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A few lyrics in this sing relate to Ishmael's journey. These are a couple of the lyrics:
"A child is born with no state of mind
Blind to the ways of mankind
God is smilin' on you but he's frownin' too
Because only God knows what you'll go through"

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In Ishmael Beah's memoir "A Long Way Gone", he goes into detail about his childhood in war and other things that he has experienced. In the beginning, Ishmael Beah was just a regular teenage boy. He attended a school and enjoyed hip-hop music, he would even perform this with his friends. Eventually, Ishmael's life changes in a way that he will remember vividly for the rest of his life. His childhood was taken was taken and replaced with war. There was no more hip-hop, rap and family, there was now marijuana, cocaine and gun powder. In addition, Ishmael is required to murder other humans in vicious ways, and continue to fight. He has been tortured, barely escaped death and he has even witnessed the death of his loved ones. So, the lesson is that no one should romanticize war or make it seem like a good thing. It is something that has taken many children from families and traumatized many people, especially Ishmael.

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This is a photo of a young war child. He is wearing a backpack that says "Lets Go To School." and he is holding a gun over his shoulders. This symbolizes Ishmael's journey. As a child, Ishmael was suppose to be living like a child, but instead he was in a war. Instead of watching TV and playing video games like other children do, he was killing people with guns and doing drugs with his unit. In the story it says "Apart from this, there were no indications that our childhood was threatened, much less that we would be robbed of it." Ishmael and his friends were robbed of their childhood, and were forced to become children of the war and they will never be the same.