
‘Afande, did we join the army to study or to fight?’ I asked. “If I don’t want to go to school, why should Mzee (President Museveni) force me to go to school?’

Unfortunately, the late Chef Ali was around and he heard me. He called me and asked a mature soldier to get a cane. He told the soldier to give me 20 lashes.

Immediately thereafter, I went and parked my property. From there, we first stayed in Mbuya before going to Bombo and later Mbarara.

But while at Corner Kamudini, we ran into an ambush many of my colleagues were killed. That was a turning point, seeing dead colleagues being heaped on the same truck that we were on a while ago.

Later that night, we set off very disappointed than excited to go back to school. A colleague called that incident ‘bye bye mobile life in the north’.

We stayed in Bombo for about three months. While there, all soldiers, including the Kadogos, received about Shs150,000. That was in 1987 when the new currency was introduced.

The money made most of us mad. It was termed ‘akasiimo’, meaning appreciation for the victory. I, like the rest of the Kadogos, enjoyed the money in style; I bought a radio cassette and a bag in which I kept it.
I carried the bag with me all the way from Bombo Barracks to Bombo trading centre. I excited people wherever I passed and this made me feel good.

I learnt how to drink beer and bought even the useless things luxuriously, but money could not get finished.

There was a shrewd comrade called Kyeyune who lured me into gambling so as to make more money. That was how my money got finished. But for the soldiers who were mature and focused, they must have done some good investment at the time or bought assets like land.

Life at school
I joined the army as an illiterate child, the best I could do was count from 1 to 10 in English. Like other colleagues of mine, we were satisfied with life, as long as we had money.
At the start, going to school was of no interest to me because I was like ‘Ah! Why should they bother us?’

It was a Sunday night that we were loaded onto a military lorry ‘kagabo’ and taken from Bombo to Mbarara Barracks to the famous Kadogo School.
We were very many children gathered from all over the country. We had logistics challenges, like eating once a day. Some of us who were weak would miss food and nobody bothered because it was survival for the fittest.

Some Kadogos opted to go back to their units since life was better in the units compared to school. That way some Kadogos missed out on that opportunity to get education.

But with time the situation improved. That aside, we were a very complex group to manage. Some of us had come with our guns. It was not until the authorities appointed Capt Katimbo to head the school that sanity prevailed.

He had a psychological approach towards solving any problem concerning us. I admired the way he first listened to whoever had a problem, then he would want to know your back ground thereafter, having analysed everything, he would provide the solution.

Around 1989, we were joined by another group of Kadogos from Nabisojjo Rehabilitation Camp; these were former enemies.

It was not easy to accept them. The bigger boys resorted to teasing and bullying them. They gave them a hard time, until the school commandant intervened with harsh and punitive punishments to those found teasing.

After the Kadogo School, I went to St Kaggwa and later went to a teacher training college. I went to Makerere and now I’m a debt officer with the Wazalendo [UPDF’s Savings and Credit Cooperative Society].

I don’t regret having become a Kadogo, but I would not encourage any of my children to join the military. I had the worst experience. Under normal circumstances, I would not be who I am. I would be a much better person. But I’m not regretting having become a Kadogo.”

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Continues next Saturday