Obituary – Lucilda Hunter
Renown Sierra Leonean librarian, novelist and biographer who wrote under the name Yema Lucilda Hunter died suddenly early Sunday morning 21 August at her home in Accra where she lived for the last twenty years. She was 79.
Lucilda, who insisted on being called by her first name, worked for many years as a librarian for the Sierra Leone Library Board, in the Medical Library at Connaught Hospital in Freetown, before going to Congo-Brazzaville to head the Library and Health Information unit at the Regional Office for Africa of the World Health Organization. She took early retirement in 1999 and in that same year was made a Fellow of the British Library Association.
Lucilda was always reluctant to called herself a writer, although she authored six novels and a work of non-fiction: Road to freedom (1982), Mother and daughter: memoirs and poems (1983), Bittersweet (1989), An African treasure: in search of Gladys Casely-Hayford, 1904-1950 (2008), Builders: the Annie Walsh story, 1849-2009 (2009), Nanna (2014), Her name was Aina: a historical novel (2018).
Her first and perhaps most famous work, Road to Freedom, was inspired by two books she came across by accident: the first, A Residence in Sierra Leone, published anonymously in 1849 in which the author gave an account of a conversation with a Nova Scotian woman who mentioned that a French fleet destroyed Freetown in 1794. The second book, Narrative of Two Voyages to Sierra Leone by Anna Maria Falconbridge, which provided more details about Freetown’s early history.
Explaining how she became a writer to an interviewer last year, Lucilda said: “Being a child of the colonial era, all this was not only new to me but also fascinating. After further research, I decided to try my hand at writing a book about that period of Freetown’s history and doing it in a way that would appeal to general readers. It was me first attempt at writing a novel.”
Lucilda discovered books at a very young age: “I learned to love reading soon after I learned to read because I lived with my maternal grandmother who took me to the British Council library where there was a children’s section. In those days there were no books for children written by African authors. In fact, the only stories about Africa that I remember reading as a child were in a series called Jungle Doctor. They were written by an English doctor and set in East Africa.”
Born Yema Lucilda Caulker on 15 July 1943 in Freetown, her father was the Sierra Leonean diplomat and educationist, Richard Edmund Kelfa-Caulker, who became the first African principal of the Albert Academy and later had a distinguished diplomatic career including serving as Sierra Leone High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and Ambassador to the United States. Her mother was Olivette Hannah Stuart who hailed from a prominent African-Caribbean family whose grandfather, Melvin Stuart, was the Collector of Customs who came from the Bahamas in 1878 to work for the colonial administration. Her maternal grandfather was Arthur MacCarthy Stuart also a colonial civil servant.
Lucilda was raised in Freetown and attended the Annie Walsh Memorial School, before pursuing her further education in the United Kingdom where she undertook her undergraduate study at the University of Reading, gaining a Bachelor of Arts in 1964, and a post-graduate diploma in librarianship from North-Western Polytechnic in 1966, and finally obtained a Master of Philosophy degree from Loughborough University.
She lived with her beloved husband and “companion on life’s journey”, Kobina, in Accra, until his death aged 80 in January 2020 after a long illness. Kobi, as he was fondly known, was the only son of the Gladys Casely-Hayford and Arthur Hunter and the grandson of Adelaide Casely-Hayford, the second wife of the Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford, the Gold Coast barrister, author and politician. Both Adelaide and Gladys worked together on the education of girls in a Freetown by setting up of the Girls Vocational School at Gloucester Street, Freetown.
She is survived by her two children, Jessie and Mark, and siblings including Richard Edmund Kelfa-Caulker Jr and Imodale Caulker-Burnett. She is also survived by several grandchildren and other relatives.
