Darfur still cries for help; Rwanda did so over a decade ago and was ignored for some time. Sierra Leone also experienced this gruesome inhumane event in 1993, with children forcefully recruited into the army and robbed of their innocence. A hard look into the eyes of a child soldier only reveals he is still innocent even behind the façade of a man, as seen in ‘A Long Way Gone’.
When Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie released her second novel, ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’, last year set in the 1967 Nigeria-Biafra war, reviewers raved about its emotion-invoked plot and Adichie’s creative ability. This year Sierra Leonean native Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier during the country’s brutal 1991 civil war released his very own memoir, ‘A Long Way Gone’, recounting a string of horrific events from the war throughout his childhood.
From 1991 to 2002 Sierra Leone suffered enormously from a civil conflict outbreak that resulted from anger by rebel leaders toward government corruption and misconduct of mineral resources and diamond in the country. Led by former Sierra Leonean army corporal, Foday Sankoh, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) was formed with the help of Charles Taylor, former Liberian president who is currently in exile facing war crimes charges. By the end of the war, an estimated 300,000 people were killed and 2 million displaced in bordering countries. Thousands of people were reported to have lost parts of their bodies (arms and legs) to rebel violence.
Beah, who was 12 years old at the time, was separated from his family whom he lost to the war; he was eventually brainwashed to join the army to avenge their death. With drugs such as amphetamines, marijuana and a noxious mix of cocaine and gunpowder known as “brown brown” in his system, the AK-47 he was entrusted with became his closest friend.
Beah provides detailed accounts of his experience; a wonder how the now 27-year-old could vividly remember such past happenings. This neophyte of a writer does a good job of communicating mental imagery. Descriptions of his first day at the battle scene are nothing compared to others he shares in the book.
He describes: “Bodies had begun to pile on top of each other near a short palm tree, where fronds dripped blood. I searched for Josiah (a friend). An RPG had tossed his tiny body off the ground and he had landed on a tree stump. He wiggled his legs as his cry gradually came to an end.”
This is a very engaging and poignant novel; from the time young innocent Beah mimed rappers at talent shows with his older brother and friends to his narrow escape from Sierra Leone to Guinea. But after reading several pages and chapters of violent encounters, you begin to wonder how much you can take. Envisioning humans losing their lives, a man reliving the mind of the boy he was then, recounting the horrific ways he took the lives of others with so much detail. A very interesting part is the reader getting the chance to enter the mind of Beah and seeing the innocent boy behind all the fierceness. It is quite disturbing knowing that these are all real events the writer alleges to have been involved in.
Sadly Beah’s story is just one of many child soldiers recruited in these brutal worthless African wars. From his eyes we get a glimpse of a world or period in time very unfamiliar to many rolled into history, but it is still happening in places like Darfur and even Somalia.
The novel becomes somewhat of an eye-opener, to everyone about how the world, not only children, is affected by these events.