A long way Gone by Ishmael Beau

This book is Ishmael's memoirs as a boy soldier in the war ridden Sierra Leone [South Africa].

Browsing through the internet I got to know that this country is third lowest ranked in the human development index and seventh lowest in the human poverty index. Civil war went over for a decade starting from 1991 to 2000. During this war, different groups, the rebels, army kept fighting, for control over the country. The government was incompetent to handle the situation, and this led to military coup. The civil war continued until some peace was restored in 2001 when UN forces moved in and repressed the rebel army. War was over by 2002 and elections restored democracy by 2007. Over this course of time many thousands of innocent civilians were killed, forced to be homeless and flee for their lives.

Ishmael was born in 1980 in a village called Mogbwemo. He was 12 – 13 when he first experience war. Rebel army started attacking villages, killing indiscriminately and barbarically. He got separated from his family, never saw them again and was lost going from one village to another in hope of finding some shelter, food and more importantly a safe haven. He was with few of his friends initially, made new ones in course of time, which was some solace to him in the madness around.

He has very poignantly described what war was doing to them. Seeing people being ruthlessly killed, hearing cries of pain and despair around them, living under constant fear for their lives, had become a normal routine. They feared that if they get caught by the Rebel army, they will be branded and forced to fight for the rebels. What happened was the counter part of this. They reached one big village where they got shelter, safety & food, as it was being guarded by the army. However the fighting got fierce and eventually all the young boys were trained and given guns to fight. They were instigated in the names of their families who were mercilessly killed by the rebels to the extent that all these young boys eventually started hating rebels and felt proud at being a part of eliminating the enemy. Brain washed by their lieutenants and numbed by drugs they also implicated as many atrocities to the rebels as they had been seeing up till now. Can you even imagine a kid doing that??

This went on for quite some time spanning years. And then abruptly, some UNICEF personnel came to their base camp and few boy soldiers were randomly selected to be sent to rehabilitation, Ishmael being one of them. Initial stages of rehabilitation were very tough for both these boys and the UNICEF people. The boys didn’t want to get rehabilitated. They wanted to continue fighting till the end, they considered themselves soldiers who commanded respect & they despised the cowardly civilians. They underwent withdrawal symptoms for their addiction, which was another tough aspect of their rehabilitation. UNICEF people faced the brunt of their aggression with patience and sympathy. Eventually Ishmael got clean of his addiction, got rid of his aggression, found his paternal uncle & started living with his family. Slowly and steadily he started returning to a normal life, though the scars of the past were still fresh. In the meantime he also went to United States to speak about the condition of boy soldiers and how war is robbing children of their childhood in some international conference. This was a very thrilling experience for him, as he was getting acquainted to common place things like “snow” for the very first time.

Things had barely begun to settle down for him, when unrest reached the city “Freetown” where he had been living. Normal life came to a stall & killings became commonplace. People were suppressed & scraping two meals a day also became a game of dodging bullets. That’s when he decided to leave his country and go to United States. He was in touch with a lady from the conference and asked her if he could stay with her. When she confirmed a yes, he gathered his guts and managed to flee his country. He knew that if he continued staying in the war ridden town, he would someday meet his old army friends and would have to either join back the army & kill people or get killed by them. Eventually he got adopted by the same lady in United States, and could complete his education & since then has led a normal life.

Ishmael in this book provides an insight of lives of small children in his country. Many countries in South Africa are so backward, and such civil wars have left no scope of any normal life whatsoever for anybody. It is claimed to be a true account of his life, but the credibility of the facts is under contention. Many sources believe that Ishmael has fabricated few parts of the story and it is left to the readers to form their own conviction regarding the book.

I don’t know if it really matters whether Ishmael has provided a hundred percent accurate account of his childhood events or he has exaggerated a bit to make it all more dramatic, spicing it up a bit. What matters is that those conditions, those events are a reality, a reality which will not cease to exist just because we don’t believe in it. Just imagine the life of those kids, who at the age when they should be studying and playing, are actually killing and have nothing remotely “normal” in their lives.

I personally found the book very poignant with its graphic descriptions. It is not a distant past we are talking of; these are events of just couple of decades ago. While we live in out “modern” worlds, experiencing all kinds of freedom and comfort, it is difficult to fathom that there still exists such places where humanity is struggling to simply exist.

Couple of statements from the book which I found very touching:

"Every time people come at us with the intention of killing us, I close my eyes and wait for death. Even though I am still alive, I feel like each time I accept death, part of me dies. Very soon I will completely die and all that will be left is my empty body walking with you. It will be quieter than I am."

"When I was young, my father used to say, ‘If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.’ I thought about these words during my journey, and they kept me moving even when I didn’t know where I was going. Those words became the vehicle that drove my spirit forward and made it stay alive."