Personal Narrative Letter Essay

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier and the recent 2006 film Blood Diamond both depict how it was living in Sierra Leone, Africa during the Civil War in the ‘90’s. While A Long Way Gone focuses on child soldiers and what they had to live and go through for many years, Blood Diamond focuses mainly on how the country is torn apart by the struggle between government soldiers and rebel forces. The film portrays many of the atrocities of that war, including the rebels' amputation of people's hands to stop them from voting in upcoming elections. Both the movie and the book try to tackle major issues by asking the questions: how

On 08/04/16 at 8:42pm, I was dispatched to 2087 S. Hamilton Rd, on a injury dangerous or vicious dog/injured dog, serious injury, involving a Columbus Police Officer (CPD) being bit by a dog and shooting dog. I arrived at the location. I was advised my CPD personnel that the CPD Officer that was bite was transported to the hospital and that the dog was still breathing. I was escorted to the area where the dog was. The dog was on the ground, next to the dog was dog owner Jackie Fate. I was unable to see any visible injuries to the dog, the dog had shallow breathing. I asked Ms. Fate to wrap the leash around the dog’s mouth to prevent the dog from biting her or me while I placed the dog on the stretcher. Ms. Fate complied, I slowly guided the dog on the

Sierra Leone has been involved in a humungous amount of absurd human rights violations since 1991 when the civil war erupted. This detailed paper on the book, A Long Way Gone, set in Sierra Leone, will create interest by summarizing the memoir through descriptive examples and text on symbolism and imagery. The author of this memoir A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier is Ishmael Beah, it's difficult to believe that this is a true and harsh story. You will be learning about Ishmael's resilience and the horrible struggles he faced as a child soldier, while somehow continuing to have hope. Ishmael Beah, 12 at the beginning of this memoir, unexpectedly gets recruited into a time consuming war over blood diamonds, against the rebels as a young child. Ishmael is at a loss, since with his own eyes he viewed not only his loving family, but his whole village as it was horrifically torn down by the dangerous rebels. Ishmael is not physically lonely during the book, but he is emotionally

In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah, a former boy soldier with the Sierra Leone army during its civil war(1991- 2002) with the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), provides an extraordinary and heartbreaking account of the war, his experience as a child soldier and his days at a rehabilitation center. At the age of twelve, when the RUF rebels attack his village named Mogbwemo in Sierro Leone, while he is away with his brother and some friends, his life takes a major twist. While seeking news of his family, Beah and his friends find themselves constantly running and hiding as they desperately strive to survive in a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. During this time, he loses his dear ones and left alone in the

In Ishmael Beah’s memoir “A Long Way Gone”, Beah’s imagery reflects both his decrepit emotional state and Sierra Leone’s disarray. When Beah explains how he and Kaloko went to Kamator to see if there were signs of anything living, he describes the scene as such, “The silence in the village was too scary. I was scared when the wind blew, shaking the thatched roofs, and I felt as if I were out of my body wandering somewhere” (46). Here, Beah’s distinguished use of imagery represents his worn emotional state and Sierra Leone’s disarray. How the war has not only turned villages into ghost towns, but also displays the emptiness and the fear that he has felt during this experience. This imagery represents the effects the war had on Sierra Leone

In the summer of 1985, I joined the Peace Corps and was assigned to the remote, landlocked country of Burkina Faso in West Africa. The stories contained in this work all have a basis in fact and are in general very much the way I remember things happening. That being said, “Agent 000” is completely fictitious, but even in this story, there is a dimension of reality, as it was commonplace for volunteers to be suspected of being CIA operatives.

