A Long Way Gone- Ishmael Beah (pg 1-17)

     The first chapter of this book has captured my attention. It starts with two young sons of a man who has divorced their birth mother and is now with a horrid step mother. The two young boys, for living in the Sierra Leone, are well set off; listening to american music and have possession of a large amount of western clothing. The younger son, Ismael Beah (the author), narrates a journey that the boys take through the Sierra Leone. The two boys, Ismael the younger, and Jounior the eldest, set off on a journey destination of Mattru Jong but stopping in their grandmothers village Kabati on the way. They depart and reach Kabati to rest and visit with their grandmother and then head out to Mattru Jong, doing all this in one day. Once arriving and spending the night at a friends house in Mattru Jong, the two boys hear news that the rebel uprising had reached their home village, Mogbwemo, on the previous day. The boys immediately decide to head back to Mogbbwemo to try and find their father and birth mother(who also lived their). On their way back they stopped back in Kabati only to find chaos. This is the part of the story that captured my attention.

     Upon arrival at Kabati, the two young boys find utter chaos. Witnesses to a world unknown in the western world. People fleeing into the jungle in every direction yelling "God save me!" and "Run they will be in Kabati next!". The boys ignored all this determined to reach their home town of Magbwemo. This thought changed when the boys were haunted when reaching their grandmothers house. No grandmother to be seen the boys sat and did not know what to do. As they sat they watched a VW van come flying over the hill into the town. They fled into their grandmother's hut. The person in the van was not a rebel but in fact the opposite. The injured man fell out of the driver side riddled with bullet holes but not dead, he vommited blood like a flood in the streets. Everyone fled except a young woman who comforted the wounded man and the two young brothers. The wounded man gestured to the sliding van door. The woman comforting him opened the door and the wounded mans wife dropped to the floor, hitting with a thump. Two others lay dead in the back seats. The van was filled with a family trying to escape Magbwemo. The rebels shot through the van hundreds of times as the fled the village. This was one of two scenes that haunted the young boys. The next was another woman who walked through Kabati with her baby strapped to her back, dead. The baby in a sense acted as a sort of body armor while she fled the scene at Magbwemo. She stopped in front of the two boys and took the baby and placed it in front of them, the baby was already starting to bloat. The young boys stood in awe of what they just saw. 

     This first chapter definitely opened my eyes to the world we live in today. The fact that these, western influenced, young boys all of a sudden had their lives flipped upside down makes me think what could happen to America if we were to rebel against our theoretical "dictoral" government. Also i liked that Ismael captures your attention and uses the nature around the villages to portray and make parallels with what was happening to him and his brother during his journey. I really enjoyed this about his writing style because he sets the setting while using the setting to parallel his journey.