A Long Way Gone- Entry #5

After finishing this book, I was struck by how it is both uplifting and discouraging. For the first two thirds of the memoir, Beah focuses on describing the horrors he was forced to endure in Sierra Leone. However, his escape to New York at the end of the book left me feeling hopeful, as if there really is a light at the end of the tunnel. His choice to end on this note truly says something about Beah's optimistic outlook on the war as a whole. The most interesting element of the end of the memoir was the last couple of pages. During these, Beah digresses into an African folk tale about a monkey who speaks to a hunter. The hunter, moments away from pulling his trigger and killing the monkey, is told by the animal, "'If you shoot me, your mother will die, if you don't, your father will die'" (217). After several paragraphs of discussion as to what his own decision would be if he were to be confronted with this predicament, Beah finally concludes in the last paragraph of the memoir, "I concluded to myself that if I were the hunter, I would shoot the monkey so that it would no longer have the chance to put other hunters in the same predicament" (218). I took this ending as a call to action. Through this folk tale, Beah urges to the reader to do more than merely think about oneself. Despite the danger that may come in confronting terrorist groups such as the RUF, one must consider that the right decision is never one that is solely focuses on one's personal needs. In other words, yes, becoming involved in such a deeply violent issue may not be wonderful for a nation's foreign policy. We must realize though that we are not the only ones who have something to lose. Even if involvement in such an issue results in the initial loss of more lives, the long term benefits would far outweigh the short term costs.

A Long Way Gone- Entry #4

Even though the primary focus of the memoir is on the suffering of a child soldier, this part of the book was refreshingly uplifting. Beah is sent to a rehabilitation center in order to recover from his experiences with the RUF. Despite the massive amounts of violence and aggression Beah was forced to internalize, he finds solace in both music and a counselor named Esther. Beah is thorough in his description of his own rehabilitation process. That is, he makes sure that the reader is aware of his initial anxieties and resistance towards recovery. Even so, Beah shows that with time recovery will always come. He makes clear in the beginning of the book that music has always been a source of immense happiness for him. Therefore, it makes sense that music plays a large role in his recovery process. On page 160 Beah writes, “Esther got me to tell her some of my dreams. She would just listen and sit quietly with me. If she wanted to say anything, she would first ask, ‘Would you like me to say something about your dream?’ Mostly I would say no and ask for the Walkman.” This passage underscores Beah’s initial resistance to Esther’s attempts at helping him, yet his unwavering interest in music. Soon, his relationship with Esther and his love of music blend together. He says, “I began to look forward to Esther’s arrival in the afternoons. I sang her parts of the songs I had memorized that day. Memorizing lyrics left me little time to think about what had happened in the war” (163). Here, his tendency to use music as an escape enables him to recover the trauma caused by the war. As I said earlier in this post, this section of the memoir was very uplifting: it shows that despite any trauma, no matter how severe, there is never a point of no return. Recovery is always possible. 

A Long Way Gone- Entry #3

In the most recent section of the memoir, it has become clear how the children devolve once they have become soldiers. I wrongly assumed that the children, despite their “initiation” still feel immense resistance to fighting and killing. However, Beah shows that while he may have felt this way for a few days, it quickly subsides.  He writes that before his first ‘battle,’ he would get constant migraines and sometime be so petrified that even the smallest of noises would startle him. After his first battle though, he explains that his attitude towards death and killing became almost mechanic, such that he felt no emotion or remorse upon ending a life.

In my research of Invisible Children and the entire issue of child soldiers as a whole, I have come to understand that this issue extends far beyond itself, with problems such as HIV, poverty, and hunger crises stemming from it. A Long Way Gone also explores the role played by drugs in this war. Beah writes about how, in an effort to cope with and simply survive the fighting he was forced to endure, he and the other soldiers would snort cocaine, brown brown (a mixture of cocaine and gunpowder), smoke marijuana, and take powerful painkillers. Although he was only thirteen when he was a child soldier, Beah admits to having been addicted to both cocaine and painkillers at that age, simply because of how readily available they were made to him. When he recounts a particular time when he simultaneously took high amounts of the aforementioned drugs, he writes that his heart would rapidly palpitate and he would break out into heavy sweats. Not only did this section of the memoir make me realize how mentally and emotionally abusive this practice of taking child soldiers can be, but I also noted how many residual effects (ie: drug addiction) are caused by this issue. 

