A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.




by Ishmael Beah.

This is part of our ongoing series on peace = prosperity.

Excerpt reprinted with permission of Sarah Crichton Books (an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
Reprinted with permission. © Sarah Crichton Books Farrar, Straus and Giroux

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah is the gripping story of a child's journey

through hell and back.

There may be as many as 300,000 child soldiers, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s, in more than fifty conflicts around the world. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. He is one of the first to tell his story in his own words.

In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-six years old, tells a riveting story. At the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. Eventually released by the army and sent to a UNICEF rehabilitation center, he struggled to regain his humanity and to reenter the world of civilians, who viewed him with fear and suspicion. This is, at last, a story of redemption and hope.

Chapter One excerpt:
There were all kinds of stories told about the war that made it sound as if it was happening in a faraway and different land. It wasn't until refugees started passing through our town that we began to see that it was actually taking place in our country. Families who had walked hundreds of miles told how relatives had been killed and their houses burned. Some people felt sorry for them and offered them places to stay, but most of the refugees refused, because they said the war would eventually reach our town. The children of these families wouldn't look at us, and they jumped at the sound of chopping wood or as stones landed on the tin roofs flung by children hunting birds with slingshots. The adults among these children from the war zones would be lost in their thoughts during conversations with the elders of my town. Apart from their fatigue and malnourishment, it was evident they had seen something that plagued their minds, something that we would refuse to accept if they told us all of it. At times I thought that some of the stories the passersby told were exaggerated. The only wars I knew of were those that I had read about in books or seen in movies such as Rambo: First Blood, and the one in neighboring Liberia that I had heard about on the BBC news. My imagination at ten years old didn't have the capacity to grasp what had taken away the happiness of the refugees.

The first time that I was touched by war I was twelve. It was in January of 1993. I left home with Junior, my older brother, and our friend Talloi, both a year older than I, to go to the town of Mattru Jong, to participate in our friends' talent show. Mohamed, my best friend, couldn't come because he and his father were renovating their thatched-roof kitchen that day. The four of us had started a rap and dance group when I was eight. We were first introduced to rap music during one of our visits to Mobimbi, a quarter where the foreigners who worked for the same American company as my father lived. We often went to Mobimbi to swim in a pool and watch the huge color television and the white people who crowded the visitors' recreational area. One evening a music video that consisted of a bunch of young black fellows talking really fast came on the television. The four of us sat there mesmerized by the song, trying to understand what the black fellows were saying. At the end of the video, some letters came up at the bottom of the screen. They read "Sugarhill Gang, ÔRapper's Delight.'" Junior quickly wrote it down on a piece of paper. After that, we came to the quarters every other weekend to study that kind of music on television. We didn't know what it was called then, but I was impressed with the fact that the black fellows knew how to speak English really fast, and to the beat.

Later on, when Junior went to secondary school, he befriended some boys who taught him more about foreign music and dance. During holidays, he brought me cassettes and taught my friends and me how to dance to what we came to know as hip-hop. I loved the dance, and particularly enjoyed learning the lyrics, because they were poetic and it improved my vocabulary. One afternoon, Father came home while Junior, Mohamed, Talloi, and I were learning the verse of "I Know You Got Soul" by Eric B. & Rakim. He stood by the door of our clay brick and tin roof house laughing and then asked, "Can you even understand what you are saying?" He left before Junior could answer. He sat in a hammock under the shade of the mango, guava, and orange trees and tuned his radio to the BBC news.

"Now, this is good English, the kind that you should be listening to," he shouted from the yard.

While Father listened to the news, Junior taught us how to move our feet to the beat. We alternately moved our right and then our left feet to the front and back, and simultaneously did the same with our arms, shaking our upper bodies and heads. "This move is called the running man," Junior said. Afterward, we would practice miming the rap songs we had memorized. Before we parted to carry out our various evening chores of fetching water and cleaning lamps, we would say "Peace, son" or "I'm out," phrases we had picked up from the rap lyrics. Outside, the evening music of birds and crickets would commence.

On the morning that we left for Mattru Jong, we loaded our backpacks with notebooks of lyrics we were working on and stuffed our pockets with cassettes of rap albums. In those days we wore baggy jeans, and underneath them we had soccer shorts and sweatpants for dancing. Under our long-sleeved shirts we had sleeveless undershirts, T-shirts, and soccer jerseys. We wore three pairs of socks that we pulled down and folded to make our crapes* look puffy. When it got too hot in the day, we took some of the clothes off and carried them on our shoulders. They were fashionable, and we had no idea that this unusual way of dressing was going to benefit us. Since we intended to return the next day, we didn't say goodbye or tell anyone where we were going. We didn't know that we were leaving home, never to return.

