Products

Peace Direct: ‘I am building peace’

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: May 29, 2011
Category: Beyond Classification

The invitation came from one of our smartest friends. His cause was new in America and unknown to us, but the cost was modest, the event would be mercifully brief and there would be a performance by Mark Rylance, the Shakespearean actor now burning up the stage in Jerusalem. A no-brainer. I wrote a check, and off we went.

The cause is Peace Direct, and its purpose is so simple that a phrase suffices: get money and support to the people who work for peace in conflict zones. Not groups. Not agencies. People.

Among the people Peace Direct works with is Henri Bura Ladyi. He’s from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and he does something so brave I cannot imagine where he finds the courage — he goes to the militias and convinces child soldiers, some as young as 10, to walk away from killing. Sometimes he buys their guns. Sometimes he pays for their freedom.

Fiona Lloyd-Davies, an English photographer and filmmaker, met Henri Ladyi in 2009. She recalls:

He brought half a dozen kids out of the forest and I met them hiding in the shadows of an intermediary’s compound. They seemed feral. Wild animals with wide staring eyes, stroking their ‘magic’ amulets (small animal carcasses made into water bottles) for reassurance, whispering to each other in a code they had learnt as warriors.

But over the next couple of days, I saw these kids transformed. Henri sat down with them, talked to them about their old life, the life they may have even forgotten. Some of them had run away from their families – perhaps because of a misunderstanding about a lost goat, or a row over something long forgotten. He prepared them for the life they should have, as children. Even over 24 hours, you could see a difference.

Fiona spent a long time getting Henri’s story. She turned it into a theater piece; it’s what Mark Rylance performed that night. Then Henri Ladyi spoke. Of course he was eloquent — I mean, he was eloquent just standing there. But the most important thing he said will surely strike you as curious.

At benefits, the usual thing is to ask for help. And to express gratitude.

“If you get involved with Peace Direct,” Henri Ladyi said, “It will help you. It will be good for you.”

Those who were there that night knew exactly what he meant — we’d just watched Mark Rylance tell a story that was both impossible and true. But if you will take the time to read Henri’s story, I think you’ll get it. And then, anything you want to do with Peace Direct to make your life better….well, with Henri, my wife and I think that might be good for you.

The Peace Builder

by Fiona Lloyd-Davies

My name is Henri. I want to build peace. I come from the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is the heart of Africa. But this heart is bleeding. It has been bleeding for a long time.

There has been a long war. They tell us this war is over but there is still fighting. Guns are everywhere. They say that 45,000 people die every month. Still. Even today.

I want to show my community that we must live in peace. So I tell them we must love our enemies. We must go out and build the peace. It is like building a house. It takes time.

We must do it brick by brick. Step by step. Piece by piece.

But I wasn’t always like this. I didn’t always feel this way. Then, I was very angry. Really angry. Really, really angry, Let me repeat it three times for you. Angry! Angry! Angry!

It started when I was 9 years old.

I am a Lendu. We are the poor people of the region. It is the Hema who have the wealth. They have the cattle; they have the goats; they have the sheep. The Hema went to give money to soldiers. The soldiers came and did bad things to my community.

This was one thing that has always played on my mind. Sometimes even today.

When I was 9 years old, my village was attacked by the Hema. It was not the first time. But it was the first time I saw the sky burn red. It was night. I was in my house with my mum and my dad. With my brothers and sisters. All of us together. We saw people on the ridge line of the mountains surrounding our village. The church pastor beat the drum to tell everyone to hide. It was not the first time they had attacked us. But it was the first time I saw the night sky burn red. It was the first time for me to see our houses burning at night. All the night.

It was not easy to see my village burning. My village. Burning. It really was something for me to witness. We were all there, my family together. Crouching. Hiding. Watching. Listening. And I felt. We felt….raw.

At our hands were knives and machetes. All of us men were ready to protect the rest of our family, my mother, my sisters.

That night when I was 9 years old, it wasn’t just the houses burning. It burnt me too. It left a deep, dark scar in my heart that stayed with me for many years.

My name is Henri. I am searching for peace. But peace is hard to find. Here in Congo it is fragile.

Sometimes I feel like I am holding it in my hand. But it’s like sand, it just runs away through my fingers. And when I look down, I think my hands will be full, just this once. But there is nothing there.

Here in Congo we must stop fighting the war and start fighting for peace. This is my job. I am Henri. I want to build the peace.

