A long way home

Baeh's Reflection Of Childhood And War

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 and 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 of a child growing up in a time and place of war. In Ishmael Baeh's 2007 reflection on the experience, the author describes a civil war in his home country of Sierra Leone as something which critically effected him and which was a terrible departure from his life to that juncture. In Baeh's text, the author gives firsthand account of the acts of cruelty and bloodletting which he committed as a child of a 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 the African child, discounting this position by showing the deep psychological damage levied on such children as Baeh.

The introduction to Baeh's story is important for dispelling preconceived notions about the African lifestyle. Indeed, we are made clearly aware 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 and public image of the continent to Americans is as AIDS-ridden, famine-struck and war-torn. While the Baeh autobiography does nothing to dispel these ideas, that make the case that these things are not at all normal. In Baeh's initial comments, we come to understand something of the dramatic alteration of life and survival caused by the intrusion of war on his theretofore unremarkable existence in Sierra Leone. As he tells it in retrospect, "the only wars I knew of were those that I had read about in books or seen in movies such as Rambo: First Blood and the one in neighboring Liberia that had heard about on the BBC news. My imagination at ten years old didn't have the capacity to grasp what had taken away the happiness of the refugees." (1)

And indeed, this is reinforced by his immediate encounter with the violence and outcome. The reality of it does not immediately strike this young boy. Even as the war will soon come to define him and his perspective on the world, at its first showing it bore a surreal and indescribable feeling for Baeh. In his own admission he finds that he is incapable at first of recognizing the meaning of that which has come to pass. As he and his friends, westernized to 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. Awaiting news of their families, Baeh and his friends noted that "the day seemed oddly normal. The sun peacefully sailed through the white clouds, birds sang from the treetops, the trees danced to the quiet wind. I still couldn't believe that the war had actually reached our home." (4)

This disbelief would fade with relative quickness though as in a matter of less than a day from this intrusion into his life, Baeh would see more bloodshed and death than any child should ever know. The horrific sequence in which the war first becomes visible to the author tells with unflinching honesty the degree to which violence had come to rule his former home. This would be part and parcel to his rehabilitation though, with four years of war behind him. Baeh would have to remind himself that he had been a victim and not the perpetrator during the four years of his childhood that were deployed to this brutal conflict. A perfectly fitting metaphor for the moment of his innoncence being taken from his is that in which he describes a woman carrying a dead baby. Baeh tells that "the image of that woman and her baby plagued my mind... I didn't want to go back to where that woman came from; it was clear in the eyes of the baby that all had been lost. " (6) Here, Baeh succinctly describes that environment into which he was forcibly entered into manhood. That this is a story told with Western audiences in mind is appropriate, as the narrative shifts with remarkable quickness from that of a relatable youth to that of a wearied civil warrior. The author's experiences are not enviable, but his survival and perspective are quite awe-inspiring. The process of descending into a place where 'all is lost' is told with humble directness, helping us to understand the depths to which humanity must descend to survive here within. The fact of Baeh's eventual rehabilitation is thus all the more compelling.