But, Warrior Fitness is not just another gym. Rather, Tchicaya Missamou, the owner who goes by the nickname of Dr. T, sees it as a place of beginnings for those among us seeking a new lease on life through exercise and nutrition.

After relocating from a smaller space on Diamond Place, The Warrior Fitness & Wellness Camp will reopen in the former William S. Hart Union High School District building at 21515 Centre Pointe Parkway, which has been revamped to not only include multiple workout spaces but on-site housing accommodations and a health-conscious juice bar and café.

The day-long grand opening celebration, which is set to include a host of local dignitaries, will open at 9 a.m. with a Marine color guard.

“When I came to America, I was illegal. I was a refugee,” Dr. T said this week. “The American people didn’t have to help me, but they did. They picked me up. They gave me shelter. They gave me an education. They gave me freedom.

“That’s what the Warrior Fitness & Wellness Camp is going to do, too,” he said. “We’re going to give people their freedom.”

A freedom, that is, from junk food, inactivity and the other symptoms of obesity that, according to the National Institutes of Health, lead to an estimated 300,000 deaths annually in the United States alone.

The good news: The deaths are preventable – with proper education, exercise and eating.

“We have to go back to the basics,” Dr. T said, adding that physical activity without mindfulness is simply “a waste of time and money.”

The Warrior Fitness & Wellness Camp features many of the common gym amenities, from an assortment of weights to a spin cycle room to floor space for yoga, Zumba and other high-intensity activities.

Want to put the beatdown on stress? There’s a “hot” boxing room lined with punching bags, too.

It’s the Warrior’s wellness camp that sets it apart from other fitness centers. The camp program will allow for up to four participants to live on-site in a newly crafted two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in the back of the building as they work to burn calories and drop weight.

“It’s like ‘The Biggest Loser,’” Dr. T said, referring to the longtime NBC reality show.

And, like the TV show, the Warrior’s weight-loss program won’t be easy, featuring a variety of intense workouts designed to push participants to their limits and, sometimes, beyond.

How demanding will it be? “I just copied and pasted what the Marine Corps taught me,” Dr. T said.

As part of the grand opening celebration, The Warrior Fitness & Wellness Camp is offering a 50 percent discount for anybody in the surrounding Centre Pointe neighborhood, plus a free 3G body analysis and consultation.

The center’s juice bar and café will be open to members and non-members alike, Dr. T said. On-site child care is also available.

To learn more, go online to the Warrior’s website at www.thewarriorfitness.com.

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The building, at 21515 Centre Pointe Parkway, sold last week for $3.2 million. It had been listed for $3.6 million. Warrior Fitness expects it to open this summer.

Warrior Fitness & Wellness combines aspects of a commercial gym and a weight-loss program, said Tchicaya Missamou, founder of Warrior. “We realized that we cannot focus only on fitness,” he said. “We must also work on wellness” with a focus on weight loss.

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“Your bad days are what make your good days.”

The simple phrase his father repeated into Tchicaya Missamou’s ears as a child still echoes thousands of miles from his homeland.

Missamou never forgets the words that helped him survive a civil war in his native country and foreign war in Iraq.

Missamou, 30, owns Warrior Fitness Camp in Valencia.

The fitness center transformed more than 600 people’s lives in its 18 months of operations, Missamou said.

“We give people hope that they can change their bodies, their health and how they feel,” he said.
Missamou’s life is filled with change, turmoil and transformation.

He was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a member of the Bakongo tribe. At 7 years old,
Missamou was recruited into the Bakongo tribal militia to wage civil war against tribes in the northern region of the country.

“I saw drugs and alcohol used to make kids shoot people with AK-47s,” he said.

A second wave of civil unrest broke out in 1997 and the militia tried to recruit then 19-year-old Missamou again.

“I was tired of the war,” he said.

He refused.

“They beat me up then tied me up,” Missamou said.

Tribal militia members raped his mother in front of him. The militia threw Missamou and his mother into their home and set it on fire. Missamou broke free and carried his mother to safety, he said.