I was born in Nyakumbe. It is a village a long way from the town. I left to study but I came back. As a child I had watched my father suffer. He was a diabetic but there was no medicine, no hospital for him. It was too far. I had a gift. I could make medicine, traditional medicine, from the herbs and leaves I found in our forest.

But when the war came to our village, he could not flee. He was too sick and he died. It was not just my father, I knew many people who suffered. Because in my village there was no support from the government. I found that I couldn’t stay without doing something. So this was a decision I took. To help my community.

But I saw how my friends changed. We were there, side by side. We grew up in the same village. We spent all of those moments together. The life together.

But because of ideology, it changed us. It was the storm of war.

Some of us became rebels. Some of us became protectors.

At the beginning we all said we were taking arms to protect our community. Our village. Our mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters.

At first we had no guns, so we made our own weapons. Arrows and spears dipped in our traditional poison. There is no cure. It is a slow death. We, the Lendu, are known by this, it made us famous warriors. We used to hunt for animals.

But then we found another prey. Our village was attacked so many times. It made us angry. So angry to see a villager, a friend, stagger from the corn field, holding his guts in his arms, bleeding.

We were angry and very scared. We were ready to go and take revenge. So we organized ourselves. We formed a militia. But somewhere they stopped protecting us and started to fight for themselves. Those young boys of my age, those who decided to join our village militia. Many of them are not alive today. They have died. Many of them died. There are only a few who are still alive today. I am one of them.

What is hard for us all is to see those friends killing. They are there with a weapon. There is a body. They look at you and you know it could be me now. That’s when you have to think of a solution.

Like when you are arrested, and you see your friend, you want to say, “Sorry my brother, we went to the same school. Do you remember all those different things we did together? We stayed together. We walked together in the huge forest. So please forgive me and lets come to a solution.”

This is what was in my mind, what I was thinking of saying the day they came for me.

My name is Henri I am looking for peace. I am searching for solutions. I go to them, the militiamen and ask them, “Please my friend, it is time to leave the bush. It’s time to stop living the life of the gun. It is time to leave the forest. It’s time to end the militia. Put down your gun and come with me.” And sometimes they follow me out of the forest.

My people. They are not rich. They are not poor. In my village, I thought “I will never be anything, if I stay here. I have no budget. No money. There is no support.” So I left and went to the big town. To Bunia.

But it stayed in my mind. I could see the burning. Until now. Until the moment they came for me.

My name is Henri. I am a parent. I am a husband. I have a baby and a wife. I want to find solutions. I want to be a peace builder.

Let me tell you, once I was a teacher. I taught those boys biology and chemistry. They were young. Then they wanted to learn. But it wasn’t long before they taught something else. Their soldiers, their new teachers came for me, they were militia. Men and boys and they had a different story.

It was a bad day for me, as you say. A bad day because it was the day for me to die. The militia came, the Hema militia. They came and brought me to their Sergeant Major at their headquarters.

And you knew.

These were bad times. If someone brings you there, they are going to kill you.

When I arrived, the guards, they said to me, ‘Henri, you are here to die”. They took a gun. They put it to my head and they said, “This is your gun. “ You are killing Hema with this, you are bad boy. You are our brother but you are also the enemy. You will die today.”

I was there for the whole day.

My wife came and said, “Please, commander. Can you release my husband.” And he said, “No, no, no. Your husband is going to die today because he is a bad boy and he continues to say bad words about our movement because of the small machine, this machine of communication.”

You see at that time, I was working for a communications company. It was the only satellite telephone in Bunia. Everyone came to use it. The army, the media, the UN, even the militias. All sides, sometimes at the same time.

They would come with their machine guns, dressed in animal hides and sit, waiting to use it on the wooden bench outside. It was complicated for me, because if two enemies met there, it was hard for me to separate them. Even at night they would come and pick me from my house, to open the machine for them because they wanted to talk.

And this is why I was very well known. I was the one who manipulated the machine. When they were talking about their political things, talking about their plans of war. I was there to listen.

When war came to Bunia, there were the militia and there were rebels. There were our local armies and the foreigner, the Ugandans. They were all killing without any control. Without the control from the government.

It was easy. Killing was easy.

For the man or the boy with the gun, it was easy for him to do anything he wanted. Every morning the streets were empty of the living. It was just the fresh bodies lying in the sun. I saw ducklings taking shelter in the body of a dead man.

I don’t know why. Maybe it was the warmth of the rotting flesh. I saw dogs eating the corpses. The children, the Kidogos — the child soldiers were all over town. Some of them were my children.

