WINDFALL GIFT FOR ST EDWARDS SECONDARY SCHOOL FREETOWN SIERRA LEONE

$100,000 for St Edwards Secondary School, Freetown

Thanks to Siera Express Media

By: SEM on February 25, 2013.

A universally recognized intellectual, Professor Alusine Jalloh, has donated the sum of $100,000 to St Edwards Secondary School, Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Professor Jalloh made the donation during an impressive ceremony marking the 91^st anniversary of the school held on the school campus on Thursday, last week. The money is meant for the construction of a monumental multi-purpose complex for the school; and the complex is to be named after him.

While donating the money, Professor Jalloh called on parents to invest in the education of their children, describing education as the key to success. He recounted the difficult days through which he went to become a success story today, urging the pupils to treat education with every seriousness and to remain dedicated and focused as they are future leaders.

“Great students are a result of great studies,” the professor remarked.

Reverend Father Garrick commended Professor Jalloh for making such a historic and generous donation to boost the school to a higher height, describing the professor as a proud product of the school.

An SSS pupil, Abass Kamara, on behalf of the student body, lavished thanks and praise on Professor Jalloh for the never-to-be-forgotten gesture.

By Gbanka Potho jnr
Stay with Sierra Express Media, for your trusted place in news!

IS RESPECT FOR OUR LOCAL SECRET SOCIETIES DIMINISHING? DO NOT TOUCH A PORO MAN'S HEAD ,HOWEVER YOUNG?

EARLY AFRICAN EDUCATION STARTED WITH OUR SECRET SOCIETIES - YES?

One of my Facebook friends posted this story with the notation
"Bo doyah u tink say dis right ba???" (i.e. Excuse me? but is this right?) my response as I chuckle with astonishment was  (jokingly)  "Den wan put den bayti?"(i.e. [They (the Poromen) want to initiate all in the school-teacher and all included].

 I later added this:"Respect for our societies is important. Do not touch a Pro man's head how ever young. Read the story "Pololck and the Poro man" by H G Wells. I posted this story long time ago in my FB Notes. Check it out. I have posted it below. Enjoy!! this is my Link posted Sunday, 23 August 2009".
 
https://www.facebook.com/israel.parpersnr?ref=tn_tnmn#!/notes/israel-ojekeh-parper-snr/pollock-and-the-porroh-man-by-h-g-wells/115605148518

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Thanks to Sierra Express of February 21, 2013

Poro men invade primary school

By: SEM on February 21, 2013.

Aggrieved members of the poro society are reported to have invaded the Baptist Model Primary School in Mangeloko in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone, sending the whole school in utter disarray with the headmistress and teachers running helter shelter to save their precious lives.

Our sources revealed that the ugly drama unfolded past Thursday when one of the school pupils who was a Poro initiate called, Yamba, went to school wearing a cap which was against the laws of the school. Reports continue that a teacher ordered Yamba to take off the cap but that Yamba out rightly refused for societal reasons and, consequently, the teacher forcefully removed Yamba’s cap.

Reports furthered that Yamba went back to the Poro bush and reported the matter which annoyed the other members of the society who, consequently, stormed the school campus, demanding the heads of the headmistress and the teacher who dared to take off the cap of the Poro initiate. The headmistress and the teachers reportedly took to their heels, leaving the school in pandemonium.

Meanwhile, the runaway headmistress is reported to have vowed never to return to the school.

By Foday Marah              http://www.sierraexpressmedia.com/archives/53239

POLLOCK AND THE PORROH MAN by H G WELLS

by Israel Ojekeh Parper Snr on Sunday, 23 August 2009 at 06:36 ·

 