Missamou’s father, a member of the police force, obtained a forged passport and snuck him out of Congo.

“At that time black Africans were not allowed to leave the country,” he said. His father convinced a pilot to sneak Missamou out of the country.

His family paid for defying the tribe.

“They put my father in jail, beat and tortured him and injected him with the HIV virus,” he said.

His father remains imprisoned.

Missamou arrived in the United States in 1997 with little money and no English skills. He was mugged at a bus station his first day in the country, he said.

On March 26, 2000, Missamou joined the U.S. Marine Corps, where he learned English and graduated first in his infantry class.

“I had lost my family. I had lost hope,” he said. “The Marine Corps is my family. It gives me hope.”

He became a U.S. citizen in 2003, and when the Iraq war began he was part of the first wave of Marines to invade the country. He gave to his new country and continued to give after he returned from the war.

Missamou began training people from his Saugus garage in 2006.

“I started with two people and within six months it grew to 37,” he said.

He combines military training techniques with Third World realities. “You don’t need fancy equipment,” he said pointing to a tire. Missamou makes his students drag tires with weighted back packs.

“This is what life is like in Africa,” he said.

He moved his business to Valencia in February 2007, and the grand opening was accompanied by another event. His mother moved here from the Congo.

“One day I will go back and get my father and the rest of my family,” he said.

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He owns a gym called the Warrior Fitness Camp in Valencia, Calif., and he says is working to bring attention to the need for education in Africa.

 “I need Oprah to help me help the people of the Congo,” Mr. Missamou said. “Women in Africa look at her like an idol. She is person from America, from a different continent, and she is investing a lot of time and passion in Africa. And here I am, a son of Africa, fighting for this country called America because I believe freedom is not a privilege. Freedom is a right.”

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• Tchicaya Missamou was recruited by a rebel militia in the Republic of Congo when he was just 14
• After fleeing his native country, he joined the U.S. Marines and served in Iraq
• Today, Missamou is helping Americans shape up at his Warrior Fitness Camp in California

Editor’s note: Every week CNN International’s African Voices highlights Africa’s most engaging personalities, exploring the lives and passions of people who rarely open themselves up to the camera. This week we profile former Congolese child soldier and U.S. Marine Tchicaya Missamou.

(CNN) — Tchicaya Missamou’s life has in many ways been shaped by the brutal lessons of war.

Born in Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo in 1978, Missamou was recruited by rebel forces when he was just 14.

“I was taught to kill, I was taught to brutalize,” the former child soldier turned U.S. Marine told CNN.

But now Missamou is applying the lessons he’s learned from the frontlines to fitness.

At his Warrior Fitness Camp in California, his grueling exercise program is helping hundreds of Americans get into shape and lose weight.

“My workout is a mind game because I believe when your mind is strong, your body will be strong,” said Missamou.

Missamou — whose life story is chronicled in his recently published memoir “In the Shadow of Freedom” — is no stranger to harrowing experiences.

As a child soldier, he says he doesn’t remember taking someone’s life, “but I recall participating in taking someone’s life. I was there. It happened.”

“We had no choice,” he said of his plight as a youth fighter. “Some of the kids were getting drugs, alcohol.”

But he was able to escape that life after two years, when he was sent away to live with his father, a lieutenant in the local police who convinced him to join the country’s elite military force.

However, neither father nor son had any idea that a civil war that would eventually claim over 10,000 lives was about to consume the country.

Missamou managed to avoid fighting in the Republic of Congo’s civil war in 1997 by starting a private security militia that helped white families escape the country.

It was an unpopular mission that, according to Missamou, eventually resulted in a mutiny amongst his own ranks.

As he and his mother’s family were on the verge of fleeing the country, Missamou’s own militia cornered him.

He managed to get his mother and another badly injured woman to a medical facility, then fled the country.

He arrived in the United States, where he found work at a martial arts studio in California. There he met a recruiter for the U.S. Marine Corps who suggested he enlist.

It was peacetime when Missamou signed up for the Marines — but just three years later, he found himself leading men into battle in Iraq.

