A Long Way Gone… the confusion

I recently finished reading A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. In it he tells the story of the civil war in Sierre Leone in the 1990s and the astonishing fact that much of the war was fought by early teenage boys who were thrust into the fight. Ishmael was one of those boy soldiers

It is hard book to read on a number of levels. First I have trouble grasping the reality that civil wars go on today… I mean I’ve never even heard a real gunshot (except at the shooting range). And second the idea of children soldiers who are robbed of their childhood and turned into cold-blooded killers is horrible.

The book is also hard to read because you can never really get your hands around the bigger picture of what was going on in Sierre Leone. You can’t really tell who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. I think this is an intentional rhetorical device used by Ishmael to reflect the confusion that boy soldiers feel. They don’t know who they are fighting or why they are fighting… they fight to survive. Yet they have no understanding of the bigger picture.

Ishmael has been saved from the war and now is dedicating his life to raising awareness around the world to the horrible realities of children soldiers.