2007年VOA标准英语-Former Sierra Leonean Child Soldier Adjusts to

By Stephanie Ho
Washington
22 March 2007

On a map, Sierra Leone is separated from New York City by nearly 7,000 kilometers. For one young Sierra Leonean man now living in New York, the journey involved much more than traveling the physical distance. Ishmael Beah went from being a child soldier in Sierra Leone to a college graduate in the United States. Correspondent Stephanie Ho recently spoke¹ with him at the VOA studios in Washington.

Ishmael Beah (2006 photo)

Ishmael Beah is haunted by dreams of his past life as a child soldier in Sierra Leone.

"A replay of things that either I participated in doing to somebody, or I watched being done to somebody, which I didn't find disturbing then, or running away from the war, or dreams of being shot, and different things," said Ishmael Beah.

A bloody² civil war broke out in Sierra Leone in 1991, and rebel groups killed Ishmael's entire family. When he was 13, government troops pressed him into service as a boy soldier. For most of the next three years, he was fed a steady diet of a cocaine³ and gunpowder⁴ mixture, called "brown-brown," along with violent Hollywood movies. When he and the other child soldiers were sufficiently⁵ pumped up, they went on brutal⁶ killing⁷ sprees.

Ishmael, who is now 26-years-old, recounts the violent life he left behind in a new book, called A Long Way Gone: Memoirs⁸ of a Boy Soldier, which is Number Four on The New York Times list of bestsellers. Sales are also being helped by Starbucks (the U.S.-based, international coffee retailer), which is selling the book in its coffee shops around the United States. It is also making a donation to UNICEF for every book sold.

After going through a UNICEF rehabilitation⁹ program, Ishmael was adopted by an American family, and, in 1998, moved to New York City, which was the source of the rap music he loved as a young boy in Sierra Leone.

"I was drawn¹⁰ to hip¹¹-hop music because of the poetry in it," he said. "And my first rap video that I ever saw was the Sugarhill Gang, Rapper's Delight. I was eight-[years-old]."

".....I said a hip-hop, a hippie to the hip....."

"For me, growing up in Sierra Leone, where my first, second and third language was not English at all, so learning English only in school, and having come to believe that the black person does not speak English, it's not their language, and seeing somebody speaking it, so versatile¹² and so fast, was really appealing to me," said Ishmael Beah.

 

"..... I got style, finesse¹³ and a little black book,

that's filled with rhymes and I know you want to look,

but there's a thing that separates you from me,

and that's called originality¹⁴....."

He remembers his parents encouraged his efforts to learn English. They just didn't want him to learn it from American rap music.

"....a tick tock, y'all, a beat-beat, y'all...."

"We had Shakespeare, because of the British colonial heritage there [in Sierra Leone], and so I remember my father saying to me, 'why don't you listen to the BBC news, because this is really the best kind of English you can have, not this one,'" said Ishmael Beah.

Now, Ishmael speaks English fluently, and says he is lucky to be in New York. He said many of his friendships have been formed through sports, like soccer, but that, especially when he first came to the United States, he often did not talk about many of his own experiences.

"Most of the friends that I knew told me a lot about themselves, but I would tell them almost nothing about me," he said. "So, in that sense, there was a very slow pace in all of how my friendships developed with certain people."

At the same time, he was interested to see how some of his classmates in the United States show off to each other.

"And, I understood certain people at school, they would pretend they were tough, or that they lived in New York, they were hard," said Beah. "I just knew they didn't really know what violence is and what it does to people."

 

Ishmael appears to have settled into his new life. He says he believes the way to heal from war is not to completely forget everything, but to learn to live with the past, and to transform the experiences into something positive.

"I think my life before the war, during the war and after the war is what makes me who I am," he said. "I cannot live without any of them. It shapes my view. It makes me appreciate life more. It makes me not want to know what violence is. And, so, that's me. That's the Ishmael you get, and nothing more."

Ishmael graduated from Oberlin College in 2004. He continues to speak publicly about his experiences, and is establishing a foundation to help other children traumatized by war. His first project will involve former child soldiers in Sierra Leone, a country he still considers his home.

1 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

2 bloody   

adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染

参考例句：

• He got a bloody nose in the fight.他在打斗中被打得鼻子流血。
• He is a bloody fool.他是一个十足的笨蛋。

3 cocaine   

n.可卡因，古柯碱（用作局部麻醉剂）

参考例句：

• That young man is a cocaine addict.那个年轻人吸食可卡因成瘾。
• Don't have cocaine abusively.不可滥服古柯碱。

4 gunpowder   

n.火药

参考例句：

• Gunpowder was introduced into Europe during the first half of the 14th century.在14世纪上半叶，火药传入欧洲。
• This statement has a strong smell of gunpowder.这是一篇充满火药味的声明。

5 sufficiently   

adv.足够地，充分地

参考例句：

• It turned out he had not insured the house sufficiently.原来他没有给房屋投足保险。
• The new policy was sufficiently elastic to accommodate both views.新政策充分灵活地适用两种观点。

6 brutal   

adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的

参考例句：

• She has to face the brutal reality.她不得不去面对冷酷的现实。
• They're brutal people behind their civilised veneer.他们表面上温文有礼，骨子里却是野蛮残忍。

7 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

8 memoirs   

n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数)

参考例句：

• Her memoirs were ghostwritten. 她的回忆录是由别人代写的。
• I watched a trailer for the screenplay of his memoirs. 我看过以他的回忆录改编成电影的预告片。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 rehabilitation   

n.康复，悔过自新，修复，复兴，复职，复位

参考例句：

• He's booked himself into a rehabilitation clinic.他自己联系了一家康复诊所。
• No one can really make me rehabilitation of injuries.已经没有人可以真正令我的伤康复了。

10 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

11 hip   

n.臀部，髋；屋脊

参考例句：

• The thigh bone is connected to the hip bone.股骨连着髋骨。
• The new coats blouse gracefully above the hip line.新外套在臀围线上优美地打着褶皱。

12 versatile   

adj.通用的，万用的；多才多艺的，多方面的

参考例句：

• A versatile person is often good at a number of different things.多才多艺的人通常擅长许多种不同的事情。
• He had been one of the game's most versatile athletes.他是这项运动中技术最全面的运动员之一。

13 finesse   

n.精密技巧，灵巧，手腕

参考例句：

• It was a disappointing performance which lacked finesse.那场演出缺乏技巧，令人失望。
• Lillian Hellman's plays are marked by insight and finesse.莉莲.赫尔曼的巨作以富有洞察力和写作技巧著称。

14 originality   

n.创造力，独创性；新颖

参考例句：

• The name of the game in pop music is originality.流行音乐的本质是独创性。
• He displayed an originality amounting almost to genius.他显示出近乎天才的创造性。