Invisible Children- Source #4

This article discusses a small Ugandan town called Lira, which has been serving as a place of refuge for those displaced by Joseph Kony's LRA. This article shows that although there may be camps that serve as a place to home displaced victims of the war, there is truly no escape. The article says of Lira, "There is fear and anger, thousands more people are without the services so desperately needed. Hospitals and clinics are without medicine. There is a lack of food and water, medical care. But thousands are flocking in for safety; tens of thousands want to remain near just to be safe." This particular passage underscores the point that the hell Joseph Kony has created is unescapable, especially for the children "night commuters" who hide during the daytime and flock to such camps to find shelter at night. The desperation in Uganda, especially from the children, is staggering. The more I read about this issue and how severe it has become, the more I support the efforts of organizations such as Invisible Children. While their efforts go primarily to helping children of Uganda and other war-torn regions of Africa that struggle with the problem of child soldiers, in helping the children they will be hugely instrumental in the ending the conflict altogether, seeing as how children make up the vast majority of Kony's army (as of 2009, approximately 20,000 children had been abducted by the LRA). In effect, the dismantling of Kony's followers can allow for the more peripheral, yet still grave, issues such extreme poverty, famine, and disease to be addressed and ultimately rectified.

Invisible Children- Source #3

While many articles I have read focus on the issues of the child soldiers and the Ugandan war on a larger scale, the the Washington Post article "A Child's Hell in the Lord's Resistance Army" gave an up-close personal account of what it is like to be an abducted child soldier. The article tells the story of Grace Akallo, who was abducted by the LRA from her school, St. Mary's College. Before reading this article, I assumed that the LRA would mainly abduct boys, as they may prove to be more efficient and effective soldiers. However, in the article Grace explains that she, along with 138 other girls, were marched out of their school by the LRA. After being taken to a forest, the rebels eventually allowed 109 of the girls to go free with one of the nuns, while they kept the remaining 30; Grace was part of the latter group. She recounts how she was forced to beat and kill other children as part of her "initiation" as a soldier. In addition to this, the article explains how many girls who are abducted are taken as "wives" by LRA officers, leading to repeated sexual abuse. This article was very instrumental in helping me to understand the horrors experienced by child soldiers. The fact that this first-hand account was told through the eyes of a young girl reveals that the child soldier issue is not isolated to only young boys, but rather extends, unfortunately, to all of Uganda's children.

Invisible Children- Source #2

The article I read today is entitled "Christian Rebels Wage a War of Terror in Uganda." This article, published in the New York Times, seemed to focus mainly on the supposed aims of the LRA as well as the relationship between the LRA and the Ugandan President and government. The article says, "A year after Uganda's President, Yoweri Museveni, vowed to wipe out the insurgency in the north of this central African country, the bloodthirsty gangs of self-styled revolutionaries and Christian fundamentalist rebels known as the Lord's Resistance Army have not only survived, but are stepping up their campaign of terror." Clearly, the Ugandan government has done little to help this issue and, if anything, has in fact exacerbated its severity. Knowing this, I realize why it is so necessary to gain international involvement with this war, seeing as how the government has no control over the rebel army. Furthermore, the article asserts that the rebels lack the power or organization to actually topple the President, in effect leading to a kind of stalemate. This lack of a just controlling body in Uganda will only lead to the continued use of child soldiers--who make up 90% of the LRA's manpower-- in this war.

Invisible Children- Source #1

Today, I visited Invisible Children's website in order to learn more about the cause and the history of the war in Uganda. On their website, I found one particularly helpful page entitled "Uganda Today" that gave both background and history of the issue, but also outlined the chronology of the war and how it has evolved in the past decade. This article spoke about the Juba Peace Talks, which occured from 2006 until 2008 and were between the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Government of Uganda (GoU). These talks signified the longest period of peace in Uganda's 23 year war. Although the Juba Peace Talks developed with the hope that they would result in a resolution between the LRA's leader Joseph Kony and Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, Kony continually failed to sign the Final Peace Agreement (FPA), eventually resulting in the unfortunate dissolution of any hope for peace. The article explains that since the end of the Juba Peace Talks, LRA violence has only increased in intensity, displacing approximately 1.8 million people. This article really helped me to get a firm grasp on the history of the war that Invisible Children is working to end. This article continues to provide a detailed history of the issue by tracing its development since nearly 1996 until present day. Although it describes many of the atrocities committed by the LRA and Joseph Kony, it is also somewhat encouraging, as it offers information on the many attempts at peace talks, cease fire agreements, and treaties attempted by other nations in an effort to help Uganda. Although this war has the reputation of being largely ignored on the global scale, it appears that awareness is steadily increasing.