I shot a gun at nine years old.
In the meet of the loud guns, you cannot hear your gun
and that sometime can be terrifying.
So you come to your conscience by seeing a gun shaking,
that's when you know it's actually working.
Emmanuel Jal was a child soldier
during the brutal Sudanese civil war in the 1990's.
Where government forces in the predominantly Muslim north
fought rebels in the south.
Taken from his home, he was beaten
brainwashed and trained by the rebels to fight.
After four years of fighting, he managed
an epic escape to create a new life.
♪ I believe I've survived for a reason, ♪
♪ To tell my story, to touch lives. ♪
♪ I believe I've survived for a reason, ♪
♪ To tell my story, to touch lives. ♪
Mr. Jal was sent to train to be a soldier
at the age of eight by his father
who was the rebels' chief of police.
The training was brutal.
We were welcomed with a beating.
The violence that was given to us,
I can't even describe it.
I look at as a psychological way to break into us
so they can mold us to what they want.
He survived the training
and was given a gun, ready for revenge.
That war took the soul of my village,
and my aunties died during that war.
All my uncles died during that war.
My mother was claimed by that war.
As a kid, I wanted two things.
To get a bike, I wanted to get a bicycle.
And also to kill as many Arabs and Muslims as possible.
Mr. Jal and the other boys,
had been groomed to feel a sense of camaraderie,
to fight for each other.
At first, the violence was exciting.
The beat of the AK-47 itself is so empowering.
Violence is fun.
There's an excitement when they give you
a gun into your hand, you're excited.
Memories from childhood can be hazy.
And some have disputed Mr. Jal's claims,
but he says after four years of fighting
he escaped the rebel commanders.
In the dead of night he, and 400 other child soldiers, fled.
If they were recaptured,
they would've almost certainly been killed.
The boys trekked for three months
across the country facing starvation.
I call this the lowest point I have ever been,
because we drunk our own urine.
Other soldiers started eating dead bodies.
One of the escapees managed
to reach a village and raise the alarm.
Mr. Jal says only 16 of the 400 boys survived.
We got rescued and I met a British aid worker
called Emma McCune.
And she's the one that smuggled me
through a plane into Kenya.
That became the turning point of my life,
where I was able to go to school.
Mrs. McCune was married to Mr. Jal's uncle,
the rebel leader Riek Machar.
She died in a car crash shortly afterwards.
So Mr. Jal had to make his own way
as a teenager in the Kenyan slums.
But something saved him.
As a way of dealing with the trauma he had experienced,
he started rapping and discovered hip-hop.
It's got into music because I found music was the place
I was able to become a child again.
In 2004, his debut album was a hit in Kenya.
The single appeared on a U.K. charity album
and he played at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday concert.
In the last decade, Mr. Jal has traveled the world
performing and sharing his experiences through his music,
with the likes of Alicia Keys and Nelly Furtado.
We want peace, big love to Emmanuel Jal.
He uses his music to be a
political activist and peace advocate.
The challenges that I've been through, I accepted them.
I accepted my childhood experience.
Every person who has become successful,
has gone through fire.
Mr. Jal is one of the lucky ones.
According to the U.N., tens of thousands of children
have been recruited as child soldiers
across 20 countries this year alone.
Children's place should be school.
Children should be taught to love.
They should be taught to explore their imagination,
not to be trained to kill people,
not to be exposed to violence.