365 from the archive~ day 9~ Congo
Childhood is the most sacred part of life. We as adults are entrusted with it to shield it, protect it and allow it its full potential...

And yet, in places like Congo, children are forcefully taken from their families by armed forces, sometimes as early as 7 years old, forced into military training, a life of crime, drugs, war and are shoved brutally into an ugly adulthood robbing them of their gift, their innocent childhood.

UNICEF and other NGOs have been actively struggling to save these children from the grips of war, offering them temporary sanctuary in an attempt to help them kickstart their childhood again and reunite with their families or other foster families in the Congolese society.

With arts, some of these children told me that they are able to escape into other places in their minds, places free of their memories of war, of killing, of brutality. They can dream of a normal life, of happiness and of recapturing the freedom that is an integral part of childhood.

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365 from the archive~ day 13~ Congo
“We want peace in the world”… Is that too much to ask?

Every child I spoke to in Congo told me the same thing, responded the same way when I asked them what their message to the world was, what was it they wished for the most…

” I want to live a peaceful life”

“I want to be able to go to school and not be kidnapped again”

“I want the war to stop”

“I want to find my parents again and live a happy peaceful life”

This boy in Kinshasa wanted to deliver his message in artform. He wanted to draw his message and asked me to pass it on, because maybe if everyone knew that the children in Congo do not want the war, then maybe, just maybe, the world can help to stop it.

Please share this message from a young boy in Congo, the country that has lost more than 5 million people so far to a bloody conflict that spares no child, mother or old person.

Thank you.
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365 from the archive~ day 15~ Congo
When the streets of the city are your home, when you are solely responsible for your own safety while other children are tucked safely at home, when your survival is depending entirely on the kindness of others...

These piercing eyes belong to one of the 300, 000 children that call the streets of the cities in Congo their home. "les enfants de la rue" ~ the children of the street, wild eyed, witty, emotionally fragile, hard shelled, untrusting... the sad product of a humanity gone wrong. But still the strength in them and the hope in their eyes could not be missed.

I met these children in a center in Kinshasa that offers them lessons, food, daytime shelter and guidance where needed. They sang to me, drew messages on the blackboard for me to photograph and sang me their national anthem in a most rhythmic excellence which I filmed and will share in a future post.

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365 from the archive~ day 16~ Congo

Some images print themselves in our minds and on our hearts because they affect us beyond the surface of visual impression. They go deep, they etch a mark on our soul...

If you were to ask me what moment in my journey to Congo was the most haunting, I would say this one when I took this photograph. This child was one of the youngest in the center for demobilized child soldiers. He never spoke, he just stood there and let his eyes that stared without blinking, the scar on his chin and his cloud of melancholy speak for him. His gaze was steady, his look far but near, his mind unreadable. It was a child who spent far too much time in the playground of the lords of war and cruelty.
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Tags:   africa congo democratic republic of congo drc travel boy child demobilized soldier war conflict goma t-shirt look gaze face portrait depth mimo khair photography

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365 from the archive~ day 19~ Congo

A small boy, on the run from Rwanda, pausing in a medical center in Goma, hiding behind the folds of a UNICEF tent, his life will never be the same again...

While days before he was just a little boy, living in a village, part of a family, living a somewhat normal life, today he is labelled a refugee. He is another number added to a list, a surprisingly large list, that grows and grows each time a new war and a new conflict is born. This boy is a side of effect of the greed of humans, of their struggle to gain power and of their disregard to what misfortunes and casualties their games are producing in the lives of others.
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Tags:   africa congo democratic republic of congo drc travel boy child tent unicef rwanda goma future life humanity

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