A Long Way Gone

Ever have a book you need to recover from? Yup, that one is definitely a need to recover from. I am fortunate I can sit here and say I need to recover from that story. The author had to live it, hundreds, thousands of children have to live that story, and yet this book isn't included in what we are taught in high school?

Oh but wait the content is to intense? Ever read "Night" by Elie Wiesel? I read it in my 9th grade

Honors English class. This book is the only book that has ever hit me as hard as "Night" because it's true, its atrocious, it's a first hand account...and it's true. 

You hear about child soldiers, you hear about war zones, but it's some random video you see online that you know is an ad asking for money, so you believe it less. Sitting on my couch reading through the first hand account of Ishmael was heart wrenching. A child running from the war not knowing if any of his family is even alive. No idea where to go, no idea where his next meal is coming from. Finding other displaced boys like himself and sticking together for safety and comfort and having villages literally attack them because the villages worried they were children soldiers. 

Most of the book doesn't even concentrate on the time he was a child soldier. Most of the book focuses on his struggle to survive and avoid the rebels after the first attack. 

For me the worst of all was the fact that you always think it's the rebels who are grabbing these kids and turning them into soldiers...which yes they do. But Ishmael was grabbed by his own government. The government military found him and offered him and the other boys shelter and food. Then suddenly it was if you want to keep this shelter and food you have to become part of our army. Manipulating them with the prospect of protection of knowing where their meals were coming from. Manipulating their feelings of anger, rage and grief telling them that they should take revenge on the rebels that killed their family. Manipulating them into agreeing to be child soldiers and having their childhood literally ripped from them. 

Then handing them drugs saying here take this, it gives you energy, until the children are so hooked on it that they don't care they are hooked on drugs, especially since it masks the feelings, the feelings not only of everything they have been through, but the feeling of killing people, of watching their friends shot down next to them. 

I thought when Ishmael was taken out that the rest of the story was his transition into normal life and eventually his transition to living in New York. But the reality was that no matter how far he ran, no matter how far into civilization he got, the war kept following, kept tracking, kept pulling the boys back in, destroying their lives. 

This book broke my heart, and this book needs to be a standard part of our high school curriculum. Right up there with important books like "Night" from the holocaust. This may not be history yet, but it is important and it needs to be brought to our attention. The suffering of the rest of the world should not be some distant oh yeah this happens. It needs to be front and center, teaching us empathy and challenging us to make a better world. 

Special thanks to my friend Shannie for recommending this book to me. 

"A long way gone" by Ishmael Beah

Bookshop

https://bookshop.org/a/21193/9780374531263