After reading I Am A Seal Team Six Warrior (I blogged about this a few weeks back), I was interested in reading more about some of the chaos in Africa (insert TIA song by K'Naan here (unedited)) since I knew very little about what actually led up to the issues in such places as Liberia, Sierra Leone, & Somalia. Beah, a Sierra Leonean, begins his story with the first day he remembered the rumors about rebel fighting and the rebels dispersing people within his village--essentially leaving him without family. It seemed that every time Beah thought he could get back to a normal state, then suddenly rebels would show up, hack some people up, give themselves high-fives and brag about the slaughterings. Beah, who is only 12 at the beginning of the story, becomes a refugee wandering and at times running through the wilderness with a handful of his buddies and his older brother. He stumbles across small groups of refugees and some embrace the boys and others view them with disdain. Many are afraid that the boys are really just rebels waiting to take advantage of them. One town even takes away their shoes and chases them away across sand that burns their feet and leaves them incapacitated for more than a week.
Eventually, the boys get taken in by a village and they are cared for and help out accordingly. The rebels begin to attack the village and the village assembles a guerrilla force to take on the rebels, which is led by a general of some sort (his origins are pretty vague and downright questionable). The boys, seeing little to lose, are conscripted into the makeshift army. Within the army, the boys take the rebels on with the aid of AK47s, G3s, machetes, marijuana and "brown brown" (a gunpowder & cocaine mixture). The drugs keep the boys dependent on the army for the adrenaline high, the violence and then they aren't worried about what's to eat-- since food is so scarce.
The boys continue to kill and be killed by the rebels and are fueled by their personal losses of family and friends. After a considerable amount of time on drugs and ransacking rebel forces, a handful of men from the UN show up at the camp and talk the with the general. The boys are shuttled of with the strangers and have their guns taken away. Only after the boys are in the city at a rehabilitation clinic for a while does Ishmael realize that he's being forced to undergo treatment for being a childhood soldier. He does a nice job expressing his naivete through describing his thoughts and frustrations at being left out of the loop, after being forced into an adult role of taking lives and caring for himself. While it would seem that the violence would end with Beah's rehabilitation, it's really just becomes the beginning of the war within the city-- which had previously been confided to the outlying areas. With Beah's rehabilitation and his realization of his lost youth, Beah is again forced into an adult role in that he takes on living with his uncle's family and he also becomes a representative to the UN for the needs of the war-torn children, particularly the child-soldiers.
Beah's lot does improve, but only after a few more twists and turns as he tries to evacuate the country, realizing the risk at which he was putting his uncle's family if he remained in their home. His willingness to speak honestly and to reflect on his previous immaturity and selfishness create bonds which later come to his aid and while make his story so compelling. This book would be a fabulous book for anyone who considers him or herself an advocate for social change-- particularly if it involves working with disenfranchised youth.
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