MEDIA & SOCIETY Sierra Leone.....We Are a Hopeless People If We Are Not United! Posted by Winston Alusine Kabia (Winakabs) on Jun 27, 2008, 11:29

The saying goes: "The tribe that collects food and gathers it by the net full, will indeed, today and tomorrow see the gathered food overflowing – (a Mampa proverb)[1].

Sierra Leone has always had a reputation for hospitality. So this our country must always have been fruitful, the gardens well-tended, and fully able to support our ancestors' desire to build a better future, working together.  Majority of the constituents comprising the population of Sierra Leone today are immigrants.  We know that and that hospitality has continued to this day.  How many of us know our origins? 

Chez Winakabs......pass the night at the Airport Floor...but his resilient attitude paid off after the Airline Manager Apologies and get him airborne to London

Yet when this beautiful country came under one rule, it was said by the late Governor Clarkson that one area would clash with another, the back wall with the front door; that its foundations were built on a combination of sand, gravel, bush layers and virgin soil, rather implying that it could not endure. This he, Governor Clarkson said could only be averted if we stay as a nation, uniting the tribes to become the whole – the nation.  I'm sure this prophecy must have caused some disquiet, even dismay. Was it pre-ordained that there must be division? Or could an underlying unity be established, so long as it was founded upon reverence for a shared belief? That was Sir Milton’s conviction - a common bond of faith would be a force strong enough to hold the house together.

May I today reaffirm that conviction, but set it even more widely: for all in Sierra Leone to live in one house; and I believe that what will hold together the house that is our nation, is a commitment to living and working together.

If we live without loyalty to a common cause, if there is no general acceptance that confrontation for its own sake damages the well-being of everyone, we shall live, obviously, in disunity. Our foundations are, indeed, unsound. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." [Mark 3:25]

Without unity, one wall will merely confront the other; age-old wisdom will go unheeded; without unity, there is, and probably can be, no proper social order. So the people lose their way, because they cannot, or will not, see the path they should walk together. "Where there is no vision, the people perish," as the Book of Proverbs says. [29:18]

Even so, this cannot mean that all contrary or individual opinion should be smothered, or ignored, or decried. New ideas have to come from somewhere. Indeed, they must be encouraged, welcomed and understood. They must be given, and received, in respect and in love. Then, there may be agreement - that the idea should be adopted, or abandoned. Or there may be agreement to disagree, for the time being at least, and so then there is opportunity to move on to something else.

We must not become trapped in quarrels. For there is so much upon which we can agree. There is so much we have in common. We are, after all, all children of God. We share a common humanity, a common ability to laugh and cry, to hope and to dream, to rejoice and to grieve, to love and to be hurt. Let us never forget that.

Another thing we have in common is that we all belong to a family; and to our families, we all owe a special loyalty, a special responsibility. They nurture us, they mature us, and they provide us with our homes. This has always been true, and further, it has always been true of all peoples, of all cultures, at all times. "Family" might mean slightly different things to different people, but the underlying concept is universal.

That sense of family is in danger of being lost. There are many reasons: the call of the city life, unemployment, the struggle to earn enough, television that limits our vision to the size of 'the box'. There is no simple answer, but so much depends on teaching, on example, on all of us practising that loyalty to one another, that responsibility to one another, that is the basis of true family life.

Yet loyalty and responsibility to others, even to those outside our immediate families, is also, when we think about the essence of things, absolutely vital. Such a loyalty as this is the basis of any true community; of overall social cohesion; of fundamental national unity. And true unity, paradoxically, allows greater diversity, amongst individuals, between families and extended families, even within entire countries.

Let's reflect on that for a moment. We in this country inherit two great cultures, the European and the hinterlands – made up of so many tribes and sub-tribes, each bringing with it its own distinctiveness. We are fortunate that we can all share the richness of both - enjoy salad, jollof rice, Shakie tomboy, kayoka, manornor, etc.   They all, belonging to the two sit comfortably, side by side. We can, and must, learn of both. And other cultures have come too, adding their own distinctive colours to the nation-state, the cloak, that represents our national life. This is what I mean by unity in diversity - understanding, sharing, rejoicing, in those things that make each of us different, yet at the same time united, determined to hold together.

It is in this spirit of greatly extended family, of unity, that we must address the problems and concerns that face us as a nation: our need for reconciliation and redress for the wrongs of the past: issues of tribalism, nepotism, cronyism and corruption in areas as diverse as land and resources, criminal and civil justice; issues of deprivation, education, health. Some issues impinge more upon a tiny minority than the average Sierra Leonean; some more upon the average Sierra Leonean than the tiny minority. But all are issues facing the nation as a whole; and all must be addressed by the nation as a whole. For they can be resolved only in a spirit of oneness.

So the essential well-being of our nation might, actually, depend on our realising that it is built upon different types of ground, that our shared nation is built upon a mixture of sand, gravel, bush layer and rich virgin soil - upon a blend of Krio, Temne, Mende, Limba, Loko, Fula, Yalunka, Susu, Madingo, Vai, Kissi, Sape, Sherbro, Mampa, plus whoever or whatever might be represented in the whole (- I shudder to think) - and, the Koranko, and that this diversity can be unified to make a firm foundation for our nation. At least, this is an interpretation of the prophecy that suggests itself to me.

For it is still the truth that, without a strong sense of kinship, of loyalty, of responsibility to all those around us, and not only to ourselves or to our immediate families, it becomes difficult, or in some circumstances impossible, to achieve the better future we all desire; not just for ourselves, but even more for our children and our children's children.

We have come to help implement the principles and ideals of the founders of our nation-state.  We have to make Sierra Leone a better place today and tomorrow.  The past has created our present circumstances – I urge all of us to embrace the past to be able to see clearly those oversights that will path a brighter today and a more fulfilling future.   We are all an extension of each other – I cannot hurt a brother in Bo without hurting another brother in Kambia.  We all stand, at present, over a great task.  I implore all to put country above party, tribal or regional politics.  We should all work towards a peaceful co-existence.

Let us unite, let us sing different songs that have a similar chorus of a united nation, let us gather together, and let the bond of fellowship unite us.

Author:

Winston Alusine Kabia aka Chez Winakabs is a Social Entrepreneur, voluntarily working with CHEZ WINAKABS EUROPE and Commission for the Advancement of African and African-Caribbean People (CAAP)