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I Had A Very Simple, Unremarkable And Happy Life. And I Grew Up In A Very Small Town. And So My Life Was Made Up Of, You Know, In The Morning Going To The River To Fetch Water - No Tap Water, And No Electricity - And, You Know, Bathing In The River, And Then Going To School, And Playing Soccer Afterwards.

-Ishmael Beah

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I Had A Very

Ishmael Beah

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I Had A Very Simple, Unremarkable And Happy Life. And I Grew Up In A Very Small Town. And So My Life Was Made Up Of, You Know, In The Morning Going To The River To Fetch Water - No Tap Water, And No Electricity - And, You Know, Bathing In The River, And Then Going To School, And Playing Soccer Afterwards.

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I Am Always Quiet So That I Know What To Say When I Must Speak.

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How Many More Times Do We Have To Come To Terms With Death Before We Find Safety?

I Believe In Having A More Open Mind And Including Others Who Don't Share Your Faith And Having Dialogue With Them. And Just Having A Pure Heart And Being A Good Person Can Bring You Closer To God. Because Once You Believe In One Particular Religion Fully And Not Others, That Requires You To Start Disliking People Who Don't Share Your Views.

As A Kid In Africa, You Were So Connected To Nature Itself Because You Went Farming, Watched The Moon Out At Night, Observed How The Sky Was Different, And How The Birds Chanted Different Songs In The Evening And The Morning.

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I Lay In My Bed Night After Night Staring At The Ceiling And Thinking, Why Have I Survived The War? Why Was I The Last Person In My Immediate Family To Be Alive? I Didn’t Know.

The Places I Come From Have Such Rich Languages, Such A Variety Of Expression. In Sierra Leone We Have About Fifteen Languages And Three Dialects. I Grew Up Speaking About Seven Of Them.

I Joined The Army To Avenge The Deaths Of My Family And To Survive, But I've Come To Learn That If I Am Going To Take Revenge, In That Process I Will Kill Another Person Whose Family Will Want Revenge; Then Revenge And Revenge And Revenge Will Never Come To An End.

In Early 1993, When I Was 12, I Was Separated From My Family As The Sierra Leone Civil War, Which Began Two Years Earlier, Came Into My Life.

I Guess What I'd Like To Say Is That People In Sierra Leone Are Human Beings, Just Like Americans. They Want To Send Their Kids To School; They Want To Live In Peace; They Want To Have Their Basic Rights Of Life Just Like Everyone Else. I Think We All Owe An Obligation To Support People Who Want To Do That.

This Is One Of The Consequences Of The Civil War. People Stop Trusting Each Other, And Every Stranger Becomes An Enemy.

Trusting Each Other

One Of The Unsettling Things About My Journey, Mentally, Physically, And Emotionally, Was That I Wasn’t Sure When Or Where It Was Going To End.

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I Get A Chance To Observe The Moon Now, I Still See Those Same Images I Saw When I Was Six, And It Pleases Me To Know That That Part Of My Childhood Is Still Embedded In Me.

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My Squad Is My Family, My Gun Is My Provider, And Protector, And My Rule Is To Kill Or Be Killed.

I Believe That There Is A God, And Coming From An African Tradition, I Believe Also That There Are Gods.

My Childhood Had Gone By Without My Knowing, And It Seemed As If My Heart Had Frozen.

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We Must Live In The Radiance Of Tomorrow, As Our Ancestors Have Suggested In Their Tales. For What Is Yet To Come Tomorrow Has Possibilities, And We Must Think Of It, The Simplest Glimpse Of That Possibility Of Goodness. That Will Be Our Strength. That Has Always Been Our Strength.

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