When the headmaster calls her name, Nadine* jumps from her seat and runs up to the stage. She greets the teachers, grabs her certificate and turns to face dozens of cheering children. She is trying to hide her smile behind her hand, out of shyness, but everyone in the room can sense her happiness and pride.
Just four months after being released from the anti-balaka armed group in Bangui, along with 90 other children, Nadine, 17, has made it to the second rank in her class. A great turnaround for a life that had taken a turn for the worst three years ago, when the mostly Muslim seleka rebels started to march towards the capital where they finally overthrew the government. “I lived with my family in a town called Dekoa,” she says. “When the seleka rebels came into town, my mother was killed by a stray bullet, and my father was murdered just outside our house.”
With no family to support her, Nadine decided to join the rival militia, the anti-balaka (which in local language means anti-AK47 bullets). “They said if I came with them, I could become a woman and take care of my little brother,” she recalls.