A long way gone.

Juliah was a counseling psychologist I had been seeing during my “numb days”. I had been introduced to her by a friend of a friend of a friend. She was studying psychology of some sorts and was looking for a subject to study. I think i fitted into the character she was looking for. Surprisingly, I don’t remember whether she was pursuing her postgraduate degree or doctorate. I was too self-absorbed in my own pity I could not have been bothered by such detail. When time allowed on both our fronts she studied me. I stopped seeing her the day she asked me a question I deemed unfit.” Does it mean in your whole life you have not experienced any other major tragedy?”. I never saw her again. I don’t know whether she graduated or not. That question was too much for me.

First forward to 2015 when I met Ishmael about three months ago briefly. Just for a short time I was engaged with many things and so I could not commit to listening to him at that particular time.  On Sunday night I get a text message, “Please ensure to come with Ishmael next Saturday when we meet”. I knew it was time to stop all the other things I was doing and concentrate on finishing with Ishmael –it was about time. And so for two days I got absorbed in his story.

Sierra Leon is a Country in West Africa with an estimated population of 6,000,000/= (2013 figure) people. It went through a civil war between 1991 -2002 and an estimated 50,000/= people died. The UN estimates that about 2.5 million people were displaced or more than half the population by the estimates of 2013. The saddest note of this war was that the rebels recruited child soldiers to fight in the war. Boys as young as 13 years were given hand grenades, automatic guns, AK47’s among other weapons to “revenge” the death of their own families and friends. Coupled with the availability and open use of marijuana, heroin and brown brown (Heroine mixed with gun powder). The children became such fierce fighters killing aimlessly without much convincing.

They took down village after village, searching for weapons, ammunition and food. They slaughtered people the whole day then in the evening they would watch Rambo and enjoy it. At times they acted as the characters they watched.. When Ishmael was recruited he was in the middle of high school and was involved in the war for four years. His nuclear family was wiped off from the surface of the earth in the earlier years of the war. He did not even burry them in a place where he could later visit and pay them their respects. It’s was in my opinion a cold uncaring world for such a young boy.

The experience is so well narrated that you easily identify with the plight of Ishmael and the pain of what a child soldier goes through. This young man was robbed the innocence of his teenage years by war. To not experience his family’s love, school life, and general peace for so long must have been a very severe tragedy. But he persevered for years in the forest fighting even after coming into harm way either from the weather, animals, other soldiers’ etc. At one point he had been shot in his foot and he walked for several days with the untreated wound until he started passing out several times in a day. His base commander knew he had to get him treatment or he was going to die.

The fighting goes on but at one point he was randomly picked as one of those who were to be rehabilitated in Freetown. It’s was a long hard and discouraging journey to wellness. The boys kept fighting and beating their minders. You can imagine the effect of withdrawing from the drug use. It became too much for some of the boys who run away to rejoin the war. Ishmael soldiers on to be fully rehabilitated. He is even released to live with his Uncle in the city who he had only heard of before but never seen. His Uncle and family treat him like a son and bend over backwards to accommodate him. Actually, they never talked to him about the war years. They lived peacefully and he went back to school. 

Then the unimaginable happened; the soldiers came into the city and war was in his periphery again. His uncle passed on. Ishmael had resolved to never go back to war again. During his rehabilitation days, he was lucky to have gotten a chance to travel to New York to attend a conference on “child soldiers” .He made a solid friendship with one of the ladies who would later host him when he escaped Freetown. He went to America through the border at Guinea .Another long and arduous journey. He made it.

Today, Ishmael Beah is a celebrated writer with several book titles under his name. He has received numerous humanitarian and writing awards. He was appointed UNICEF’s first Advocate for Children Affected by war in 2007. To me he deserves this and much much more. What measure of tragedy is this to a boy of 13 years? What could be worse? How did he heal? What was his driving force?

My reading A long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier was an awakening of the question Juliah asked me many years ago. Have you never suffered a major tragedy in your life? 

If the tragedies that bother our life is how our pictures look on Instagram, how we will beat the traffic, which pizza to buy, the shoes we saw in the shop, the boy/girl who dumped us in high school e.t.c kindly read the book. You will rethink your priorities instantly like I did.

As always,

Sojourner.