Depressing quotes...

From a very depressing, but eye-opening book...
for my Youth and Conflict course
"Allah Is Not Obliged" - the story of a child soldier by Ahmadou Kourouma

• "When you haven't got no father, no mother, no bothers, no sisters, no aunts, no uncles, when you haven't got nothing at all, the best thing to do is become a child-soldier.  Being a child-soldier is for kids who've got nothing all left on earth or Allah's heaven."
• "When (you're) just a little kid, living in some messed up barbaric country where everyone is cutting everyone's throat, what do you do?  You become a child-soldier of course, a small-soldier, a soldier-child so you can have lots to eat and cut some throats yourself; that's all your only option."
• "They've divided up all the money, all the land, all the people.  They divide up everything and the whole world lets them, everyone in the whole world lets them kill innocent men and children and women."
• "The woman is always wrong.  That's what they call women's rights."
• "In those days there weren't too many schools, so education was still worth something."
• "Humanitarian Peacekeeping is when one country is allowed to send soldiers into another country to kill innocent victims in their own country, in their own villages, in their own huts, sitting on their own mats."

Then there was this line... from a ten year old... that really got me:

"It was about this time that I realized I didn't understand this ******* universe, I didn't understand a thing about this bloody world, I couldn't make heads or tail of people or society."
Sometimes neither can I Birahima... neither can I...

Food for thought... my apologies for the heaviness of the thought...
KK