A Long Way Gone

Ex-child soldier tells horrors of warBy TIM COLLIESouth Florida Sun-Sentinel

How did it feel to kill someone?

Did you ever shoot other children?

How was your family murdered?

The questions came fast Friday as he stood before a group of South Broward High School students. They were trying to understand how the slight, well-spoken young man standing before them once killed dozens as a young teen.

"Shooting just one person damages you," Beah told a rapt audience of about 300. "You're never the same."

At 26, he is a former African child soldier, rap singer, diplomat and overnight literary sensation. Beah spent two hours reading from his memoir, A Long Way Gone, and answering questions from dozens of students.

Beah was forced into the army at the age of 13 to fight for Sierra Leone's army against a rebel group. By his own account, he killed dozens of people over two years, until he was rescued by the United Nations child protection organization. His family - parents and two brothers - were killed in a massacre during the war. After being counseled and schooled in Africa, he was adopted by a family in New York City, where he attended school. In 2004 he graduated from Oberlin College.

Since then, he has worked with the United Nations and Human Rights Watch to bring recognition to the plight of child soldiers not only in Africa, but also in Latin American and Caribbean countries such as Haiti and Colombia.

Once in an army, the children were drugged - most inhaled a mix of cocaine and gunpowder called brown-brown - to make them more manageable and numb them to the carnage, Beah said.

"We'd go out and kill all day and then you'd come back and do drugs and watch videos, listen to music," Beah told the students. "You didn't ever cry. The children who cried . . . they were shot.
"There weren't any uniforms - we were just kids with T-shirts, without shirts, wearing flip-flops or bare-footed," he said. "The youngest soldiers I knew were 7 years old. Their AK-47s were taller than they were so they had to drag them."

The Hollywood students, a diverse group of blacks, whites, Hispanics and Asians, seemed only vaguely aware of events in Africa.

"I don't think many of us know what's going on there, except for maybe what's happening in Darfur," said JoAnn Soero, 15, an officer in the school's Amnesty International club. "It's just incredible how he was able to go through something like that and come out of it like he has. He's my new role model."

Latasha Ducktant, 17, a junior, said she planned to read Beah's book and others about Africa.
"American teenagers, we just live in this very protective, isolated world. We don't have any idea that anything like this is going on," she said. Like many students, she had only heard about Sierra Leone and the diamond trade through the songs of hip-hop superstar Kanye West.
Yoni Anijar, 15, a sophomore, attended two sessions of Beah's readings because he was so fascinated with Beah's descriptions. He had seen the movie Blood Diamond, a film that Beah said offered an accurate depiction of the Sierra Leone war, and wanted to learn more.

"I want to be a lawyer and a judge and get involved in helping people in situations like this," said Anijar. "This is happening all over the world . . . I think it's important that the word get out about this."

And that's exactly what Beah wanted to hear.

"What I wanted to get them to understand was that people are driven to this, that they started out with normal lives, and they get caught up in these circumstances and forced into this," he said.

"I think they're beginning to understand that now."

Beah's book is available at Starbucks, A Long Way Gone.