Willie Nelson

Peace must start somewhere and insuring peace for mothers and their children can be the beginning of a peaceful generation. It will only take one peaceful generation to turn the page on human violence. Ending the use of children for soldiers seems an essential step towards creating a peaceful generation.

Children of peace can grow up to become parents of peace and only with this consciousness will we see a peaceful generation arise. JosieKro and Karibuni have musicians from Angola, Congo, Ethiopia, Portugal, Turkey and Germany singing and working together for peace.

They are associated with Filmwerkstatt Munster and are reaching a global audience. Here we have evidence of the truly international efforts to make peace the standard instead of the exception. North America does not need to lead the way with its guns, merchandise and lifestyle.

An obvious conclusion seems to be that big government and big business have joined together to advance their goals in opposition to the interests of most people and life on our planet.

This is the tendency that peace thwarts.

Instead of choosing between the social tendency to make everything public and thus open to government surveillance and control or the economic tendency  to make everything private and subject to property rights, we can choose a different path.

We can choose to embrace the responsibility of individual personal rights and freedoms while sharing the wealth we all make and hold in common to promote peace. Only in this way will be live to see a peaceful generation born in our lifetimes.

Name of the band: Karibuni
Album: Shalom Salam – peace4kids
a song against Child Soldiers
sung in Lingala and German
Angola & Germany!
Translation of the song:

I went to Luanda as life in my village became unbearable
Children went to school and didn´t come back
Children went to fetch firewood and didn´t come back

We have no school in the village
The school has been bombed
We have no hospital in our village
The hospital has been bombed

I went to Kinshasa as life in my village became unbearable
Roberto was still going to school, but now he´s a soldier
Roberto was playing in the village street and noone has seen him since then

And I dream… No child soldiers
And I dream… No child soldiers

Don´t destroy the future of the children
Give them a chance for a good future

In my village there is no school anymore
There is no hospital either, and life is hard there
The school was bombed and then burnt down
See the ruins where the hospital once stood?

Roberto was just 15 and lived around here
It´s been weeks now since I last saw him
He was on his way to school with his friends
Like every day when they were captured

By a troop of soldiers, or were they rebels?
I heard later from a friend that
Roberto must now fight, shoot and obey
I heard that from someone that had escaped

Roberto went to school and still had lots to learn
He would be lucky if he´s still alive now

And I dream… No child soldiers
And I dream… No child soldiers

Don´t destroy the future of the children
Give them a chance for a good future

Djam, djam, djam, I say: Let us play Kebo
Help children, I say: Let us play football
Let´s keep our eyes wide open, I say School for kids!
Djam, djam, djam, I say: Build our land together
Djam, djam, djam, I say: The world belongs to us all!

* * * * Artist’s Statement * * * * *

Josephine & Karibuni write, Our Band’s name is Karibuni which means Welcome in the African language Kiswahili. First of all we are a band with a multicultural background and live in Germany. The main members’ heritage is Ethiopia, Syria, Angola, Congo and Germany.

We regularly work with musicians from Turkey, Brazil, Portugal and Palestine. We are influenced and inspired by many musical styles from different cultures & countries. Our lyrics reflect the experiences we made in our home countries and the multicultural society we live in.

Learning to live together and in peace can only be achieved by a plan of constructive action. We have recorded several albums with songs from different cultures that tell about tolerance, acceptance, understanding, dialogue, solidarity, social justice, caring and happiness. Some of them were written by us, some of them are traditional.

The conception of our albums is not only for adults but also for kids, because they are our future. Peace for us means more than trying to prevent war.

Peace can only exist if every nation and every individual person respects and fulfills the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” which was proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948.

Our CD with peace songs from all over the world is called: Shalom, Salam – peace4kids. The songs come from different countries and are sung in different languages. We get a lot of positive feedback. Particularly for two of our self-written songs on the CD.

The first one, “Selam, Shalom, Shlomo is sung in Amharic (Ethiopia), German and Kicongo (Angola). It moves and affects people from different societies, like Ethiopians, Eritreans, Jewish and Arabian people very much

No Child Soldier reflects the true story of a young boy called Roberto who was forced to fight as a child soldier in the civil war in Angola. His family still doesn’t know if he is alive.

He never made it back home.

Approximately 250,000 children under the age of 18 are thought to be fighting in conflicts around the world.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. ~ Article 1, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

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