Day 1: The Recruitment

I know many people may think that village boys have adapted to every hardship, but the truth is I only learned how to use a machete to cut sugar cane, not handle a gun. But first the only reason we are here is because I had to get up before my mom and then when I spotted them (the army trucks) I should have told my mom. Although I like to know things before other people this time they didn’t come for harmless food they came for recruits. Others had fled to avoid this but unlucky us (Ignacio, Lolo, and I) where left here. We sat in a army truck where it was a long ride to the fortress. Once there we were assigned tents and given the rules then we could eat but before that Lolo decided he would snoop around camp and report to us. The surroundings in this camp are dense jungle and not that much shelter. My thoughts are that to stay alive in combat I’ll have to be faster than a jack rabbit running from a fox. Its torture, we never know if there is going to be an air raid like last night but they say we could have fought them of. What’s the point of having the equipment to fight if we don’t fight? Many boys came here because they wanted to and serve the revolutionaries. Forty-two wars have gone by but nothing has changed and it is unlikely that this one will make a difference as well. We get AK-47’s but not much ammo and how do they expect us to train, serve, and do well in a real war with so little ammo. The commanders are vigorous and they expect us to know everything. Though they may care for their families they don’t show it. Many are fighting this revolution to save their families. They all think of peace as a glorious prize but what they have to do to get that prize is what will bring them to an end one day. The recruits have to sleep on the jungle floor while the ‘important’ people get proper beds because they think that we are cut-rate, low lying dogs that do their bidding for them. They don’t care if we die they say that they will take ‘care’ of our families but god knows what will happen if anything happens to them cause I’m in the revolutionaries they will pay I tell you. We were just brought here to take down a couple of soldiers then to die for a cause that will never win.