“Fighting is not fair. It’s brutal, you see people killed,” he recalled. “We were defending ourselves, defending our values for the good of the people.”

After six months in Iraq, Missamou returned to the United States to find that the naturalization process for foreign-born members of the U.S. military had been speeded up and that he’d become a citizen.

It was a short-lived happiness, though, interrupted by the news that back at home, his father had been imprisoned for helping his son escape the country.

Missamou returned to the Republic of Congo to see his father, but was promptly jailed himself.

He was shot during an unsuccessful escape attempt but managed to call an old roommate in the United States and was released and sent back to his new country.

At home in California, Missamou says being an American was what gave him hope during his time in jail.

“You can see I’m very patriotic about America,” said Missamou. “All my life, I lived in the shadow of freedom. I thought I was free until I came to America.”

After eight years in the Marines, he opened the high-end gym where he gives “warrior” classes to help people wanting to shed pounds.

“You’re going to see them rolling, sweating and crying,” said Missamou of his training style.

His decision to focus on fitness after he left the military was influenced by his family health history, he says. Both his mother and grandmother are overweight and diabetic.

In addition to training at his gym, he visits schools to teach children how to eat right and take care of their body.

“When I see them, I see the future,” Missamou said.

He’s also delivering motivational speeches across the country and speaking out about the plight of child soldiers in Africa.

“I believe that education is the strongest weapon that we have to change people’s way of living,” he said.

He says his voice has never been louder than it is today, and that after years of struggling against great odds, he has never felt more free.

“I’m living in freedom,” he said, “I am not dreaming freedom. I am living freedom.”

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Freedom. The American dream. The idea meant everything to a young Tchicaya Missamou.

An African child soldier at age 11, the Congolese-born Missamou knew if he could just get to America, he would be able to achieve the goals he set for himself. An education, a successful business, a family and a place to live without the daily threat of violence. Goals that could never be realized in the corrupt, poverty-stricken nation in which he was born.

“The first white man I ever met, when I was 7 or 8, was big and blonde with blue eyes,” Missamou recalled. “I asked him, ‘How can I become like you?’ He slapped me hard on the back and said, ‘You can’t. I’m a Marine, an American.’ I thought he was the savior of the world.”

Ambitious from the start, Missamou took his natural gifts — a quick mind, a strong body and an indomitable spirit — and parlayed them into an illegal empire to ferry jewels, cash, computers and white diplomats out of Africa. He was rich by age 17.

By age 19, he was a wanted man, his family brutalized. Missamou escaped to Europe and eventually came to the country of his dreams.

America — where he became a Marine sergeant, a business owner, a husband, a father, and just recently, an author.

Autobiography
Missamou’s incredible story of will and survival has been captured in his new book, “In The Shadow of Freedom,” co-written with Travis Sentell and published by Atria Paperback, a division of Simon & Schuster.

While Missamou had wanted to write his memoir for a long time, it wasn’t until he met Sentell — through a mutual friend — that the book began to take shape.

“We went out for lunch and  on our way to the restaurant, Travis said, ‘I know you have a story. Tell me.’ I said, ‘Alright, buckle up.’ In a half hour, I  had told him maybe a quarter, or a half, of the story,” Missamou recalled. “Travis said, ‘Your story is bigger than you think. You need to put this on paper.’”

A few days later, Sentell called Missamou and set up a time to meet again. After an hour, according to Missamou, Sentell went home and wrote the first 15 pages of “In The Shadow of Freedom,” which have remained the same, with no edits.

“I told him, ‘You write the way I’m saying it.’ I talk about the people of Africa, I believe I’m ambitious for the people of the Congo,” Missamou said. “Most people forget or don’t care what’s going on in Africa. They forget that Africa is the birth of humanity. I’m sharing the life of millions of Africans.”

An African tale
So far, Missamou has been sharing his tale of Africa with a multitude of Americans. Recently featured on Fox News, Missamou has been traveling the country to read and sign “In the Shadow of Freedom.” A signing at Valencia’s Borders Books & Music in August drew more than 200 of Missamou’s friends, relatives and members of  Warrior Fitness, the gym Missamou owns and operates in Valencia.

