A Long Way Gone Ch. 6-7

As the boys keep moving throughout the villages, they start to talk less and their trust within each other is weakening slowly. After Ishmael and his friends had been given food and a place to stay from the village that they were at first accused of being rebels, they settled down and Ishmael starts to realize their quietness. Ishmael has a memory about Junior and him when they were younger and were still in Mattru Jong. In this memory, Junior was at first teaching Ishmael how to skip rocks as they were getting water from the river one day. On the way back to their house, Ishmael falls and Junior gives Ishmael his bucket of water and goes to fill up Ishmael's bucket again. When Junior comes back from getting the water, the first thing he does was ask Ishmael if he was hurt from falling. When Ishmael told Junior that he was fine, Junior still checked to see if he was all right and then started to tickle him. And when Ishmael came back into reality, he realized that he wanted Junior to ask him if he was fine. Ishmael's memory showed how at one point, Junior and him were very close. Compared to the present part of his past to his memory, it showed how much they had spaced from each other. It was sad to see how such a close bond had deteriorated in such a quick time. The boys then moved on to another village where Gibrilla's aunt lived. She lived in the village of Kamator. They stayed there for a few months until the rebels came. The last two lines of chapter six were sad in my opinion. Ishmael says, "It was during the attack in the village of Kamator that my friends and I separated. It was the last time I saw Junior, my older brother." The last sentence especially made me feel so bad for Ishmael. The next chapter it tells of how Ishmael and Kaloko were the only ones left of their group. The village was pretty much abandoned. There was not much left, except for a few families that were hiding in bushed or other various places. Ishmael and Kaloko found a family to stay with in hiding for a while in the bushes. Ishmael after a while got sick of just waiting, though, so he said his goodbyes and set out on foot. He came into contact with humans after a while and tried to talk to them. It was then that he realized that trust had begun to shatter within others as people turned their backs on him. Although the people gave Ishmael directions, he knew that he was not wanted and was definitely not trusted. It seemed to me that those two chapters were about how trust was starting to fall between people who you are close to and others who you are not close with. I think that this is just the beginning of how trust is crumbling between people, because of the war.