Taking a Long Walk on My Birthday
By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
I have never celebrated my birthday (July 22). And it is typical for me to forget my birthday on my birthday unless someone reminds me of it (As the President of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists, Ahmed Sahid Nasralla, did last Saturday morning.). Knowing that I’m an early bird; it is usually my mother or my younger brother in England, whom we share the same birthday, who always reminds me of my birthday with an early morning phone call between 6:30 am and 7:00a.m with wishes of good health, longevity, and prosperity. The third person is always my elder sister whose birthday is the next day (July 23) after my brother and I. (Photo: Enjoy your natal day Mr Mohamed Sankoh, a great journalist).
My wife and two children (daughter age 16 and son age 11) know that I do not like celebrations or formalities generally; so they do not even border to say “happy birthday” every year because they know I will just shrug it off. They know that I’m a sort of bohemian who believes in a Spartan lifestyle but loves good food and juice or malt. They know that I’m an unrepentant teetotal who has never smoked or never been in a nightclub or “jam” or “pool party” in my entire forty-something-ish years on earth! They know that I don’t celebrate Christmas or the birthday of any Prophet. And they know that surprising me with a surprise birthday party will be sacrilegiously sacrilegious. So, my birthday is normally just like any other normal day in my home.
But my birthday last Saturday coincided with an activity that I normally undertake every Saturday morning: A long walk from Regent Village to Kortright at Fourah Bay College (FBC) and back in less than two hours. Like the British poet William Wordsworth who composed a few lines above Tintern Abbey for the poem “Tintern Abbey” whilst revisiting the banks of the Wye; it is during those long walks that I normally find inspiration for my Tuesdays’ Op-Eds. It is during those walks that I usually draft in my head the headlines and the first two paragraphs (as in “Intros” in journalese) of my would-be One Dropian droppings. And it is during those Saturdays long walks from Regent Village to Kortright at FBC that I normally search the library in my brain for a quote or quotations from a poem, play, novel, or book that I think will be suitable for the theme of what I’m about to write for my next One Dropian dropping.
Whilst walking in the rain last Saturday (and luckily it was not raining cats and dogs) from my Regent Village home heading for Kortright; I was engrossed thoughtfully in my thoughts about the current state of affairs in Sierra Leone. How would the Bio-led administration cope if the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the European Union (EU), the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), and other Donor Partners withdraw their financial support from Sierra Leone because of the glaring irregularities and violations of established electoral procedures, which eventually brought President Julius Maada Bio to power again? What would be the state of the country if the All People’s Congress (APC) continues with “its non-participation in any level of governance, including the legislature and local councils, as the results have already been tampered with to give the SLPP an unjust majority at all levels”?
As I continued walking through “Loko Tong” at Gloucester Village unto the St Andrews Church, I thought about the supremacist arrogance of the Chairman of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), Dr Prince Alex Harding, who recently told a gathering of SLPP faithful in the presence of President Bio that the SLPP would never hand over political power to the APC because those in the APC were “mad people”. Now the SLPP has added another epithet to their “terrorists” and “insurrectionists” branding of APC supporters. While behind the scenes the SLPP and its apologists are frantically trying to broker peace between the Bio-led government and the APC hierarchy to end the current political impasse; in public the SLPP Chairman is derogatively calling members of the APC “mad people” with President Bio smilingly smiling and shaking his head in acquiescence! This is equivalent to pouring petrol into an inferno that is snaking its way to an ammunition depot.
Yet, President Bio and his band of sycophants may want to give the outside world that it is the APC and its supporters who are the problems in Sierra Leone. But through their words and actions; it is members of the SLPP, coupled with the security apparatuses, who are paving the way for an apocalypse in the country. And as I continued my walk from the St Andrews Church at Gloucester Village, going down, down, down, down unto the small ancient bridge which is normally musical by the unmusical croaks and grunts of frogs early in the mornings; I remembered First Lady Fatima Bio. I remembered her words that “only SLPP supporters are [the] true Sierra Leoneans”. It suddenly dawned on me that she might have had the original disparaging template from which President Bio borrowed his “terrorists” and “insurrectionists” labels and from where Dr Prince Harding, also, yanked out his “mad people” description of APC supporters.
Whilst walking through the small ancient bridge and looking at the banks on either side and listening to the unmusical croaks and grunts of the frogs; I might have felt the same aura that Wordsworth might have felt when he was revisiting the banks of the Wye. With the thick vegetation around, coupled with the singing and chirping birds in the background and the burbling stream underneath; I felt a sort of spiritual union with nature. I left the small ancient bridge and climbed up, up, up, and up the little hill unto the Dove Memorial Methodist Church. And I walked, walked, walked, and walked until I reached the intersection where Gloucester Village kisses Leicester Village and branched to my right just by the new Peak Energy Fuel Station.
Looking at the Leicester Peak Energy Fuel Station as I walked towards the Chinese “CRIG” centre and the giant mobile-phone tower a few meters away; several visions came to mind. I pictured the pictures of all those Baby-Mamas, former and current concubines, and cohabitants of some of the current political elites who had been transformed from rags to riches simply because they were connected with connections to the status quo. By the time I reached the gate of the mansion of the Principal of Fourah Bay College at Kortright, which is my normal endpoint for my usual Saturday morning walks, I was so deep in thought that I didn’t notice that I was already drenched. I turned back and started my homeward journey – whence I had come… [email protected]/+232-76-611-986; https://nationalistsl.com
