We all know the power that education has to transform lives. That’s perhaps most stark in the case of those whose lives are in turmoil, as it was with former child soldier Emmanuel Jal. Here, he tells Deborah Leek Bailey about his remarkable beginnings, how he overcame them and what all teachers should understand about trauma.   

What was your childhood like?

My childhood has been interfered with but I remember many things: war and violence, bombs dropping, people running from one place to another. When war broke out…[I was] seeing people killed in a way that I’ve never thought could be. It was worse than what my mind could have seen. All that horror.

My mum was claimed by that war. My aunties died during that war, and all my uncles except two. All my aunties from my mother’s side, none of them survived. So then I ended up becoming a child soldier.

I didn’t even know I was going to become a child soldier because we were told we were going to go to school in Ethiopia and that we had to walk hundreds and hundreds of miles. The journey in itself was traumatic. Some children died of dehydration, some died of starvation, some were eaten by wild animals.

How did you find the resilience to survive that?

When I was a child soldier, I started asking questions like: who made this? Who made the towns and the guns that are loud like this? And I was told that people went to school. So I said I wanted to be able to go to school so I can become part of a solution someday. So that was it! 

The power of imagination helped me. When I imagined my future in a negative way, it terrified me so much that I did not want to think about it again. It destroyed me.

However, I discovered I can also imagine the future for me in a positive way and through this build resilience, without even knowing, because when I imagined myself as a pilot as a teacher, as a doctor, it meant that I wanted to stay alive so I could go to that place in my mind.

And what impact did your education have on you?

Education has enlightened me. I was able to transform myself when I went to school. I was able to learn history. I was able to acquire the knowledge that I can no longer continue to hate people different to me. I came to realise my people were not the only ones suffering. I came to discover all human beings are the same.

By acquiring the right knowledge, I realised that I can transform my thinking and that decision changed my perspective. It widened my thinking, and increased my mental power to be able to think and plan. 

Our lives are shaped by the stories we hear, those experiences we share and are told. So I thought: “OK, I’m going to share my experiences in school with young people. Then they will know my story. My stories might shape their future.” 

What advice do you have for young people who might see this and think ‘I really struggle at school, and I don’t see any way out of it’? Or for those who teach them?

When I was in school, I was robbed of my ability to focus and pay attention. So when the teacher was teaching, my body was not comfortable. My body just wanted to go out, to be talking, to play. That is often how you can tell a child who has felt trauma, they need to do things. My heart was willing to learn. My mind was not. 

I ended up repeating one year four times. Can you imagine being in that class? Thinking you’re great and improved, then I get a grade card saying I failed! What pushed me to continue to repeat was because I already knew who I was and I was not comparing myself with others. 

I would say young men and women need to be able to go be anything. Each one of us knows something they want to do. A child knows what they want to do. If teachers want to drive kids, they need to be helped to know it is not just about themselves.

It is about getting them to see how they want to be a part of a society, so whatever it is they want to do in the world, whatever change they want to bring, whatever problem they want to solve, that’s why they’re going to the school.  

I wonder whether you have any ideas about what we can do within schools and education for refugee students?

When I was in school, my traumatic experiences would appear, then I’d be stuck in a class with a pen in my hand, terrified by the events of the past. Sometimes I wish the teacher had asked me “What’s in your mind?” but it just never happened. 

You can tell a traumatised kid. They like to do stuff with their hands, or run around, or do art - that’s because there is a part of their mind directing them to what stops them from thinking. It is easier to expand their minds once you give them the opportunity to run, or do sport, or all the physical stuff and artistic stuff, then there’ll be room for them to do the difficult stuff. 

I discovered that when I was able to concentrate better in class after PE. It created mental space and I could then concentrate.

Help the child find what they like the most. What is it they want to give? Every kid wants to do something. Each one of us knows the solution for their problems. If we only walk with them. We are experimental things, our mind suggests this and then our mind, along the way, will suggest something else, until we’re able to figure it out. It’s healing, it is on a journey. 

Emmanuel Jal was a child soldier in Southern Sudan in the early 1980s and has since become a successful recording artist and peace ambassador. Deborah Leek-Bailey OBE is head of UK schools for Education Development Trust and director of DLB Leadership and education adviser for Child Bereavement UK