Healing the Mind of a Child Soldier
“I didn’t feel a thing for him, didn’t think much what I was doing…The prisoner was simply another rebel who was responsible for the death of my family, as I had come to truly believe” (Beah 124). In the Memoir “a long way gone” by Ishmael Beah, sees 12-year-old Ishmael trying to survive in the war stricken country of Sierra Leone. Ishmael is just an ordinary boy when the RUF (Revolutionary United Front) attacks his home of Mattru Jong, while he is away in a neighboring city. For the next year Ishmael runs away from the war desperate to find his family. He journeys with a group of boys, but soon loses them to the chaos and is alone trying to endure on his own. After being alone for quite some time Ishmael …show more content…
Ishmael and Mambu, his friend, find a way of selling the given school supplies and hopping on a bus to Freetown. “we laughed and clapped for the dancers” (Beah 146). They had fun, they had un violence influenced fun, something that is not just healthy but that influences them in a way that lets them know that there is a way out, or something other than the war to occupy their minds. When Ishmael and Mambu return to the Benin Home, they tell all the others about what they had experienced and seen. All the boys wish to go and see the city, so they sell school supplies to get money to go. Eventually people stop buying there supplies and they are forced to go to classes if they want the Benin home to provide trips for them. “Attending class became a requirement for the weekend trips to the city…. Because of these things we began going to class” (Beah 148). Mike Wessells article Child Soldiers says that it important to reteach to the children what it means to be a kid. One way that they achieve this is by using a game called the tunnel. “The boys stood in two lines facing each other, with partners in the line joining hands and raising their arms, creating a tunnel through which the first two boys, would run. When they reached the end, they faced one another and locked their hands in the air, becoming part of the tunnel through which the next pair at the front of the line ran” (Wessells The tunnel). The point of the game is to teach the kids that “The tunnel existed only through cooperation, the joined hands symbolizing human interconnectedness. The game required trust, because the boys forming the tunnel could have easily collapsed the tunnel, tripping the runners. Or they could have harassed the runners in myriad ways” (Wessells The
“I didn’t feel a thing for him, didn’t think much what I was doing…The prisoner was simply another rebel who was responsible for the death of my family, as I had come to truly believe” (Beah 124). In the Memoir “a long way gone” by Ishmael Beah, sees 12-year-old Ishmael trying to survive in the war stricken country of Sierra Leone. Ishmael is just an ordinary boy when the RUF (Revolutionary United Front) attacks his home of Mattru Jong, while he is away in a neighboring city. For the next year Ishmael runs away from the war desperate to find his family. He journeys with a group of boys, but soon loses them to the chaos and is alone trying to endure on his own. After being alone for quite some time Ishmael …show more content…
Ishmael and Mambu, his friend, find a way of selling the given school supplies and hopping on a bus to Freetown. “we laughed and clapped for the dancers” (Beah 146). They had fun, they had un violence influenced fun, something that is not just healthy but that influences them in a way that lets them know that there is a way out, or something other than the war to occupy their minds. When Ishmael and Mambu return to the Benin Home, they tell all the others about what they had experienced and seen. All the boys wish to go and see the city, so they sell school supplies to get money to go. Eventually people stop buying there supplies and they are forced to go to classes if they want the Benin home to provide trips for them. “Attending class became a requirement for the weekend trips to the city…. Because of these things we began going to class” (Beah 148). Mike Wessells article Child Soldiers says that it important to reteach to the children what it means to be a kid. One way that they achieve this is by using a game called the tunnel. “The boys stood in two lines facing each other, with partners in the line joining hands and raising their arms, creating a tunnel through which the first two boys, would run. When they reached the end, they faced one another and locked their hands in the air, becoming part of the tunnel through which the next pair at the front of the line ran” (Wessells The tunnel). The point of the game is to teach the kids that “The tunnel existed only through cooperation, the joined hands symbolizing human interconnectedness. The game required trust, because the boys forming the tunnel could have easily collapsed the tunnel, tripping the runners. Or they could have harassed the runners in myriad ways” (Wessells The