Article content

For Jemal Damtawe, spilling the traumatic details of life as a child soldier and violent gangster onto the pages of a book has been an important step along a path of faith and recovery.

Damtawe, 49, was profiled in a Postmedia news article in 2016 after receiving Coast Mental Health’s Courage to Come Back award in the addictions category. He shared parts of the traumatic events that led up to his recovery from drugs, from his time as a child soldier fighting in Ethiopia to his battle with addiction on the streets of Vancouver.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Former child soldier finds book about his life and struggles with drugs helps his recovery Back to video

After receiving the award, many people inspired by Damtawe’s life encouraged him to tell the full story, he said.

Now, he has shared it all in detail with a book to be released next weekend called ‘Forced Paths – Ordered Steps: When Our Addiction Meets Jesus’.

Damtawe takes the reader back to when he was abducted on his way to school at 15 years old and forced into military service during the Ethiopian civil war. The brutal war began in 1974 after the Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia staged a coup d’état against Emperor Haile Selassie, and lasted until 1991.