"A Long Way Gone: Memories of a Boy Soldier"

Make love, not hate

When I was a child, I played a lot with many children from a neighborhood. I still remember the feeling of joy and fun. We were spontaneous and very happy. I did not have many responsibilities at that time and felt free. We were enjoying the time together and no one would treat us badly or force us to do things. We also could distinguish what was bad and good to do. The moral rights were built into our intuition during childhood and we were raised in normal conditions of standard loving families. Unfortunately, some children cannot be so lucky and have such wonderful childhood as I or other children of the peaceful places have now. Sadly, there are approximately 300,000 children participating in about 30 conflicts. It is hard to imagine that children can harm and be dangerous. They seem to be born with free spirit and innocence. But the reasons for using ‘child soldiering’ in recent conflicts are characterized by the creation of orphans who are often abducted or sold, destruction of opportunities and the revenge. is a novel of a young writer Ishmael Beah who has experienced the drama of war in his life. In his book he describes the tragedy of his lost childhood but also of other thousands of boys and girls who were forced to fight and kill.
Those groups of people who are capable of doing such crime as kidnapping and grabbing children from their homes or selling them, are indifferent to the future of the next generation. They do not care about the principles and unit of the family but especially about the little individuals who are about to enter into life.
As long as people will not understand that teaching children violence and bringing them to the war area is not a moral right, there still will be tragedy, trauma, destruction and killing present in every day all around the world. The way the child is being brought up has important impact on the future of people and the matters in their life. It is not the innocent children fault that they are changed into dangerous individuals trained to kill, but the adults’. Children that were recruited to an army through such drastic actions as abduction, devastation of their hopes or teachings of revenge, is the worst crime ever that man could have committed. Children deserve to be loved, treated with special care and certainly not to be deprived of childhood or filled up with extreme dislike towards others. They shall be taught how to love and be loved, not how to hate.
Reading A Long Way Gone:Memories of a Boy Soldier gave me a lot of thinking of how damaging is war and how happy my childhood was.