So the early Porroh man in Sierra Leone had "wate man" blood?
This is a facinating & rear storry written by H G Wells which I would like to share with those interested in Sierra Leone Literature. For those who are interested in our local culture, this reminds them not to take things for granted or simply cast certain ideas aside in a care-free manner or it will hunt you. Or again- as the saying goes "dont trouble, trouble, until trouble troubles you".........
Hope you enjoy it as much as I do....... READ ON.....+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Pollock and the Porroh Man by H.G. WellsIt was in a swampy village on the lagoon river behind the Turner Peninsula that Pollock’s first encounter with the Porroh man occurred. The women of that country are famous for their good looks—they are Gallinas with a dash of European blood that dates from the days of Vasco de Gama and the English slave-traders, and the Porroh man, too, was possibly inspired by a faint Caucasian taint in his composition. (It’s a curious thing to think that some of us may have distant cousins eating men on Sherboro Island or raiding with the Sofas.) At any rate , the Porroh man stabbed the woman to the heart as though he had been a mere low-class Italian, and very narrowly missed Pollock. But Pollock, using his revolver to parry the lightning stab which was aimed at his deltoid muscle, sent the iron dagger flying, and, firing, hit the man in the hand.
He fired again and missed, knocking a sudden window out of the wall of the hut. The Porroh man stooped in the doorway, glancing under his arm at Pollock. Pollock caught a glimpse of his inverted face in the sunlight, and then the Englishman was alone, sick and trembling with the excitement of the affair, in the twilight of the place. It had all happened in less time than it takes to read about it.
The woman was quite dead, and having ascertained this, Pollock went to the entrance of the hut and looked out. Things outside were dazzling bright. Half a dozen of the porters of the expedition were standing up in a group near the green huts they occupied, and staring towards him, wondering what the shots might signify. Behind the little group of men was the broad stretch of black fetid mud by the river, a green carpet of rafts of papyrus and water-grass, and then the leaden water. The mangroves beyond the stream loomed indistinctly through the blue haze. There were no signs of excitement in the squat village, whose fence was just visible above the cane-grass.
Pollock came out of the hut cautiously and walked towards the river, looking over his shoulder at intervals. But the Porroh man had vanished Pollock clutched his revolver nervously in his hand.
One of his men came to meet him, and as he came, pointed to the bushes behind the hut in which the Porroh man had disappeared. Pollock had an irritating persuasion of having made an absolute fool of himself; he felt bitter, savage, at the turn things had taken. At the same time, he would have to tell Waterhouse — the moral, exemplary, cautious Waterhouse — who would inevitably take the matter seriously. Pollock cursed bitterly at his luck, at Waterhouse, and especially at the West Coast of Africa. He felt consummately sick of the expedition. And in the back of his mind all the time was a speculative doubt where precisely within the visible horizon the Porroh man might be.
It is perhaps rather shocking, but he was not at all upset by the murder that had just happened. He had seen so much brutality during the last three months, so many dead women, burnt huts, drying skeletons, up the Kittam River in the wake of the Sofa cavalry, that his senses were blunted. What disturbed him was the persuasion that this business was only beginning.
He swore savagely at the black, who ventured to ask a question, and went on into the tent under the orange-trees where Waterhouse was lying, feeling exasperatingly like a boy going into the headmaster’s study.
Waterhouse was still sleeping off the effects of his last dose of chlorodyne, and Pollock sat down on a packing-case beside him, and, lighting his pipe, waited for him to awake. About him were scattered the pots and weapons Waterhouse had collected from the Mendi people, and which he had been repacking for the canoe voyage to Sulyma.
Presently Waterhouse woke up, and after judicial stretching, decided he was all right again. Pollock got him some tea. Over the tea the incidents of the afternoon were described by Pollock, after some preliminary beating about the bush. Waterhouse took the matter even more seriously than Pollock had anticipated. He did not simply disapprove, he scolded, he insulted.
‘You’re one of those infernal fools who think a black man isn’t a human being,’ he said. ‘I can’t be ill a day without you must get into some dirty scrape or other. This is the third time in a month that you have come crossways-on with a native, and this time you’re in for it with a vengance. Porroh, too! They’re down upon you enough as it is, about that idol you wrote your silly name on. And they’re the most vindictive devils on earth! You make a man ashamed of civilisation. To think you come of a decent family! If ever I cumber myself up with a vicious, stupid young lout like you again’ —
And now a quick break from the story. It should be clear that whoever published this tale did not take the time or effort to do it correctly and to check all the text.
