January's all about Africa!

One of my goals for this year is to read a book from or about another region of the world each month.  I picked Africa for January.  Then I thought oh great, I don't know anything about Africa, and I don't know where to start selecting a book (I'm a little picky about books)!  But then I remembered hearing about a book titled, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah.  It's a true story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone.  After reading the book, I think I've fallen in love with yet another country!

The story isn't a very happy one.  At least until the end.  Sierra Leone had a horrible civil war from 1991-2000.  Near the beginning of the war, Ishmael was separated from his family who were all eventually killed.  He wandered the countryside for a few months until he was forced to be a child soldier.  And as a child soldier, he was forced to do many violent and cruel things.

Some of the saddest parts of his story for me was how quickly things changed from good to bad.  Ishmael and his friends were only gone overnight before the bad guys came to his town and ruined... well, everything!  There were no warning signs.  One day they were carefree children.  The next, they were orphans.

Honestly, I skipped over a lot of the first half of the book.  Most of the beginning was violent.  The author did a great job of writing about his experiences without making it rated R, but it still made me a bit uncomfortable.  The second half was much better.  It was his account of rehabilitation, reunion with his relatives (an uncle he didn't really know, but had heard about), and escape to the US.

I loved the last half of the book.  Ishmael's recovery, rehabilitation, and relocation to the US was amazing and inspirational to read.  In a way, it reinforced the principles of the atonement to me.  Especially the part about children being innocent.  Ishmael was a bit older than eight, but none the less, wasn't fully responsible for his actions as a boy soldier.  It took him a while to realize that, but eventually he did.

He said,

"If I choose to feel guilty for what I have done, I will want to be dead myself," Beah said. "I live knowing that I have been given a second life, and I just try to have fun, and be happy and live it the best I can." (Alissa Swango, NYC24, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, A Child Soldier Grows Up, 2006. Retrieved February 15, 2007.) 

Read Alissa Swango's article, it's great!

The book ended a little abruptly and with a memory of a story from his young childhood, but I enjoyed the rest of the book enough to overlook a strange ending.  I'd recommend this book to anyone who can handle a little war violence with a happy ending.  I feel like I learned a lot and gained a little more world perspective by reading it.

I'm excited to read the other books about Africa that I found at the library!