I call them my children, because a big number of the militia were children I had taught in secondary school. I found them in the militia. I would see them in their uniforms, and they would say. “Oh my teacher! How did you come here?”

You know it was sad. Very, very sad. Young, young children. All of them, under 17 years old.

When I was arrested some of them were there — at the headquarters. The first child at the door was the guard. I think he was around 13 or 14. Inside I found a girl from my school. She was around 15.

I found another one who was also young, around 17. Those militia groups, they want them when they are young, because the kids, the Kidogos, will not question an order, if an order is given. They are there to be used by the commanders. You know these children will not hesitate.

When they finish their actions, when they kill someone, they are very joyous. They are singing, they are saying many things. ”Now we are powerful, now we are…” something like this. That is what they are trained to do. After killing people they train them to do something to celebrate. “You must do something like a dance to show that now you have become very powerful.” These children, they are very obedient.

They asked me, “Why are you here? Because you are a teacher, you are not a bad boy.” And I answered them back because I wanted to talk to the leader. In my heart I thought this is the one who will kill me.

They brought me a gun, an AK47. They showed this AK47 to me, and they took the strap and put it over my head so I was wearing it. The AK47 across my chest, and they said. “This is the army. This is the gun we are using to kill you. It is your gun. You are killing Hema with it. Look here, it even smells of you.”

I told them, “This is not my gun. You must believe me. You know that it belongs to you.”

This day looked very bad. I was in a place where people can be killed. It was a very bad experience. Then they brought a father and son in. They were cow herders. They had lost the cattle, but the animals were not theirs to lose. They belonged to a Hema commander. The cows had been stolen in an attack and the militia men were very angry. They wanted to punish them.

The father was about 45 years old and his young boy was around 5 or 6. When they came they were forced onto the ground. The father was the one who was killed first. It was not because they wanted to give me more fear or to intimidate me. It was normal for them to kill people.

Very normal.

When I heard the voice of the gun… “Arggghh,” I say. “Oh my God!” Was it the young boy or the father? At first I couldn’t see which. I had turned away. I couldn’t bear to look. But then I heard the voice of the boy. His father had been killed by the child soldier. Then the child with the gun shot the boy herder.

It will forever be in my heart. It was a bad moment for me. I cried for the first time. This was my first time to cry. I didn’t understand why they didn’t kill me. I was waiting for my turn to die.

My name is Henri. I am reaching for peace. But there was a time when I thought of another way. Not for peace but finding answers through the gun.

I was a member of the militia. Everyone was. But I was also another person. Someone looking for answers, looking to help. I would go to the village. To hide my identity. I would go as a trader.

But I was a collector too. A collector of information. Information for human rights organizations, for journalists, people who wanted to show what was happening to us, to the people here.

But it was complicated. My village was completely destroyed. People who fled, came to Bunia and they saw how I lived. I was with a Hema family. But they didn’t know I was the enemy. My people asked what I was doing with Hema, and so the militia found out. I was their enemy, a deep-rooted enemy. Me. I was their Judas. That’s why I was arrested. My identity had been revealed.

At the command headquarters two soldiers stripped me. They pulled my clothes off violently. There was a child soldier watching, holding a pistol. They tortured me by putting sticks under my fingernails. Then they sent me outside.

They made me stare at the burning sun and roll in the dirt. They made me do it until I lost my mind. This is what they do before they kill you. It’s easier to kill you, when you have lost your mind.

I was thinking about how to die when something changed. This Uganda soldier was there and he said, “If you kill this bad boy you will have a problem. I will solve this situation. You,” he said, pointing at me. “You will pay for your life.”

And then the other soldiers started to talk about money. They told me I must get five thousand dollars. It was a good thing when they ask me to pay money. Why? Because then I knew I would live. They wanted me alive. The rest were discussing two thousand, one thousand, then hundreds, nine, eight. I knew then, it was not my day to die. At 6 PM I was released. My life cost just 30 dollars.

My name is Henri. I work for peace. But then I was angry. Really angry. I had watched my village burn. Witnessed my people die. I had seen the hands of a child on the trigger. And I had felt the gun against my skin.

This idea came to me. I thought this was how to make revenge. In my family, we are four. And I asked my three brothers to go together with me. To look for liberation. All of them were convinced by this vision. My idea was to buy guns. I met with a group of young boys who were using guns, as militia. My brothers, my family, they were all ready to come.

