"A Long Road Gone"

I picked up a book the other day called "A Long Road Gone" by Ishmael Beah. It's a true story about Ishael's journey as a boy-soldier in Siera Leon, a country in Africa. I am not a very fast reader by any means, unless I'm reading an incredibly dull text book and I skim . . . very quickly. But this book was a different read for me. It took me only two days to read, maybe two hours each day and full reading and I was pulled into it. It's a view on the war that was very difficult to read. This twelve year old boy is talking about his favourite ways of killing a man and what tactics he wants to try on the next village and the only things on any of their minds is where they'll get more drugs (cocain, brown brown, marajuana, and a white capsule that went un-named), where he'll get more ammunition and how many people he wants to kill on the next raid. The majority of the book takes place while Ishmael and his friends are running from the rebels and all that happnes to them during that time, and only a few chapters are dedicated to his life in the army and then the majority of the second half is about his time in the camps in the cities when the UNICEF workers are trying to create little boys out of them once more. There time in the city under the care of UNICEF is just as, if not more traumatic for the boys that joining the army or rebel forces. If you can get your hands on this book, I recogmend reading it more highly than I would any other book I have read over the past few years. This is a very important issue that is plaguing our world right now and it is something that is so hard for us to imagine.