"Why I Write" by Ishmael Beah

I did not believe in my youth that I would be one to write a book. There was little that concerned me aside from survival for a long time. Even after I had gone through rehabilitation and left Sierra Leone, my experience there was not something that I was able to discuss, even with people in my life that I was closest with. However, it was not something that I could leave to dredge in the desert sand of my home land. Seeing the faces of the other children at the UN conferences, I knew that I was not like them. I knew that they had not seen what I had, nor could they understand it. But it was not just the children that made me want to share my story; they were not the only ones that did not understand. Adults everything viewed my story as surreal- as if it couldn't be true. Most did not want to believe that children and civilians could be caught up in the middle of such madness. The children in Sierra Leone are the ones who suffered the most. Most of us were not saved by the expected end of death, but forced to go on, and stare it in the face. In writing A Long Way Gone, there were many times in which I felt as if I were 12 years old again, the cold dead feeling of drugs and hate. We no longer cried as children, we were not afraid. We wanted to bathe in blood. It was long before I finally understood what the nurses and rehabilitation workers were trying to tell us all: “it's not your fault.” At first I hated this. Sometimes I can feel the courage of a young warrior fighting to say that I fought for my family, for my country. In reality, neither side was right. We were twelve year old boys, brainwashed by drugs and loss. I do not write because it does my existence any kind of justice to do so. I write because I want people to understand : my story is not the only one.  There are many others crying out to be told, others who want the world to never forget, and never let it happen again. I am not the only one.