On March 23rd, 1991, a civil war started between the Sierra Leonean Government and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). This war had an enormous impact on everyone in and around the country, especially young civilian boys who were taken from their families and homes to become child soldiers. One of these former government soldiers is Ishmael Beah, who was brought into this battle between powers at only 13 years old. Throughout his lifetime, he has had to confront many challenges and conflicts, most of which can be found in his memoir, “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.” After reading his memoir, I have gained much knowledge on the topic of both the Sierra Leone Civil War and the issue of children becoming soldiers. The themes of this

Mass killings have disrupted and affected many communities in the world. The ethnic violence witnessed in Rwanda, and its neighbor Burundi is a relatively recent twentieth century example. Tracy Kidder, in his book Strength in what Remains, tells the story of a Burundi immigrant, Deogratias (Deo) Niyizonkiza, who witnessed the Burundi and Rwanda genocide and eventually becomes a U.S. citizen. It follows his flight from this predicament, and recounts how he suffered and overcame homelessness to graduate from Columbia University, and finally- to his unrelenting pursuit and achievement of his childhood dream of building a health care

The doors open slowly when a semi-delirious man uses his back to push them open. Makeshift bandages are nearly bled-through despite the string tourniquets a kind passerby had made for the now-destitute man after he had collapsed on the road to the hospital. He numbly rambles out his story, it’s not one the hospital staff is unfamiliar with but the macabre details are still worthy of nightmares. The man, Ismael, relives a more coherent version once the antibiotics have started to fight off the infections around his amputated hands: “The first victim was dragged forward and forced to kneel before a stump. As the man screamed, he severed one limb first, then the next” (Campbell, Ch. 1, para. 6). Ismael described the way that the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) attacked his village of Koidu, Sierra Leone – an area that is rich in diamonds, the catalyst that led not only to the RUF, but the civil wars that plagued the region. Even though Ismael’s story is likely a dramatized conglomerate of similar tales from the region, it does serve to illustrate the plight for which Sierra Leone was renown. Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola, and certain other African nations had been in a state of near constant conflict since the 1980s, or earlier.

Social impacts of violence are detrimental to individuals, communities, and entire nations. Beah’s harrowing ordeal in Sierra Leone’s civil war exposes him to all of these impacts. A sense of community is quickly lost

“Things had rapidly changed in a matter of seconds and no one had any control over anything” (Beah 29). Ishmael Beah’s harrowing story about what it meant to be a rebel during the war in Sierra Leone is disturbing and unfathomable. For him, killing was a second nature and he considered the war to be as addictive as cocaine and marijuana. Unlike A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Mariatu Kamara’s story is told from a completely different perspective. In The Bite of the Mango, she describes having her hands chopped off by the rebels and became impregnated by her uncle’s close friend. With the help of journalism, Mariatu’s story was heard globally. At the end of the book, she learns how to use her voice as a catalyst for good and

Staring into the eyes of a photographed teenager who lost both hands to rebel’s machetes at the Waterloo Camp in Sierra Leone I felt a surge of mixed emotions: pain, compassion, anger, discontent and the need for a more effective campaign against “conflict diamonds.”

Imagine a place so desolate and broken you feel as if it has been forgotten about for ages. There is a sense of despair and a feeling of eeriness that overcomes you. This feeling is not to unfamiliar for John Bul Dau, and those “Lost Boys” of Sudan. Djellaba soldiers invaded John’s village forcing him and many other members of the Dinka tribe to flee to the safety of Kenya. Little did they know this would be a journey of heartbreak, trial, and faith to survive the harsh conditions they soon would have to face.

Arriving at Hope Lives made all my emotions run straight to my heart. Hundreds of children were flocking us, bowing and cheering. Hope lives serves as an orphanage and a school for the locals. The orphanage was built soon after the civil war there in Uganda by the church I was traveling with. Joseph Kony kidnapped and forced young children to become rebels for his army or sold the young girls as sex slaves. He murdered many of these children's family as a way to persuade them to come with

Our book described a dreadful scene that occurred in 1999 when two 14-year-old boys from Conakry, Guinea frozen bodies were found in the landing gear at Brussels International Airport. Found with the boys was also a letter they had written. The letter entailed a deep plea for help for the children of Africa and particularly the children of Guinea. They stated in the letter, “Therefore, if you see that we have sacrificed ourselves and risked our lives, this is because we suffer too much in Africa and that we need you to fight against poverty and to put an end to the war in Africa. Nevertheless, we want to learn, and we ask you to help us in Africa learn to be like you.” Many can take much away from this letter as one can see the global gap between the rich and the poor; and also see the desire of migration from a poor to rich county.