‘Steady on, now,’ snarled Pollock, in the tone that always exasperated Waterhouse; ’steady on.’ Now for a break from the story. Where do you think that this came from? Another site, that’s where. Sorry if you find this annoying, but you might want to find a site that does the work instead of stealing someone else’s work. At that Waterhouse became speechless. He jumped to his feet.
‘Look here, Pollock,’ he said, after a struggle to control his breath. ‘You must go home. I won’t have you any longer. I’m ill enough as it is through you’ —
‘Keep your hair on,’ said Pollock, staring in front of him. ‘I’m ready enough to go.’
Waterhouse became calmer again. He sat down on the camp-stool. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I don’t want a row, Pollock, you know, but it’s confoundedly annoying to have one’s plans put out by this kind of thing. I’ll come to Sulyma with you, and see you safe aboard’ —
‘You needn’t,’ said Pollock. ‘I can go alone. From here.’
‘Not far,’ said Waterhouse. ‘You don’t understand this Porroh business.’
At that Waterhouse became speechless. He jumped to his feet.
‘Look here, Pollock,’ he said, after a struggle to control his breath. ‘You must go home. I won’t have you any longer. I’m ill enough as it is through you’ —
‘Keep your hair on,’ said Pollock, staring in front of him. ‘I’m ready enough to go.’
Waterhouse became calmer again. He sat down on the camp-stool. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I don’t want a row, Pollock, you know, but it’s confoundedly annoying to have one’s plans put out by this kind of thing. I’ll come to Sulyma with you, and see you safe aboard’ —
‘You needn’t,’ said Pollock. ‘I can go alone. From here.’
‘Not far,’ said Waterhouse. ‘You don’t understand this Porroh business.’ ‘But what can he do?’ asked Pollock, unheeded.
‘I must get you out of this. There’s something brewing, or things would not be so quiet,’ said Waterhouse, after a gap of silence. Pollock wanted to know what the brew might be. ‘Dancing in a circle of skulls, said Waterhouse; ‘brewing a stink in a copper pot,’ Pollock wanted particulars. Waterhouse was vague, Pollock pressing. At last Waterhouse lost his temper. ‘How the devil should I know?’ he said to Pollock’s twentieth inquiry what the Porroh man would do. ‘He tried to kill you off-hand in the hut. Now, I fancy he will try something more elaborate. But you’ll see fast enough. I don’t want to help unnerve you. It’s probably all nonsense.’
That night, as they were sitting at their fire, Pollock again tried to draw Waterhouse out on the subject of Porroh methods. ‘Better get to sleep,’ said Waterhouse, when Pollock’s bent became apparent; ‘we start early to-morrow. You may want all your nerve about you.’
‘But what line will he take?’
‘Can’t say. They’re versatile people. They know a lot of rum dodges. You’d better get that copper-devil, Shakespear, to talk.’
There was a flash and a heavy bang out of the darkness behind the huts, and a clay bullet came whistling close to Pollock’s head. This, at least, was crude enough. The blacks and half-breeds sitting and yarning round their own fire jumped up, and someone fired into the dark.
‘Better go into one of the huts,’ said Waterhouse quietly, still sitting unmoved.
Pollock stood up by the fire and drew his revolver. Fighting, at least, he was not afraid of. But a man in the dark is in the best of armour. Realising the wisdom of Waterhouse’s advice, Pollock went into the tent and lay down there.
What little sleep he had was disturbed by dreams, variegated dreams, but chiefly of the Porroh man’s face, upside down, as he went out of the hut, and looked up under his arm. It was odd that this transitory impression should have stuck so firmly in Pollock’s memory. Moreover, he was troubled by queer pains in his limbs.
In the white haze of the early morning, as they were loading the canoes, a barbed arrow suddenly appeared quivering in the ground close to Pollock’s foot. The boys made a perfunctory effort to clear out the thicket, but it led to no capture.
After these two occurrences, there was a disposition on the part of the expedition to leave Pollock to himself, and Pollock became, for the first time in his life, anxious to mingle with blacks. Waterhouse took one canoe, and Pollock, in spite of a friendly desire to chat with Waterhouse, had to take the other. He was left all alone in the front part of the canoe, and he had the greatest trouble to make the men — who did not love him — keep to the middle of the river, a clear hundred yards or more from either shore. However, he made Shakespear, the Freetown half-breed, come up to his own end of the canoe and tell him about Porroh, which Shakespear, failing in his attempts to leave Pollock alone, presently did with considerable freedom and gusto.
The day passed. The canoe glided swiftly along the ribbon of lagoon water, between the drift of water-figs, fallen trees, papyrus, and palmwine palms, and with the dark mangrove swamp to the left, through which one could hear now and then the roar of the Atlantic surf. Shakespear told in his soft, blurred English of how the Porroh could cast spells; how men withered up under their malice; how they could send dreams and devils; how they tormented and killed the sons of Ijibu; how they kidnapped a white trader from Sulyma who had maltreated one of the sect, and how his body looked when it was found. And Pollock after each narrative cursed under his breath at the want of missionary enterprise that allowed such things to be, and at the inert British Government that ruled over this dark heathendom of Sierra Leone. In the evening they came to the Kasi Lake, and sent a score of crocodiles lumbering off the island on which the expedition camped for the night.
