Word: blue
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Kyaw Lin hangs out with the other kids at Komura, doing chores and waiting for the orders of Lieut. Brown, 38, a Karen who lost his right leg to a mine ten years ago. His stump is covered by an intricate blue swirl of tattoos. Unable to go out on patrol, he trains the children and the volunteers from nearby villages. Brown insists that the children are not forced to fight, and he says he tries to keep them back. But, he acknowledges reluctantly, sometimes they do go to war. He adds that the children are mostly good fighters...
...shares his carbine with two others, does not have a uniform or even a helmet to show he is a soldier. As if to compensate, he proudly wears mottled blue-black swirls on his arms and chest -- make-believe tattoos. His commander drew them with charcoal because no one in camp can wield tattoo needles properly. Other kids tease him about trying to act like a grownup and joke that he even has a girlfriend. But Khi Ha Won shakes his head with shy dignity. "Oh, no, impossible." He knows he is too young for that...
...Afghans, Karens harbor mixed feelings about the use of children in war, vacillating between denial and pride. They revere childhood enough to try to preserve its innocence. A wooden schoolhouse in a village near Manerplaw is a tidy outpost of chalkboards, geography maps and tattered textbooks. Students wear blue-and-white uniforms and recite their lessons in singsong unison. They study math, history, Karen, English and even Burmese, and there is no time for indoctrination or propaganda. The war is only a few miles away, but little of it intrudes into the classroom...
...insists he is 14, and perhaps he is. But his sweet, uncertain face, as well as his dirty undershirt and blue-checked sarong, makes him look no older than eight. He joined after a Karen officer went to his village on a recruiting drive and his parents signed him up. He doesn't have a tattoo because, he says, "I'm afraid of needles." He is homesick but not so awed by his surroundings that he can't dread what lies ahead. "I have to do my military service," he says with a miserable smile, "but I'd rather...
...leaders of the country's nascent democratic forces. He won that position by taking on the ruling establishment before it was the fashionable thing to do, denouncing corruption and privilege while demanding the return of political power to the people. Along the way, Yeltsin turned himself into a genuine blue-collar hero...