A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

I have been meaning to read this for some time. Was glad to find it in the school library. Ishmael enjoyed rapping, and he had gone to rap and dance with some friends on the day that the rebels reached his village. So he had to run, and he ran, with friends, then by himself, then with other boys he met on his journey, until he finally reached a village where he could stop for a while and feel safer. A village protected by the army.

At first, I felt relieved that he was with the army, and had not been captured and 'brainwashed' by the rebels. But then I realised that the army was going to be just as bad; it doesn't matter what side you are on if you are being filled with hate for the others and taught how to use the serrated side of your bayonet to cut someone's throat to inflict the most pain as they die. Beah recounts a few incidents from the time that he had to fight with the army in order to not be caught be the rebels, and to kill those who had invaded his village and dispersed and destroyed his family.

However, although these passages are amongst the most graphic, they make way for the story of Beah's rehabilitation. He is sold by the army to some aid workers who are trying to rescue child soldiers. It is not an easy journey, but the final third of the book describes the path from soldier to international speaker on child soldiers and rehabilitation.

The book was not an easy one to read. Reading at night, I was glad to finish a chapter and put it away knowing that Beah was not yet a soldier, and that I had not had to read about the atrocities he had committed. I read about some of his acts on the tube, where my faced curled up and my feet folded under each other at some of the painfulness of the actions described. It was not necessarily 'unputdownable' because of the writing, although the writing was good, but I did feel that it was a book I had a 'duty' to read. However, in the end, it was a book that I was glad I had read, and it is a good book for someone to read to know about the horrors of the child soldiers - in fact, of anyone called to be a soldier in such a civil war, full of atrocities. And with Refugee Week upon us, the book should be read so that we can understand why some people leave a country and are scared to go back.