To save money, we decided to walk the sixteen miles to Mattru Jong. It was a beautiful summer day, the sun wasn't too hot, and the walk didn't feel long either, as we chatted about all kinds of things, mocked and chased each other. We carried slingshots that we used to stone birds and chase the monkeys that tried to cross the main dirt road. We stopped at several rivers to swim. At one river that had a bridge across it, we heard a passenger vehicle in the distance and decided to get out of the water and see if we could catch a free ride. I got out before Junior and Talloi, and ran across the bridge with their clothes. They thought they could catch up with me before the vehicle reached the bridge, but upon realizing that it was impossible, they started running back to the river, and just when they were in the middle of the bridge, the vehicle caught up to them. The girls in the truck laughed and the driver tapped his horn. It was funny, and for the rest of the trip they tried to get me back for what I had done, but they failed.

We arrived at Kabati, my grandmother's village, around two in the afternoon. Mamie Kpana was the name that my grandmother was known by. She was tall and her perfectly long face complemented her beautiful cheekbones and big brown eyes. She always stood with her hands either on her hips or on her head. By looking at her, I could see where my mother had gotten her beautiful dark skin, extremely white teeth, and the translucent creases on her neck. My grandfather or kamor teacher, as everyone called him was a well-known local Arabic scholar and healer in the village and beyond.

At Kabati, we ate, rested a bit, and started the last six miles. Grandmother wanted us to spend the night, but we told her that we would be back the following day.

"How is that father of yours treating you these days?" she asked in a sweet voice that was laden with worry.

"Why are you going to Mattru Jong, if not for school? And why do you look so skinny?" she continued asking, but we evaded her questions. She followed us to the edge of the village and watched as we descended the hill, switching her walking stick to her left hand so that she could wave us off with her right hand, a sign of good luck.

We arrived in Mattru Jong a couple of hours later and met up with old friends, Gibrilla, Kaloko, and Khalilou. That night we went out to Bo Road, where street vendors sold food late into the night. We bought boiled groundnut and ate it as we conversed about what we were going to do the next day, made plans to see the space for the talent show and practice. We stayed in the verandah room of Khalilou's house. The room was small and had a tiny bed, so the four of us (Gibrilla and Kaloko went back to their houses) slept in the same bed, lying across with our feet hanging. I was able to fold my feet in a little more since I was shorter and smaller than all the other boys.

The next day Junior, Talloi, and I stayed at Khalilou's house and waited for our friends to return from school at around 2:00 p.m. But they came home early. I was cleaning my crapes and counting for Junior and Talloi, who were having a push-up competition. Gibrilla and Kaloko walked onto the verandah and joined the competition. Talloi, breathing hard and speaking slowly, asked why they were back. Gibrilla explained that the teachers had told them that the rebels had attacked Mogbwemo, our home. School had been canceled until further notice. We stopped what we were doing.

According to the teachers, the rebels had attacked the mining areas in the afternoon. The sudden outburst of gunfire had caused people to run for their lives in different directions. Fathers had come running from their workplaces, only to stand in front of their empty houses with no indication of where their families had gone. Mothers wept as they ran toward schools, rivers, and water taps to look for their children. Children ran home to look for parents who were wandering the streets in search of them. And as the gunfire intensified, people gave up looking for their loved ones and ran out of town.

"This town will be next, according to the teachers." Gibrilla lifted himself from the cement floor. Junior, Talloi, and I took our backpacks and headed to the wharf with our friends. There, people were arriving from all over the mining area. Some we knew, but they couldn't tell us the whereabouts of our families. They said the attack had been too sudden, too chaotic; that everyone had fled in different directions in total confusion.

For more than three hours, we stayed at the wharf, anxiously waiting and expecting either to see our families or to talk to someone who had seen them. But there was no news of them, and after a while we didn't know any of the people who came across the river. The day seemed oddly normal. The sun peacefully sailed through the white clouds, birds sang from treetops, the trees danced to the quiet wind. I still couldn't believe that the war had actually reached our home. It is impossible, I thought. When we left home the day before, there had been no indication the rebels were anywhere near.

"What are you going to do?" Gibrilla asked us. We were all quiet for a while, and then Talloi broke the silence. "We must go back and see if we can find our families before it is too late."

Junior and I nodded in agreement.



Excerpted from A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. Copyright © 2007 by Ishmael Beah. Published in February 2007 by Sarah Crichton Books, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2001-2003 Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

http://alongwaygone.com/

You can make a difference for children worldwide. UNICEF depends entirely on voluntary contributions for all of their work. You can donate, or purchase UNICEF cards and gifts, or become a volunteer. Go to http://www.unicef.org to Support UNICEF, the organization which helped to rehabilitate Ishmael Beah.

