Ishmael baya a former child soldier from
Sierra Leone has said no one is born
violent no child in Africa Latin America
or Asia wants to be part of war these
are situations children are forced into
hi I’m Christine on watchmojo.com we’re
going to be talking to Ishmael Beah the
author of a number one New York Times
bestseller entitled a long way gone
memoirs of a child soldier basically
general experience of being a child
soldiers that you lose everything that’s
dear to you within family community and
your cultural values norms and the
normalcy that you have known as a child
so your life becomes fearing for your
life constantly and it just becomes
about trying to stay alive and in the
context of a war that requires fighting
and taking other people’s lives you were
rescued after two years by UNICEF what
was some of the process of
rehabilitating you so that you could be
integrated back into society well first
of all there’s a lot of psychosocial
therapy and there’s also a lot of the
draw from the drugs and a lot of undoing
of some of the the way I’ve been
conditioned to behave living without
violence
trusting in other people learning even
how to sleep so I was in the center for
eight months that allowed me to go
through that motion through sports into
other things but then after that as the
people that came into my life having a
family being able to go to school that’s
a holistic aspect to find that there’s
something more that I can do with my
life is supposed to what I’ve come to
know why did you feel you needed to
share this story with a mass audience
there needed to be a human face put to
this experience so that people who are
now closer we do not think that is so
far enough that it happened so different
kind of human beings it happens to
people whose humanity are the same as
everyone anywhere and all of us with the
circumstances we can lose ourselves so I
wanted people to see that how this
violence comes into people’s life how it
disrupted but also more importantly the
possibility of recovering from it that
is often not spoken about that children
as myself as I was who are dragged into
this war not a lost generation they can
heal they can recover with the right
hand support now I was very lucky not
only to survive it but also have an
education so it became a responsibility
for me to be able to write about this so
people can know that it’s not the end
when it happens to people
Sierra Leone has said no one is born
violent no child in Africa Latin America
or Asia wants to be part of war these
are situations children are forced into
hi I’m Christine on watchmojo.com we’re
going to be talking to Ishmael Beah the
author of a number one New York Times
bestseller entitled a long way gone
memoirs of a child soldier basically
general experience of being a child
soldiers that you lose everything that’s
dear to you within family community and
your cultural values norms and the
normalcy that you have known as a child
so your life becomes fearing for your
life constantly and it just becomes
about trying to stay alive and in the
context of a war that requires fighting
and taking other people’s lives you were
rescued after two years by UNICEF what
was some of the process of
rehabilitating you so that you could be
integrated back into society well first
of all there’s a lot of psychosocial
therapy and there’s also a lot of the
draw from the drugs and a lot of undoing
of some of the the way I’ve been
conditioned to behave living without
violence
trusting in other people learning even
how to sleep so I was in the center for
eight months that allowed me to go
through that motion through sports into
other things but then after that as the
people that came into my life having a
family being able to go to school that’s
a holistic aspect to find that there’s
something more that I can do with my
life is supposed to what I’ve come to
know why did you feel you needed to
share this story with a mass audience
there needed to be a human face put to
this experience so that people who are
now closer we do not think that is so
far enough that it happened so different
kind of human beings it happens to
people whose humanity are the same as
everyone anywhere and all of us with the
circumstances we can lose ourselves so I
wanted people to see that how this
violence comes into people’s life how it
disrupted but also more importantly the
possibility of recovering from it that
is often not spoken about that children
as myself as I was who are dragged into
this war not a lost generation they can
heal they can recover with the right
hand support now I was very lucky not
only to survive it but also have an
education so it became a responsibility
for me to be able to write about this so
people can know that it’s not the end
when it happens to people
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