It was a hard period to make a decision. To make peace or to continue to kill people. So I said to my wife, “Now I want to go to people, to go to buy guns, and to buy a big gun, and I will be the big commander.” And my wife said to me, “Sorry, my husband, if you go there. If you go, it will be without me. Here is the door.” Three times, or five times, I was arrested, the same soldiers I told you about. This happened to me three or five times. I can’t say, I don’t know, I can’t remember further. (NOTE: he is in crisis here. Speaks very quickly, rapidly, distressed)

But I listened to the voice of my wife (voice calms down here, softer, calmer, quieter). And she said, “ I love you, we have a baby boy. God is protecting our baby, God will change us.” And this is why things changed for me. This is why I became a peace builder.

There was something in my heart and my mind. That I should be the one who was able to look after peace. And this is why I decided to train people, to bring people to peace. This was the vision I had. To laugh together, to live together with the Hema, To share with them this life.

My name is Henri. I am a peace builder. But before I became a peace builder I was a refugee. I was a husband and a father. But I had nothing. No home, no job, no security. At that point. At that moment I had lost everything. My life was at zero.

I decided to go to the UN because I couldn’t live in the city anymore. It was too dangerous for me. The UN said, “We can arrange a flight for you to go to another province.” But it would be without my family. We had just given birth to our first child. His name is Joshua. So we were obliged to flee.

This evening it was bad. It was around 8 PM to 9 PM. People decided to take their bags, to take everything and start by going to the direction of Beni. The militia, our militia, were in retreat. There was chaos. They killed many people, we knew they would be here soon. One came into the house. He found our hiding place. He was Lendu, he was one of us. But his face was dark. It frightened us all. He was covered in blood. There was blood all over his clothes and all over his machete. He came in and said, “I have already killed many people and my heart is not stable. I want to be supported, I want a pastor who can pray for me.” It was our signal to go, to flee with our village. We started walking slowly. We walked for two hours this night, it was around 10 to 12, midnight.

It was May and we left Bunia. It had been our home, the birthplace of our firstborn son. But now it was no longer a haven. It had become a hell.

People were running from the town. On the road there were more militia. And they attacked us. We changed the way and we had go by the forest. It took over two weeks by foot and it was over three or four hundred kilometres.

It was very difficult because of the lack of water, the lack of anything, even food. It took a day to reach another village. Every day, all the day, And you were obliged to walk briskly, until you reached the new village because you would stay there and pass the night there.

I didn’t have any money, but I did have clothes. That was how I got help from people even for food. I was obliged to take my clothes and give it to one family and exchange it for food. A t-shirt for some rice. A jacket for some porridge. This was the way our life was, on the road, for two, I think two or three weeks. We were on the road in the forest, living as pygmies, living as forest men. Each day was very hard. We met many bones there on the road.

In the forest my job was to take care of my child. It was not easy, because at that time he was very weak. Many, many children died on the road during this time. We thought our baby might die any day. Because he was not very strong as other children. Me and mama, we said to ourselves: “If we lose our child, if we lose our baby, it’s no problem. Because we are in the war. We will do all our best to protect him, and protect the baby. But if we lose him, it is no problem. It is not the fault of the baby.’” So I thought back to my schooling, how could I keep my baby safe. I thought of a Kangaroo, and how he carries his children. So I put my baby in my pocket. And our child stayed safe. It is why we thank the Lord for this.

When we finally arrived in the town of Beni, we went to a camp. It was a camp for the displaced. All of us together. Lendu living alongside Hema. The warrior Lendu sleeping next to Hema fighters. There were five thousand families. We were all homeless. If I changed, it’s because I didn’t want to be seen as a bad man. I wanted to leave behind the bad image of the militias.

A charity came to the camp saying we must forget what happened in Bunia. They told us that we must build peace. They told us that all of us could be, would be. That we are all peace builders.

It startled me. It made a difference. It started me down a path to a new place, a house of peace. But if took time, I changed progressively.

My name is Henri. I have to make peace. In my heart I know it is good to love your enemy. To give all of your good things to your enemy. This is a good way to show to them that they can’t do bad things to you.

It was a vision. To try to do something hard, something difficult. To start to build peace. In town I found many friends who had left the militia. They formed a task force. They became my intermediaries to the militia in the bush. They still are.

We started when the situation was very bad. Then, you couldn’t move from village to village. There was too much insecurity. Now many things are going well.

There is progress. There are many villages that are free of militia Now there are only 10,000 militia men. Before there were many more.