All Deepak is Saying is Give Peace (and Business) a Chance.

All Deepak is Saying is Give Peace (and Business) a Chance. by Natalie Pace



Photo: Deepak Chopra, author of The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore

On March 11th, 525 peacemakers flocked to the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica to hobnob with spiritual leaders, attend Presidential ceremonies and brainstorm strategies for promoting, in the words of Deepak Chopra, "a new world where hope, social justice, peace and a sense of the sacredness of life prevail." For the next three days, Americans, Mexicans, Europeans, Asians, Australians, Africans and even a few Texans spent time in small groups envisioning what the world needs now, what actions need to be taken to bring about the new vision and how they could network to support one another in an Alliance for a New Humanity. Spiritual gurus like Deepak Chopra (the president of the Alliance), the eloquent Marianne Williamson (bestselling author and Chair of The Peace Alliance), President Oscar Arias Sanchez (the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winning President of Costa Rica), Baltazar Garzon (the Spanish judge who was responsible for nailing Pinochet) and other respected academics, authors, policymakers and even business leaders lead provocative debates by day, and celebrated the lush Costa Rican heritage by night.

In fact, Costa Rica was the perfect place for such a global conference, as well the leaders of the Alliance knew. Costa Rica is a groundbreaker in many regards. The country has no military, having disarmed its army in 1949. The former military headquarters is now a Museum of Peace. Money that would have been diverted to defense is poured into education. As a result, Costa Ricans are very well educated and about one out of ten people speak English almost as well as Spanish. (Learning English is compulsory, as is education, in Costa Rica.) Electric service abounds – reaching 97% of the territory! And recently, Costa Rica became the first Central American country to establish diplomatic relations with China. On October 24, 2007, President Arias of Costa Rica and President Hu Jintao of China agreed to cooperate on technologies, investment, culture, public health and agriculture.

Costa Rica is known for protecting their rainforests, for electing a Nobel Peace Prize winning President, for their educated citizens, for their spectacular beaches and for pura vida – enjoying a grand life. The cultural mix of African, Spanish and Indian makes for some of the most beautiful people in God’s creation. (I overheard a woman comment that she’s surprised that everyone isn’t half-Costa Rican -- the men and women are so beautiful.) So does peace work flawlessly when given a chance?

Peace appears to work amazingly well, especially when you consider how literate the people of Costa Rica are – in the fine arts, in addition to basic math and language skills -- compared to their neighbors. However, there are some unique factors that play into Costa Rican peace, which are not the case in war-torn countries. Costa Rica doesn’t have any rare, expensive natural resources – like diamonds, oil or gold – and the citizens feel that the United States has their back if they were to be invaded. It’s much easier to walk the back alleys of the world in daylight without anything of value glistening on your neck, and a big security guard a few paces behind you.

Marianne Williamson suggests that countries like the U.S. don’t need to disband their armies (yet) to start actively promoting peace now. As the Chair of the Peace Alliance, an organization with the goal of putting a Department of Peace in the United States government, Marianne is not proposing either or. According to Williamson, the United States needs both -- a department of peace and a department of defense.

"What a Department of Peace will do is give a more sophisticated analysis of what constitutes peace, of what it would take to wage peace in as meaningful and sophisticated a way as we now know how to wage war," Marianne proclaimed to a crowd of peacemakers last February, who seconded her thoughts with a standing ovation. "We must do more than fight our enemies. We must create more friends," she said.


Deepak Chopra speaking at the National Peace Museum in San Jose.

Peace starts with personal interaction -- even at a peace rally. It wasn’t all good times and Hallelujah in the group dialogs at the Human Forum in Costa Rica. Two brothers complained that there was too much politicizing and flagrant promotion of Costa Rica real estate for sale. "I thought that this was going to be more spiritual," they said. One panelist, Sam Keen, called for an end to all business now, saying, "The best thing the business community can do is commit suicide." In a discussion on how to influence the "influencers," an American man called business leaders "monsters," who were in the business of "profiteering for greed."

Since half of the audience was made up of business leaders (who understand the responsibilities of running a business), there were more than a few uncomfortable moments before the presupposed myths of business and money as "bad," which were held by a very vocal minority, began to be deflated. One person received a standing ovation when she called for a capital markets solution to the inhumane conditions of raising cattle, which might be contributing to the greenhouse gas effect. "If you want to stop ranchers from raising cattle, simply stop eating meat!" she said. In solidarity, the conference leaders asked for vegetarian meals to be served the following day.