“In The Shadow of Freedom” opens with Missamou’s return to the Congo in 2004, where he was arrested and imprisoned before being rescued by the United States military, and flashes back to the years and often-times horrific experiences that shaped him.

In person, Missamou is charming, passionate and pragmatic when sharing his past.

“We don’t call it a child soldier in Africa, it’s more like a gangster. Some were forced, some volunteered. I volunteered. It was a way for me to protect my family,” Missamou said. “It’s more rough (in Africa). People use machetes. They drug kids or give them alcohol. In America, no one forces you to become a gang member. They think it’s cool.”

He’s also quick to acknowledge the positive points of his African upbringing, which Missamou described as the archetypal “it takes a village to raise a child” environment.

“A child is not raised only in the house, but in the streets. In Africa, the neighbor has the right to discipline a child. Everyone is watching you and is concerned about your well-being,” Missamou said. “In Africa, if one person succeeds, the whole village succeeds. It’s the success of the country and the success of the continent.”

Becoming a success
In 1997, the Congo was at war. Armed with a fake passport and fortified by a very insistent father, who threatened to shoot down the plane, which would carry his son, were he not to board, Missamou made his way to France, where he spoke the language and could live with a relative.

There, while working at a warehouse, Missamou saw the Dr. Dre and Tupac Shakur video for “California Love” on MTV. As he listened to the last note, he made up his mind. He would come to California.

He landed in Sacramento on Feb. 14, 1998, and began taking classes at a local college while working as a janitor at a studio. He became a manager six months later.

In 2000, inspired by a new friend who had joined the military, Missamou passed the test to become a Marine and was issued a green card. After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Missamou fought in Iraq. 

In 2003, upon returning to the United States, he was sworn in as an American citizen to much fanfare.

“America is the greatest place on Earth. It’s the only country that took me, taught me to speak the language. When I needed food, shelter, education, America gave it to me,” he said. “The one thing that America gives you is freedom. It’s up to you as to do what you can do with it.”

Fitness warrior
With his newfound freedom as a citizen and military veteran, Missamou settled in Fillmore. He had married Ana, a Bulgarian woman he met at a Germany train station in 2000. After their initial meeting he remained close with Ana through writing letters until she came to America — where their relationship deepened.

Missamou described their first meeting. “I saw a  beautiful woman drop something. I approached her and we made eye contact. I thought, ‘She could be my wife’,” Missamou said of Ana. “She’s educated, her parents believed in family values, she really takes care of her husband. Ana’s my great support and my number one fan.”

The couple moved to Saugus in 2006, where Missamou started fitness training for clients out of his garage. He based his training on his African military and street experience. In less than six months, he had 36 clients, and opened the Valencia Warrior Fitness gym in February 2007.

Now, more than 200 clients work out with Missamou and his staff comprised solely of ex-military personnel. The training is usually conducted outside — and often in public — running, carrying one another for extra weight and getting hosed down as they lift massive poles together as a team.

“It’s Congo-style. American people use machines, but we would use manmade things in Africa — tires, water hoses, street poles. My training combines these things together,” Missamou said. “I make (clients) sing and dance after I kick their butt.”

He described Warrior Fitness as a family gym, where people can bring their children. He brings his children — twin daughters Marie Vagansi and Yana Simbasi and son Allan Kelvin Tamsi. Missamou’s mother joined the family as a permanent American resident in 2008.

“I am blessed. Through hard work, I have achieved great success. Hard work always pays off,” Missamou said. “If people think the American dream doesn’t exist, I’m living proof.”

Still, Missamou — who acquired a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Laverne and is pursuing a Ph. D in education — never forgets his African roots.

“They taught me well. They told me, ‘Bad days make better days’ and that ‘men should never live in the present, but live in the present like it’s your last day on earth,’” Missamou said. “It’s what you do today that matters.”

For more information visit www.intheshadowoffreedom.com or www.thewarriorfitness.com.

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