Speaker Ishmael Beah

Duration: 2 minutes and 48 seconds

Country: United States

Language: English

License: Public Domain

Genre: None

Views: 776 (622 embedded)

Posted by: pangea on May 14, 2008

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[Applause]
Ishmael Beah. Former Child Soldier.
Thank you.
I am from Sierra Leone, West Africa.
As a child, I had a simple, remarkable life.
I had a caring family, and a community.
I went to school, played football, and listened to stories at night
from older people.
These were time that I laughed with my entire being.
However, all these things changed when the civil war began
and when it reached my part of the country.
I was twelve years old, my immediate family
mother, father, and two brothers were killed in the war.
At age thirteen I was forced to fight as a child soldier
and did so for over two years.
I will never forget the first day of battle
watching my friends, some younger than I crying for their mothers
as life departed their little bodies
and their blood covering my hands and face
shooting a gun for the first time
and losing all sense of remorse
and the ability to exhibit any human emotion.
My life became consumed with violence
as it had become the only way to stay alive.
I didn't think how it would end.
Luckily, I was removed from the war by UNICEF
and placed in a rehabilitation center where I spent eight months
just to start functioning as a normal person again.
It took many years to learn to live with the memories of the war
to learn to transform the war experiences
so that they were no longer a burden
but instructional tools for living positively.
During those years, I realized the importance of sharing my story
in order to put a human face to the experience
of a child soldier so that the world wouldn't forget
about the children that continue to be victims
of conflicts around the world.
My work, through my writing and advocacy
is to give the neccessary human context
to the issue of children affected by war and conflict.
By using my personal experiences, this I hope
will allow people to see our humanity at all times.
In times of chaos and war.
I believe that when the human context is central
to how any story is told it makes us see
the strength of the human spirit and gives us hope.
Hope, I have come to learn, is a form of strength.
So my plea to the world today is for all of us
to make it a responsibility to expose yourself to our world
more so than ever.
To learn about the lives of people and their cultures
beyond your immediate surroundings.
We do not only need to only lean about other fellow human beings
in times of chaos or war, but also during times of peace.
Through this, I believe we can see each other's common humanity
and not the differences that set us apart.
We can realize that regardless of where we live
what conditions we live in
the sancrosant nature of our lives are the same
Thank you.
[Applause]

Speaker Ishmael Beah

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