A Long Way Gone....Book Reflections

This last week I've spent time working my way through a book by Ishmael Beah entitled A Long Way Gone: reflections of a boy soldier. Beah recounts his teen years of being on the run from rebel forces in Sierra Leone and how he became a teen soldier in a very bloody civil war.

The passages of this book that struck me very deep and hard were his descriptions of killings he witnessed or was part of carrying out. He describes the gruesome deaths of friends and other soldiers during the course of his odyssey of war.

As I read this book I wondered how it was possible for such awful torture and killing to take place. The rage and anger toward enemies certainly drove Beah and his superiors as they sought to avenge the killing of family and friends. Spurring on his actions were drugs-cocaine and marijuana that were supplied by his fellow soldiers and commanders. The drugs propelled him into a craziness and sleepless existence that one can only begin to imagine.

Rescued out of the war by international agencies Beah began his road to healing in his life physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

As difficult a book as this is to read I would recommend it as a way to enter the life and world of a young man living through the horrors of war and how this affected his growing up during his teen years.