In A Long Way Gone, author Ishmael Beah mentions a variety of musicians. One that stands out to me comes in the early chapters of the text where he talks about rebels invading the villages, killing randomly, and using the saying "one love" in a mocking way. Beah points out that this expression is a reference to the late reggae singer Bob Marley and his song "One Love". Today, we're going to take a close look at the lyrics of this song and listen to the song together. We'll try to connect our understanding of the song to our knowledge of the type of child Beah was and the man he became.
Here is a youtube music video of Marley's "One Love":
After talking about the connections between A Long Way Gone and the lyrics of this song, we learned another pair of facts about the differences between Sierra Leone and the United States. Today, we talked about the average yearly income of the two countries. As you all predicted, Sierra Leoneons barely earn $250 per year, while Americans earn a little less than $30,000 annually on average. This means that Sierra Leoneons survive on less than one dollar per day. Obviously, it would be almost impossible (if not absolutely impossible) to do this in the United
States.
We read to the start of chapter six in today's class. At the end of class, you all picked a word from our chapter four and/or five vocabulary words and wrote a summary or reactionary sentence about today's reading. we used these sentences to reflect on the atrocities Beah experiences in these chapters. We'll pick up with chapter six on Thursday.
Vocabulary words for chapters four and five:
machete
predicament
ravaged
survive
emotion
interrogate
culture
freedom
recruited
captured
journey
nightmare
