50 Fun Facts About A Long Way Gone

In A Long Way Gone, what are Ishmael and his brother travelling to when rebels attack their home village?

A talent show in a nearby town was the draw. The boys planned to perform rap songs and told no one they were leaving, because they expected to be home the next day.

The drug 'brown brown', which Ishmael Beah's unit sniffed in A Long Way Gone, mixes cocaine with what?

Gunpowder was the extra ingredient. Beah blames the addictions and the brainwashing for the violence he carried out as a boy.

The opening scene of A Long Way Gone finds Ishmael Beah at high school in 1998 in which city?

New York is where the book opens. Curious classmates ask him about the war, and he smiles and tells them almost nothing.

A village chief who finds rap cassettes on the captured Ishmael Beah orders him to do what?

Dance was the test, and it worked: the chief decided the boys were lost children fleeing the war, not rebels, and released them instead of drowning them.

In A Long Way Gone, a strange roaring that frightens the seven wandering boys turns out to be what?

The ocean was making the noise. Beah had never stood on the shore of one so vast, and the sight calmed the boys enough to play soccer on the sand.

Workers from which organisation arrive by truck and take Ishmael Beah away from the fighting?

UNICEF staff left with fifteen boys that day. Beah felt betrayed by the commander who handed him over to civilians, and hid a weapon in his clothes.

Which film hero's moves do Ishmael Beah and his friend Alhaji copy on raids in A Long Way Gone?

Rambo was the model. The boys watched war films between raids, and one village attack earned Alhaji the nickname Little Rambo.

In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah's grandmother explains a saying that people should strive to be like what?

The moon, she tells him, never draws the complaints the sun gets when it shines too hard. At six he would lie on the ground at night picking out shapes in it.

What do fishermen take from Ishmael Beah's group in A Long Way Gone, leaving the boys to cross scorching ground?

Their shoes were taken as a punishment. A lone fisherman then treated the boys' blistered feet for days and refused to tell them his name.

Which nurse at the rehabilitation centre in A Long Way Gone patiently wins Ishmael Beah's trust?

Esther made him earn her trust instead of demanding his. He came to see her as a sister, but never saw her again after he left the city.

To which West African capital is Ishmael Beah driven for rehabilitation in A Long Way Gone?

Freetown astonished him. He and Alhaji had never seen the city before, and they later slipped out of the centre to explore it on their own.

What is the name of Ishmael Beah's older brother, last seen fleeing a rebel attack on Kamator?

Junior, older by a year, vanished in the chaos at Kamator. A woman later told Beah that his brother had passed through her village looking for him.

Which Shakespeare play is Lieutenant Jabati reading when he first talks with Ishmael Beah?

Julius Caesar is the play the lieutenant likes to quote. Beah later recites a monologue from it for foreign visitors at the rehabilitation centre.

Which weapon is the trembling Ishmael Beah handed on the day he is made a recruit in A Long Way Gone?

An AK-47 was his first weapon, and he shook the whole time he held it. By the next day he was being taught to fire, reload and clean it.

On what does Corporal Gadafi make Ishmael Beah and the other recruits practise stabbing in A Long Way Gone?

A banana tree stood in for the enemy. The boys stabbed feebly until the corporal told them to picture the rebels who had killed their parents.

Which bird falls from the sky and is eaten by Ishmael Beah's starving friends in A Long Way Gone?

A crow dropped out of the sky, and the hungry boys cooked it despite their misgivings. Two nights later Saidu, one of the seven, died in his sleep.

Lost alone in the forest for a month, Ishmael Beah climbs a tree to escape which animals in A Long Way Gone?

Wild pigs charged the tree until night fell. It recalled his grandmother's tale of a hunter who used magic to become a boar and lure the herd to its death.

In which town are Ishmael Beah and his friends due to perform a rap routine when A Long Way Gone begins?

Mattru Jong lay sixteen miles from home. The boys were still there when friends came back early from school with news that their own village had been attacked.

Ordered to hand in his weapons before leaving the front, Ishmael Beah secretly keeps a bayonet and what else?

A grenade stayed hidden in his clothes. By his account he threw it during a brawl with former rebel boys at the first compound, though its delayed blast did little harm.

Which nickname does Lieutenant Jabati give Ishmael Beah for seeming harmless yet proving deadly?

Green Snake was the lieutenant's name for a boy who did not look dangerous but could be deadly when he chose. It came after a raid Beah led as head of a small squad.

The Walkman a nurse gives Ishmael Beah in A Long Way Gone comes with a cassette by which rap group?

Run-D.M.C. was on the tape. The nurse kept the player in her office so that no other boy could take it, and told him to come and listen whenever he liked.

In A Long Way Gone, a cassette by which reggae star is bought for Ishmael Beah on a trip into the city?

Bob Marley's Exodus album was a gift from a field worker on that trip. Beah had grown up on reggae, and the nurse used his old love of music to draw him out.

Before which world body does the teenage Ishmael Beah speak about child soldiers in 1996 in A Long Way Gone?

The United Nations heard him on the last day of a children's conference. He dropped the speech that had been written for him and spoke from the heart instead.

Arriving in America in A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah learns which new word for something he has never seen?

Snow was new to him, and so was the bitter cold. He had brought only light clothes, so a workshop leader had to find winter jackets for him and his travelling companion.

Which American storyteller, met at a 1996 conference, later becomes Ishmael Beah's foster mother?

Laura Simms ran a workshop that helped the children tell their stories. She gave him her phone number, and he called her collect when war reached the capital.

