Jean-Pierre Kabila and Samuel Musafiri were both taken from their families as children and forced to fight in the Second Congo War. They were on opposite sides — Jean-Pierre with the RCD, Samuel with the Mai-Mai. They may have fired at each other in the forests of South Kivu. Neither would ever know for certain.
The War
Jean-Pierre was abducted at eleven from his village near Bukavu in 1998. Samuel was taken at twelve from a village thirty kilometres away. Both were drugged, brutalised, and turned into weapons. By the time the war wound down, both had killed, both had been wounded, and both had been children who deserved none of it.
After demobilisation, they were released into a country that didn't know what to do with them. Former child soldiers were feared, stigmatised, and largely abandoned. Jean-Pierre drifted to Goma. Samuel ended up in a displacement camp near Uvira. Both were consumed by nightmares, rage, and a bottomless guilt they couldn't articulate.
The Church
In 2019, a reconciliation programme run by a Congolese church brought former combatants together in Bukavu. The programme — called "Amani" (Peace) — didn't ask participants which faction they'd fought for. It simply gathered them, fed them, and asked them to listen.
Jean-Pierre and Samuel sat across from each other on the first day. They recognised nothing about each other — the war had thousands of child soldiers. But as they shared their stories over weeks, the parallels emerged. Same province. Same age. Same war. Opposite sides.
The moment of recognition was quiet. Samuel was describing an ambush near a river crossing in 2001. Jean-Pierre said, "I was at that crossing. I was on the other side."
The room went still. Two men who may have tried to kill each other as children sat looking at each other as adults.
The Brotherhood
The reconciliation facilitator — Pastor Emmanuel — didn't intervene. He let the silence hold. Then Jean-Pierre said: "I was a child. You were a child. We were both stolen. I don't hate you. I can't hate you — you're the only person who understands what happened to me."
Samuel broke down. They embraced. Two former child soldiers from opposing factions, holding each other in a church in Bukavu, weeping for the childhoods they'd both lost.
They were baptised together in Lake Kivu in 2020. They now work as peer counsellors in the Amani programme, helping other former combatants find the same peace.
"We were enemies because adults told us to be," Jean-Pierre says. "We're brothers because Jesus told us we could be."