Essay - Baeh's Reflection of Childhood and War War and Political Strife...

Baeh's Reflection of Childhood and War

***** and political strife are typically thought of as commonplace occurrences in Africa. And where it compares to more industrialized continents, it is true that Africa remains more sharply ***** hostilely divided across ethnic, geographical and political lines than other inhabited continents. However, there is nothing which can be claimed as 'normal' in the experience ***** a child growing up in a time and place of war. In Ishmael Baeh's 2007 reflection on ***** experience, the author describes a civil war in his home country ***** Sierra Leone as someth*****g which critically effected him ***** which was a terrible dep*****rture from his life ***** that juncture. ***** Baeh's text, ***** author gives firsthand account of the acts of cruelty and bloodletting which he committed as a child ***** ***** mere twelve years old while working as a soldier for the government. The text effectively serves to address the western perspective that war is a normal event for ***** African child, discounting t***** position by showing the deep psychological damage levied on such children ***** Baeh.

***** introduction ***** Baeh's story is important for dispelling preconceived notions about ***** African lifestyle. Indeed, we are made clearly a*****e that the work is oriented toward Western audiences that must be disabused of the notion that war is a state of normalcy to the African society. This is important as the media portrayal ***** public image of the continent to Americans is as AIDS-ridden, famine-struck and war-*****rn. While the Baeh autobiography does nothing to dispel these ideas, that make the case that ***** things are not at all normal. In *****'s initial comments, we come to underst***** something of ***** dramatic alteration of life and survival caused ***** the intrusion of war on his **********fore unremarkable existence in Sierra Leone. As he tells it in retrospect, "the only *****s I knew of *****re those that I had read about in books or seen ***** movies such as Rambo: First Blood and the one in neighboring Liberia that had heard about on the BBC news. My imagination at ten ***** old didn't have the capacity to grasp what had taken away the happiness ***** the refugees." (1)

And indeed, this is reinforced by his immediate encounter with the violence and outcome. The reality of it does not *****ly strike this young boy. Even as the war will soon come to define ***** and his perspective on the world, at *****s first showing it bore a surre*****l and indescribable feeling for Baeh. In his own admission he finds that he is incapable at ***** of recognizing ***** meaning of that ***** has come to pass. As ***** ***** his friends, westernized ***** the point of dedicating their talents to perfecting their hip-hop act, depart from town, the war sets in and creates a scene of chaos. Awa*****ing news of their families, ***** and his ***** *****ed that "the day seemed oddly normal. The sun peacefully sailed through ***** white clouds,