A Long Way Gone

So I finished this book almost a week ago now and I've been meaning to write some sort of review on it where I tell how great it is and how everyone should read it. Needless to say I haven't yet so I am now. Is that all useless information?

Probably.

Thank you for your 5 seconds you'll never get back.

The truth is I did read this book. It was recommended to me by my dear friend Adam who, I believe, picked up from Starbucks. For those of who live back home on the east coast, Starbucks is this coffee chain that has successfully marketed ethics, maybe even better than the church. 

But I digress.

A Long Way Gone is former boy soldier and Sierra Leone national, Ishmael Beah's, retelling the story of his childhood. This bitterly horrifying and brutally honest story tell of the suffering, pain, and abuse children face in the face of war. Beah tells of how he is split from his family, runs from death only to be meet by it on the faces of common people, is recruited to be a boy soldier, forced to kill hyped on drugs no child should even hear the name of, and has his childhood literally stripped from him.

Although Ishmael finds help in the end, my heart broke for him as he tells of memories no child should have. It makes me wonder how such hate and evil can exist in the world. It sounds cliche but I have no other way to say it really. Why are children forced to kill? What posses someone to rape a child in front of her parents and then lock them together in their burning house. And where were we when this all went down in Sierra Leone.

I watched To Shake Hands with the Devil on Friday. This documentary is about Romeo Delair, a Canadian General working for the UN while the Rwandan Genocide occurred. I won't go into too much detail about this film, other than to say it's a good one to watch, but it made me have the same thoughts as when reading A Long Way Gone. Why weren't we there? Why did I never hear of it until a few ears ago. 

I wonder how many wars we never hear of because everyone is to busy concerning themselves with the death of Heath Ledger. I mean no respect to Mr. Ledger, but I wonder how many Dead Rwandans it would haven taken to replace the trial of OJ Simpson in the headlines.

Reading this book has made me feel pathetic for being Western. What could I possibly do about the dying Iraqis? I'm too busy to do anything. I need to go get a 5th pair of shoes that were probably made by a child in some other part of the world. 

I've always wondered, would bombing continue in Baghdad if I - a white, privileged, North American kid, with supposedly more potential than any of the kids in Iraq who are my age - were to publicly go stand in the middle of it?

But this is turning into ranting.

You should probably read A Long Way Gone