Chapter 8: What was Ishmael's point in being so descriptive for that paragraph?

Beah again employs the technique of flashback in order to fill in the details of his life before the rebels attacked Mattru Jong. The repeated delving into this memory also underscore the way his mind worked while he spent so much time isolated in the forest. He connects his encounter with the snake to his grandfather’s medicine allowing him to resist snakebites (which Beah says will not work anymore due to his lack of faith in the medicine), and utilizes his grandfather’s forest lore to bathe himself properly. Through these flashbacks, Beah demonstrates how his family’s legacy works to keep him alive and relatively comfortable despite the dire circumstances he finds himself in.