Why I Wrote My Memoir, A Long Way Gone

      I wrote this book because I wanted to share with people, using my own experiences, how children are drawn into brutal wars, how communities and societies collapse during wartime, how family structures and landscapes rapidly change due to extreme violence. To do this, I needed to show the humility, culture and interaction of the closely-knit and accommodating village community and country that I grew up in and how the brutal ten-year civil war fueled its disintegration.

     I wanted to bring the reader to the landscape of my country in such a way that they become part of my journey, and the journey of many other children, to witness, see and feel our humanity and how we lost it. And more importantly to show that all human beings, regardless of who we are or were we live, are capable of loosing their humanity if faced with circumstances that forces them to do so. Equally, I have come to learn that we all have the capacity to transform our suffering and give meaning to our lives again, if given the support and help.

      To write such a book, that doesn't glorify violence or romanticize war, as they only bring about more suffering, meant that I would have to be honest and to delve deeper into a past that is extremely difficult to remember. I felt that it was important to do so at the time I decided to write. I didn't always want to remember the past.       

     When I came to live and continue school in the United States in 1998, I wanted to put my recent past behind me. I got a chance to do so that summer before I started high school at the United Nations International School in New York City. My new mother, Laura Simms, took me on her storytelling trips around the country and I got a chance to rest from all my ordeals and be fully present in my new life.   

      However, during my first semester of high school, I became disheartened when I found out that most people didn't even know that my country Sierra Leone existed and knew nothing about the brutal war that continued to unfold there at that time.  I talked to my mother about this and she said she would support me to do what I felt necessary to expose what was going on in my country. I hadn't thought that I would want to revisit my war memories so soon but I felt that it was important to speak about the tremendous suffering that people were undergoing in my country, to put a human face to what seemed distant to some and to others, non-existent.

       I started speaking about home during a cultural educational event at my high school to teach students about where their schoolmates were from. For my presentation, I explained what a day was like for a young person in Sierra Leone during the war. After that, I began speaking at the United Nations, on behalf of Human Rights Watch, UNICEF, Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, and at myriad events and places to raise awareness about the use of children in wars. I wanted to put a human face to this appalling phenomenon that continues even to this day. I used my personal story to talk about the violence that children are subjected to when pressed into wars, and I also presented myself as an example that these same children are resilient and capable of regaining their lives if given the opportunities and support.
 

     Throughout high school and my undergraduate years at Oberlin College, I continued to speak to raise awareness of the issue of child soldiering and generally children affected by war all over the world.  At the end of every presentation, I felt that a better understanding of the issue was needed so that programs and measures to effectively help those children affected, and those that continued to fall victim to this madness, can be put it place. It wasn't until I started taking writing classes at Oberlin College that it struck me that I must write a book about my experiences; a book that would serve as a powerful advocacy tool about the issue of children affected by wars.

You can learn more about my book, A Long Way Gone, and find my Starbucks book tour and Book Break schedules at the Book Break group on Gather. To join the group, click here.