Nightmares still flood the mind of Emmanuel Jal.
Some nights Jal runs away from enemy gunfire past burning houses and prays not to be captured. Other nights he is tempted to eat the flesh of dead child-soldiers - friends who are no longer alive.
He was a "lost boy," part of a generation of child-soldiers that fought in two civil wars in southern Sudan.
Jal will speak in the Reitz Union Grand Ballroom tonight at 7:30. His appearance, sponsored by Accent Speakers Bureau and the Dean of Students Office, is free and open to the public, and doors open at 7 p.m.
Although his memories are blurred, he said he remembers the hunger and the thirst. He remembers being told his little sister was raped three times by government soldiers and how his older sister was sold as a sex slave to a warlord.
He remembers the mine fields and the murders, the cannibalism and the fear.
He remembers the certainty of death.
"Once you are there, you know you are there to die," Jal said in a telephone interview. "You just have to hope that you survive."
But that is all over now. He lives in London, and when he's not home, he's on the road touring.
He traded in an AK-47 for a microphone, and his muddled memories echo through his lyrics on stage. He turned a life of brutal violence into a budding hip-hop career, telling his story through music.
"The lyrics just come," said Jal about "WARchild," his new album. "Music kept me busy in my mind."
Although he is uncertain of his exact birthday, Jal was born in war-torn Sudan around the year 1980.
His father left as a rebel for the Sudan People's Liberation Army, never to return. His mother was killed when he was 7. Jal was sent on a roughly 370-mile walk with thousands of other Sudanese children from his home to Ethiopia, where they were told they would receive an education.
Instead, they trained for war.
Filled with rage and vengeance, 8-year-old Jal volunteered to train after witnessing his village burn to the ground and the destruction of his family and friends.
Jal said he has no good memories from childhood. Everything was violence. Every day was survival.
"When we were in the front lines, there was no food," he said. "We ate snails. When the snails ran out, we depended on the vultures. And when those disappeared, cannibalism started happening.
"I was tempted to eat my friends."
In 1993, after years of fighting, he became one of the 400 "lost boys" of Sudan who fled the rebel soldiers for three months on foot to the town of Waat.
Only 16 survived, he said. Many died of hunger, drowned or were eaten by crocodiles.
He was rescued and adopted by a young British aide worker named Emma McCune, who smuggled him into Kenya.
He was given another chance, he said.
"I don't have the heart of hatred I used to have," Jal said.
Jal enrolled in school in Nairobi, Kenya's capital city, but it wasn't an easy transition.
"I was kicked out of school many times," he said. "It took a long time to settle into the system."
He became involved in church and sang in a gospel choir. He said he started concerts for homeless children and eventually found his voice in hip-hop music.
"I'm a war child," he sings in his single. "I believe I've survived for a reason - to tell my story, to touch lives."
Jal sings in five languages: English, Swahili, Arabic, Nuer and Dinka. His message of hope and personal power resonates through African beats and instrumentals in "Ceasefire" and "Gua," his previous albums.
Jal said it is a responsibility to tell his story through his music.
"It's hard going back to that place," said Jal, who added that he becomes an 8-year-old soldier again when he steps on stage. "Music is like therapy - it's difficult. But it gives me strength and positivity to see how far I've come."
Jal has performed at Live 8, a worldwide benefit concert for hunger and poverty, and recently took the stage at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday concert in Hyde Park in London.
"It gave me more hope that good things will happen," he said.
Jal has also been nominated for an mtvU Woodie Award for his commitment to social change. His story is told in the documentary film "War Child," in which he travels back for the first time since he left Sudan to see his remaining family and a country that is still struggling.
"A lot of people led their lives in fear that the war will come again," he said. "But the people of Sudan have a lot of strength in the way they encourage themselves."
"I believe in people," he said, pausing. "I tell my story to raise their consciousness and give them the energy to do good."
Jal added that he believes in university students because they have the power to change governments.
"The future leaders will hear my story and want to improve the world when they have opportunity in power," he said.