Those calling for an end to all business were probably not aware that I was sent to the conference to represent business by an enlightened investment banker, a senior executive at his company, who believes that capital solutions have been responsible for many of the social innovations that we most love. He believes something even more radical -- that creative banking, for example, Mike Milken’s high yield bonds, can contribute to the "democratization of capital." This particular executive protects the people he employs, feels personally responsible for their livelihoods, promotes the interests of his customers and works to ensure that the corporation is sound so that shareholders – regular folks, like you and I, with a pension plan -- continue to benefit from their investments.

Speaking under anonymity, the investment banker wrote to me by email:

Money and business are not evil. Enlightened spiritual architects must be cautioned to not blame commerce for the structure of society. Money is a storage of potential energy. It is a transactional "battery". We don't blame batteries for the poor direction of flashlights; we shouldn't blame money for the poor direction of people.



Deepak Chopra with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez and Culture Minister María Elena Carballo.
Photo Credit: Erika Rand

When influencing the business leaders and policymakers, another attendee counseled that, "They are parents. They are people who care." She recommended that promoters of peace and sustainable living sit down and meet with business and governmental leaders as fellow souls, and that individuals should be quick to thank fast food companies that switch to paper packaging over Styrofoam. Deepak Chopra would agree. In an interview with me, the bestselling author said, "You start by giving recognition to organizations and communities that are nurturing the environment that are using wisdom-based economies for their affluence."

And thus, having 525 tourists infuse capital into Costa Rica, supporting a state of peace by spending their money on food, hotels and by shopping in the malls, is in perfect alliance with the mission of the Human Forum. Whether the attendees understood it or not, the money brought into Costa Rica from their conference plays a role in ensuring that a country dedicated at its core to natural existence, preservation of rain forests and promoting peace among its neighbors continues to flourish. As Deepak Chopra said, "Costa Rica could serve as a model, as a microcosm for what could happen in the rest of the world."

By the end of the three days, it felt as though business leaders had infused greater tolerance into the peacemakers and the peacemakers were learning to employ best business practices to achieve their ends. All in all – it was just another day at the office, full of give and take, push and pull, frustration and insight, and, ultimately, celebration and a spark of new ideas. They came thinking that peace began with an end to business as usual, and left singing, "All we are saying is give peace and good business practices a chance."






Deepak Chopra is the President of The Alliance for a New Humanity, the founder of the Chopra Wellness Center and the author of more than 40 books. You can access more information on Deepak Chopra, on The Third Jesus, on the Chopra Center and on the Alliance for a New Humanity, at Deepak Chopra’s website, DeepakChopra.com.

For more information on Marianne Williamson and Marianne’s new book, The Age of Miracles, go to Marianne.com. For more information on the Peace Alliance and the Department of Peace bill that is currently before the House of Representatives, go to ThePeaceAlliance.org.

To find out more about vacationing in beautiful Costa Rica, with their white-sand beaches and rain forests, go to VisitCostaRica.com.



Other articles of interest in our ongoing Peace = Prosperity series:
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on Peace and Fairness in Iraq. Exclusive Interview with Natalie Pace. Vol. 4, issue 9.

Peace = Prosperity. Q&A with Dr. Gary Becker, esteemed University of Chicago economist and Nobel Laureate, on how freedom, democracy, war, terrorism, riots and gangs affect a nation's prosperity. By Natalie Pace. Vol. 4, issue 6.

The Economics of Disaster Management. By Dr. Gary S. Becker. Vol. 4, issue 6.

Stars Shine on Marianne Williamson’s Peace Plan. by Natalie Pace. NataliePace.com archived ezine, vol. 4, issue 3.
Steven Tyler, Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Smart, Deepak Chopra, Reverend Michael Bernard Beck, Frances Fisher, Denise Brown and Marianne Williamson entertain, inspire and educate Marianne’s Peace Alliance conference attendees to become citizen lobbyists on behalf of House Bill number 808, calling for a U.S. Department of Peace!

Spiritual Gurus Weigh in on The Department of Peace Bill. By Natalie Pace. NataliePace.com archived ezine, vol. 4, issue 3.

China's Evolution Toward Freedom. A candid interview with one of the most respected CEOs in mainland China, Dr. Charles Zhang, Chairman and CEO, Sohu.com. By Natalie Pace. NataliePace.com archived ezine, Vol. 4, issue 1.

Gap's Inc(RED)ible Campaign to Empower Africa. By Natalie Pace. Featuring (PRODUCT) RED. Vol. 3, issue 12.