Charging Money to Leave War

Throughout the entire book A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah there are stories told of horrific scenes and of people who aren't acting how most would think that humans would act. Many times their are stories of people who you may think would help these boys or the victims that have both fought and been attacked by the monster of war. Some of these circumstances are logical, for instance when the boys are repeatedly chased out of the different villages by men with guns or spears. The reason for this, as weak as it may seem is the people are afraid of the boys coming into their town as they may be scouts for the rebels or the military, or they could be kids running from the monster of war, however you never know so the reasoning is on the safe side of the chances. However the part that surprised me was when Ishmael talked about how the border officials between Sierra Leone and Guinea asked for 300 Leones, which according to Ishmael is about 2 month's pay, a hefty price to pay to leave a country that is ravaged by a horrible war. Ishmael as well as myself were surprised by this, the Sierra Leoneans would ask for month's of pay to cross a border into safety when their own country is ravaged by a horrible war that the government isn't doing much to stop, but rather helping it burn. This would make sense for the Guineans to ask for money, in hopes to slow the rush of refugees from Sierra Leone into their own country however that didn't seem to be the case. Their are only two reasons why I could see this happening, both aren't good reasons and they are both the result of a corrupt government. One is to help fuel the fire of war in the favor of the government's troops, the other would be to prevent people from leaving the country, why? I don't know, but war allows for strange things to happen. The other place where the government, or their representatives in this case, charged money or stole goods from people at barricades that the military controlled for no reason other than personal gain, even when everyone had the correct papers. This again is the result of a corrupt or lazy government which allows for military and other enforcers collect money for personal gain.