We are building peace but negative aspects come back. My life goes up and down, but my blood pressure is always going up.

Every morning I think, ‘today I will succeed.’ This is the best time of day for me.

The evening is not a good time for me. I am scared that something will happen to me. As darkness comes, it brings the risk of arrest. It is because of my constant contact with militias. So many leaders are not happy with me. There are many politicians who don’t want me to touch the militiamen. They say to me, “Leave them alone, we don’t need your peace here.” Each evening I think about what I have to do. It’s not easy.

Sometimes I get a call from a militia who say, “I want to leave the forest, I want to demobilize.” But I have to work out, is this just a trap for me? Sometimes I feel afraid.

At night I get other calls. They tell me “Say goodnight to your wife, because we are coming to get you.” Or “Henri! Think of us. We are enjoying our last beer before we come to get you.” Even my staff get SMS messages, they text them: “Henri is not building peace.”

At night I cannot sleep, I am waiting for them.

The people who one day will come and get me. I can tell you how many motorbikes have gone past, how many cars, how many horns. I count each one. I am not free. Not in my heart. But everything is different in the morning. Some people tell me you can’t end the militias but I believe I can. I have seen so many leaders who have left. I will continue, until peace has been built. Day by day. Piece by piece. It’s like building a house

Peace building is a small part of peace making. When you are building peace you go step by step. It is a process.

I keep doing this work because it has affected my community. Those who are still in the bush, I know the experiences of these people. I know the experience of these children, and this is why I decided to continue to help. I want to do something to change the situation. But it’s not easy.

It is not easy in this country, where one group of people are thinking about peace and another group are thinking about conflict. And you must protect your life. Because at any time you can find bad things on your way and you can die.

This is why I can’t be afraid. My life has already been taken. I must be a hero because this is what we have to die for. We must die for these things. For peace.

Those militia know the meaning of peace. They are 30 kms from Beni. They sit from morning until night waiting for me. I do not go as myself, I arrange to go to a family. I know I must wait. I know I must be patient. I must wait for peace.

I stay in the community. I am there not as a visitor, but as someone of the village. So I stay with a family. It can take two or three or four, even five days I have to hide what I want to do. This is not the first time that I have hidden my real purpose. My past prepared me for my present. This present.

When I meet them, they cry out, “We don’t have anything, but we have a problem. We want to leave but the politicians want to keep us in the bush.” The thing they say to me is: “You are our friend, no one else will do this, no one else is doing this, you are our very good brother.” They tell us: “You will be our right hand.” They say: “If the government can’t protect our people, then we have to do it.” It’s not easy, they have the power to kill you. They do not like politicians. They do not like the UN. But they like our charity because we are making peace for the community.

When I’m back in my house, I am confused. Even myself, I don’t know exactly what is pushing me to go and meet these kinds of people. But then, when I see militia putting their weapons down, I am very satisfied. Even if it is just one, I am very happy. If I reduce from 5,000 people, just one. Take away one, or two or even three. I am doing a big thing for peace. I want to do many things for them and I want to change their life. When they are very far in the bush I go. I bring them. I want to show them that peace is the only way.

The most important part of the process is to see the Kidogos released. The children with guns. We are lucky because they are welcoming us now. The ones who have the children. They are ready to secure us and welcome us. But to release kids takes a long time. It takes many discussions. Even compromise. It takes a long time. Two months sometimes.

For the first week we start contacting militia who live in town. They take the news into the forest. They may have to walk for many days. Sometimes it is weeks before we see the results of our approaches. It is our joy. To see ten or fifteen kids released.

The first thing to do is: we tell them that it is prohibited to use children as soldiers, I tell them they are meant to protect kids futures. Being in a militia is no place for a child. I tell them they should be at home and at school.

They should be able to enjoy their childhood like other kids. The militia do not know this. They give us very difficult conditions. Sometimes they even make us pay for a child. A goat for each Kidogo. A kid for a kid.

Their parents have already accepted that their child is dead. Sometimes it is seven, eight, even nine years since they went into the forest. When I come with their child, it is as if I have brought them back to life. So I am like a parent to them.

When the parents see me they say, “Oh! it is the father of Freddie.” I feel satisfaction. When I see a child who was lost in the forest and is coming back to life. I feel very satisfied.

I know that one day, because of this hard work I am doing, I can die. I know this. But I close my door to this, I won’t let it in just yet, because God will protect us. I will do this until my last breath.

My name is Henri. I am building peace. I will continue until peace has been built.