I was about to go to bed and then I remembered, I actually am on my way to completing another checkmark: Reading 20 new books
While packing for Raleigh last weekend (I'll update you on that trip soon), I tucked a book in my bag that has been on my shelf for a long time. Coincidently, it is called A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. It is Ishmael's autobiography of being a boy soldier in the civil war of Sierra Leone. It was such an enwrapping narrative that I read over half of it by the time I landed in Raleigh (and the other half before I landed back in Nashville).
(http://gccblogs.concernusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/a-long-way-gone1.jpg)
To lose your family to war. To be forced into killing others, convinced it is the only way to save yourself. To watch your close friends die when you are only a child. To lose your childhood, seem to retake it, and then have it be shattered again. Each of these, Beah faced. It will remind you of the luxury we have living in a land of freedom and democracy with our wars being fought halfway around the world by those people we will likely never meet or never be able to thank.
So if you need an eye-opener, or a sharp taste of what reality is in other countries, I would strongly recommend this title. -Beth
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