A long way gone

Recently read A long way gone by Ishmael Beah. Borrowed it from work because I am ignorant about Africa and the subject matter looked interesting. The book is the story of a man who was a child soldier fighting in the civil war in Sierra Leone, in West Africa.

I found the descriptions of the people intriguing. Take this description of Ishmael’s grandmother, for instance:

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.

Ishmael describes a visit to his grandmother just before the fighting breaks out in his home town and in his grandmother’s village. When he returns to the village it is deserted and there are people dead in the streets. He never finds his grandmother and the reader is left wondering what happened to her, although one can imagine what might have happened to her…

He returns to his home town to try and find his family, but it is chaotic and he has no idea where they are.

In the bushes along the river, the strained voices of women cried out, “Nguwor gbor mu ma oo,” God help us, and screamed the names of their children: “Yusufu, Jabu, Foday…” We saw children walking by themselves, shirtless, in their underwear, following the crowd. “Nya nje oo, nya keke oo,” my mother, my father, the children were crying. There were also dogs running, in between the crowds of people, who were still running, even though far from harm. The dogs sniffed the air, looking for their owners. My veins tightened.

Ishmael describes how he feels by saying his veins tightened or I became so sad that the bones in my body started to ache. I’d never heard this way of expressing tension or sadness before; is this phrasing particularly Sierra Leonean or West African?

The food was what really brought home my ignorance of African cultures: rice and fish stew in palm oil, cassava leaves, okra soup, leweh (rice paste), kola nuts. I also remember reading about kola nuts in Chinua Achebe’s Things fall apart, but I’m sure I have never seen them here in Western Australia.

Ishmael’s experiences as a child soldier, from the age of 13 to 15, were harrowing. The soldiers gave the child soldiers drugs: tafe (marijuana) and brown brown (cocaine mixed with gun powder). “The combination of these drugs gave us a lot of energy and made us fierce.”

Imagine all those children’s lives, destroyed by war.