What is the trade of Uncle Tommy, who takes Ishmael Beah into his family in A Long Way Gone?

A carpenter with a houseful of children, Uncle Tommy had never met his nephew. He visited every weekend and took the boy on long walks until he was ready to move in.

Into which neighbouring country does Ishmael Beah escape at the end of A Long Way Gone?

Guinea was his way out. He spent most of his savings on bribes at checkpoints, then sheltered among refugees at his home country's embassy there.

Just across the border at the end of A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah finds he cannot speak which language?

French is the country's colonial language, and he did not speak it. He searched until he found someone who spoke a language he knew and could help him find a bus.

A Long Way Gone closes with a folk tale in which a hunter is handed an impossible choice by which animal?

A monkey warns the hunter that one of his parents will die whether he shoots or not. As a child Beah decided he would shoot, to spare other hunters the same trap.

During the 1997 fighting in A Long Way Gone, what finally kills Ishmael Beah's Uncle Tommy?

An illness killed him. He ran a fever while the fighting kept doctors out of reach, and the family buried him the next morning.

In a nightmare early in A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah unwraps a bullet-riddled corpse and sees whose face?

His own face looks back at him from the wheelbarrow he has been pushing to a cemetery. He wakes in his new home in America, a month after arriving.

In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah credits a brain medicine made by his grandfather with giving him what?

A photographic memory, he says, came from the remedy: an Arabic prayer written on a slate, rinsed off, and the water drunk before studying. That claim left him less room to manoeuvre when reporters later challenged the book's dates.

Which ailment plagues Ishmael Beah before he is recruited and returns during his rehabilitation?

Migraines eased once he was absorbed in soldiering and the drugs. They came back with a vengeance at Benin Home, as the memories he had numbed began to return.

Where is Ishmael Beah hit by three bullets during a forest ambush he describes in A Long Way Gone?

His foot took all three shots, and he woke to find the unit's sergeant doctor fighting to save him. He tells the story at Benin Home to explain his scars.

In A Long Way Gone, what do the boys at Benin Home drag outside every night as a silent protest?

Their mattresses went out every night and the staff carried them back every day. Then rain soaked them, and the boys were told to wait until they had dried.

Which childhood best friend, who missed the trip that saved Ishmael Beah, later turns up at Benin Home?

Mohamed had stayed behind to help his father work on the day of the trip. He arrived at the centre six months into Beah's stay and later joined the same foster family.

Which man delays Ishmael Beah with a load of fruit just before rebels burn the village sheltering his family?

Gasemu asked the boys to help carry his harvest and kept a slow pace. Beah attacked him in grief afterwards, and the man died of gunshot wounds as they fled.

In which village, held by Lieutenant Jabati's troops, are Ishmael Beah and his friends recruited?

Yele felt like a safe haven at first. Then the lieutenant announced that anyone unwilling to fight was free to leave, but would get no more food.

Musa, the storyteller in A Long Way Gone, entertains the wandering boys with a tale about which trickster?

Bra Spider ties ropes around his waist so that several villages can pull him to their feasts. They all pull at once, which is why spiders are so thin in the middle.

Whose voice on the radio declares him Sierra Leone's new leader after the 1997 coup in A Long Way Gone?

Johnny Paul Koroma headed the junta that ousted the elected president, and he invited the rebels to join it. Five months of gunfire and looting followed in the capital.

Besides Mende, which Sierra Leonean language does the lost Ishmael Beah try on a wary family of strangers?

Krio was his first try, and Mende, his own tribal language, his second. The man gave directions to the island of Bonthe, while making it plain that the boy should keep moving.

What is the subtitle of Ishmael Beah's 2007 book A Long Way Gone?

Memoirs of a Boy Soldier completes the title. The book earned its author a Quill Award nomination for best debut, and American librarians put it in their top ten for young adults.

Which chain, better known for coffee than books, sold A Long Way Gone as a featured title in 2007?

Starbucks featured the book in 2007, the year it became a bestseller. Its publisher, Sarah Crichton Books, was an imprint that had launched only the year before.

From which Ohio liberal arts college did A Long Way Gone author Ishmael Beah graduate in 2004?

Oberlin awarded his degree seven years after he fled the war. The book that made his name followed three years later.

Which 2014 novel by Ishmael Beah follows friends returning to a ruined village after Sierra Leone's war?

Radiance of Tomorrow was his first novel, set in a place where the ground is still covered in bones. A second novel followed in 2020.

A national newspaper in which country disputed the timeline of Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone?

Australia's national daily reported that his village fell in 1995, not 1993, which would cut his time as a soldier to a few months. Beah denied the claims.

Which gemstone, mined in eastern Sierra Leone, helped arm the rebels in the war described in A Long Way Gone?

Diamonds lay so close to the surface that anyone with a shovel and a sieve could dig for them. The rebels used the proceeds to buy weapons and ammunition.

Sierra Leone, the setting of A Long Way Gone, gained independence in 1961 from which country?

Britain handed power to Sir Milton Margai, the first prime minister. Thirty years later the country slid into the civil war the book describes.

Which late-night host interviewed Ishmael Beah about A Long Way Gone the day after it was published?

Jon Stewart had him on The Daily Show, where Beah said that returning to ordinary society was harder than becoming a child soldier had been.

What do the boys at Benin Home sell to outside vendors, funding a secret trip into town in A Long Way Gone?

Their school supplies went straight to traders outside the gate. Beah, Alhaji and Mambu saved their share for an outing, and their stories set off a wave of unauthorised trips.