August 1995... Ogunu town, Warri, a city in the suburbs of Delta State, Nigeria..

A community settlement, kids playing, women talking, men playing board games.... Evening wind blowing....

My name is Matthew Philips... (my adopted name at least). My birth name was Efe Obaro.. I was 9 years old when they came in the evening of a Thursday with guns and machetes, killing all in their path. It was a dreadful evening. People screaming and running helter skelter, grown men wailing, bodies dropping. What we heard at first was a gunshot which froze everyone to the spot. Time froze for a second and I think we all thought the same thing at the same time. What just happened? It took a while for Mr Ezekiel's body to hit the floor and it seemed like the thud brought everyone back to reality. And that was when the screaming began. At first, I didn't know where to turn, what to do, whether to move or stay, to run or walk, to cry or laugh... I just stood confused, looking back and forth. It wasn't till I heard my mother scream my name that I had where to turn. I can still remember how my mother screamed my name and by the time I got to where she was, all that I met was her lifeless corpse with her blood wetting the sand beneath my feet... I looked at where my father was playing his dice game and could see him lying on the floor with a hole where his left eye should be. I looked back at my mum and I called her, but she didn't respond. I held her and shook her but she wasn't moving, so I laid next to her like we do when we're going to bed, hoping that she'd wake up in the morning. But before I could wait for her to wake up, I was pulled away by a man who went by the name 01.. I remember feeling scared when he took me and a group of other children and he said he was going to take us in. Looking up, I could still see his men killing some of our neighbors and I remember my dad's friend Peter trying to run away with his wife before he was shot down. I looked around and I saw the bodies of mostly adults laid on the floor and occasionally one or two kids who tried to fight back were killed and some were hit with stray bullets. But I believe their main focus was the adults. The children were all being collected. The smell of blood filled the air, I felt like I was drowning in a choir of screams. Everything seemed dark and at the same time bright. Like the sun was shining, but it had a veil over its eyes. I looked in the distance and I saw my mum move. My heart stopped, I tried to breathe but my chest felt stiff, I could hear the cries of the other children around me but it all seemed distant as my eyes remained fixed on my mother's corpse... I kept watching her, waiting for her to move again, to come hold me like she used to when I was scared at night and tell me it would be alright. I wanted to see her reassuring smile that always made me feel like nothing could hurt me, but it wasn't there. Her eyes just remained still. She didn't even look at me or call me like she used to. I tried to run to her, but I was held back. I struggled, but it made no difference. 
At that point, I felt a hand lift me the way my father used to, but there was something different about this hand, it was tougher... My father always lifted me gently. I turned my head to see a scary looking man taking me towards a truck. It was 01. I tried to fight him off. I kicked and I screamed, but he was too strong. He put me into the truck with some other children and we were all taken towards what seemed like a journey of forever.
It felt like we were on the road for days. We couldn't see outside the truck, everywhere was dark, we only felt the occasional road bumps. Initially, there was a lot of crying from a lot of kids, a lot of voices calling out to their parents. But it all died down after a while. I think by then everyone was either too tired or too hungry to cry. I stayed quiet throughout, just thinking. I kept replaying the hole in my father's head, the stillness of my mother's corpse. I really wanted to cry, but I remember how my father taught me that no matter how bad a man feels, he must never let the world know that he's in pain, he must always put up the tough front because the world doesn't deserve to see us cry. It just wants the pleasure of making us weak and we must never give it the satisfaction.... So I stayed quiet, for days I said nothing. Even when I felt hungry, my whole body was weak and my back felt like it was going to give out from carrying the weight of my neck and head. My throat felt sore like it had a couple of dry sponges rubbing against each other. I tried to sleep at times, but every time I started to sleep off, there was always a bump right on cue to wake me up. Seemed like there was no end to the torture.
After what felt like forever, we finally came to a stop. We got out of the truck in the middle of the night with no sound or light around us besides a couple of torches and the screeching sounds of crickets all around us. I looked around and all I saw was tall trees and bushes like we had been dropped in the middle of a jungle....

..... The past that shapes the future...