I recently picked up the book a long way gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. You may have seen it if you go to Starbucks, it’s the book they’ve been promoting for the past month or so. The book, written by Ishmael Beah, is excellent. A pretty quick read at about 200 pages, it holds your attention and really packs a big punch. It is the memoir of Beah, who was basically forced to become a boy soldier in Sierra Leone, during the civil strife that the country saw in 90’s.

And this weekend I saw the movie Blood Diamond. It’s about the (illegal) diamond trade in Sierra Leone and does a great job of bringing to life why they’re “blood” diamonds. The acting is very solid, the direction is great and so the movie was really good. I recommend it.

Anyway, the book is incredibly powerful at describing something which is so very foreign to most of us. What it’s like to live a normal life one day, and the next be living in a state of total chaos. To see a small child, barely a teenager, have to fend for himself and do terrible things is incredibly powerful and jarring. The fact that I read the book, and then saw the movie had a pretty powerful impact. The book does an amazing job of giving you a small glimpse into what life is like as a boy soldier (an estimated 250,000 are still in such condition according to a stat I saw at the end of the movie). While the boy soldier theme is a part of the movie, it’s not what the movie is about. But if you’ve read the book, the movie becomes so very much more real and powerful.

What really struck me is how well the book made real a topic that only been a footnote to me. Most of us have heard about the (multitude of) civil wars in Africa. I think we hear about them in passing, usually in the last few minutes of a broadcast or in terms of a fundraiser, etc. The book put a human face on the impact of this– suffering is truly on real to us when we can empathize. If we are successful in dehumanizing it, we can easily shut it out. Reading the book, and then even watching the movie, brought home to me how real something that is a world away can be. Most of us will never see Africa (unfortunately) in our lives, so a movie or even a book can open our eyes and move us to action (or at least compassion). What’s really interesting to me is how this will evolve. Camcorders are rapidly finding their way around the world (even the developing world). How soon before a civil conflict, a terrorist act, etc is captured on video and put up on YouTube. Why wait for a book to be published or a Hollywood blockbuster to be created? I see clips being distributed in near-real time (how chilling was it to see and hear the V-Tech cell phone footage this morning?) and being transmitted virally and picked up by the main-stream media. I see talented editors taking the time to splice this footage together (and in mere hours, no less) and packaging them in a format that can move the heart and bring out compassion that rivals the Starbucks bestseller or the Dicaprio blockbuster.

It’s an interesting world. While that continues to evolve, I urge to read a long way gone, and to a much smaller extent, rent Blood Diamond. Unless watching Blood Diamond convinces you that you don’t -really- need that diamond after all!