Word: felfiel
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What are the eyes of a child soldier supposed to look like? Felfiel Manhica's are downcast and blank in a face that rarely smiles. He is 22 now, still undersize and boyish, but he was just 13 when rebel Renamo soldiers crept into the hamlet of Taninga before dawn in 1988 to steal food and took him too. They threatened to execute him, armed him with an AK-47 assault rifle and turned him into a pitiless killing machine aimed at his family, friends and neighbors on the government side of Mozambique's civil war. "They told...
...long before the ruling Frelimo government signed a peace accord with Renamo in October 1992, Felfiel escaped and walked for three days back to Taninga. The village allowed him to undergo the forgiving rites of traditional cleansing. Felfiel's mother went to the spiritual guardian for a muti, a physical and psychological purgative. It took three days for Felfiel to vomit up the "bad things" he had done and earn atonement. After the cleansing, Felfiel stopped having nightmares, and his neighbors embraced him once again...
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