They return to Mattru Jong and spend their days waiting at the wharf for word from their families. They realize that a journey back to the village is impossible. Ishmael describes cars packed with dead people covered in blood and the terror on everyone's faces as he passes.
Ishmael, Junior, and Talloi decide they must return to their village and find their families.Īs the boys begin retracing their steps, they encounter remnants of the attack: crowds of people running women hiding in bushes screaming their children's names children, naked and lost, following packs of stray dogs. The villagers say that the attack was too sudden and that, in the chaos, everyone ran in different directions to save their own lives.
Villagers begin arriving from the mining area in Ishmael's home village, but no one knows anything about the safety of Ishmael and Junior's family. Khalilou tells them that the rebels will be coming to Mattru Jong next. The boys stay at Khalilou's house and are surprised when he returns home from school early the next day to report that rebels have attacked Mogbwemo. When they reach Mattru Jong they meet up with their friends, Gibrilla, Kaloko, and Khalilou. There, Mamie Kpana, as the grandmother is known, questions them about their schooling. They visit the town of Kabati, Ishmael and Junior's grandmother's village, along the way. In January of 1993, Ishmael, Junior, and Talloi set off from their village of Mogbwemo on a trip to the town of Mattru Jong to participate in a friend's talent show. The rap music has defined how Ishmael and his group dress and use slang. What shocked Ishmael so much about rap was that black men could speak English so well and so quickly to the beat. They were transfixed by the music and returned as often as possible to watch rap on the big television. They learned of rap during a visit to Mobimbi, where their fathers and other foreigners worked for an American company. Ishmael, Junior, Talloi, and Mohamed have been singing and dancing to rap music since they formed a group when Ishmael was eight years old. He describes the idea of war as entirely abstract to his young mind and insists that he and his fellow villagers didn't have the capacity to understand what the refugees coming through his village had experienced. Ishmael's story begins when he is ten years old, two years before the civil war comes to his village.
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