The next day they reached Sulyma, and smelt the sea breeze, but Pollock had to put up there for five days before he could get on to Freetown. Waterhouse, considering him to be comparatively safe here, and within the pale of Freetown influence, left him and went back with the expedition to Gbemma, and Pollock became very friendly with Perera, the only resident white trader at Sulyma — so friendly, indeed, that he went about with him everywhere. Perera was a little Portuguese Jew, who had lived in England, and he appreciated the Englishman s friendliness as a great compliment.
For two days nothing happened out of the ordinary; for the most part Pollock and Perera played Nap — the only game they had in common — and Pollock got into debt. Then, on the second evening, Pollock had a disagreeable intimation of the arrival of the Porroh man in Sulyma by getting a flesh-wound in the shoulder from a lump of filed iron. It was a long shot, and the missile had nearly spent its force when it hit him. Still it conveyed its message plainly enough. Pollock sat up in his hammock, revolver in hand, all that night, and next morning confided, to some extent, in the Anglo-Portuguese.
Perera took the matter seriously. He knew the local customs pretty thoroughly. ‘It is a personal question, you must know. It is revenge. And of course he is hurried by your leaving de country. None of de natives or half-breeds will interfere wid him very much — unless you make it wort deir while. If you come upon him suddenly, you might shoot him. But den he might shoot you.
‘Den dere’s dis — infernal magic,’ said Perera. ‘Of course, I don’t believe in it — supersitition — but still it’s not nice to tink dat wherever you are, dere is a black man, who spends a moonlight night now and den a-dancing about a fire to send you bad dreams … Had any bad dreams?’
‘Rather,’ said Pollock. ‘I keep on seeing the beggar’s head upside down grinning at me and showing all his teeth as he did in the hut, and coming close up to me, and then going ever so far off, and coming back. It’s nothing to be afraid of, but somehow it simply paralyses me with terror in my sleep. Queer things — dreams. I know it’s a dream all the time, and I can’t wake up from it.’
‘It’s probably only fancy,’ said Perera. ‘Den my niggers say Porroh man can send snakes. Seen any snakes lately?’
‘Only one. I killed him this morning, on the floor near my hammock. Almost trod on him as I got up.’
‘Ah!’ said Perera, and then, reassuringly, ‘Of course it is a — coincidence. Still I would keep my eyes open. Den dere’s pains in de bones.’
‘I thought they were due to miasma,’ said Pollock.
‘Probably dey are. When did dey begin?’
Then Pollock remembered that he first noticed them the night after the fight in the hut. ‘It’s my opinion he don’t want to kill you,’ said Perera — ‘at least not yet. I’ve heard deir idea is to scare and worry a man wid deir spells, and narrow misses, and rheumatic pains, and bad dreams, and all dat, until he’s sick of life. Of course, it’s all talk, you know. You mustn’t worry about it … But I wonder what he’ll be up to next.’
‘I shall have to be up to something first,’ said Pollock, staring gloomily at the greasy cards that Perera was putting on the table. ‘It don’t suit my dignity to be followed about, and shot at, and blighted in this way. I wonder if Porroh hokey-pokey upsets your luck at cards.’
He looked at Perera suspiciously.
‘Very likely it does,’ said Perera warmly, shuffling. ‘Dey are wonderful people.’
That afternoon Pollock killed two snakes in his hammock, and there was also an extraordinary increase in the number of red ants that swarmed over the place; and these annoyances put him in a fit temper to talk over business with a certain Mendi rough he had interviewed before. The Mendi rough showed Pollock a little iron dagger, and demonstrated where one struck in the neck, in a way that made Pollock shiver, and in return for certain considerations Pollock promised him a double-barrelled gun with an ornamental lock.
In the evening, as Pollock and Perera were playing cards, the Mendi rough came in through the doorway, carrying something in a blood-soaked piece of native cloth.
‘Not here!’ said Pollock very hurriedly. ‘Not here!’

But he was not quick enough to prevent the man, who was anxious to get to Pollock’s side of the bargain, from opening the cloth and throwing the head of the Porroh man upon the table. It bounded from there on to the floor, leaving a red trail on the cards, and rolled into the corner, where it came to rest upside down, but glaring hard at Pollock.
Perera jumped up as the thing fell among the cards, and began in his excitement to gabble in Portuguese. The Mendi was bowing, with the red cloth in his hand. ‘De gun!’ he cried. Pollock stared back at the head in the corner. It bore exactly the expression it had in his dreams. Something seemed to snap in his own brain as he looked at it.
Then Perera found his English again.
‘You got him killed?’ he said. ‘You did not kill him yourself?’
‘Why should I?’ said Pollock.
‘But he will not be able to take it off now!’
‘Take what off?’ said Pollock.
‘And all dese cards are spoiled!’
‘What do you mean by taking off?’ said Pollock.
‘You must send me a new pack from Freetown. You can buy dem dere.
‘But — “take it off”?’
‘It is only superstition. I forgot. De niggers say dat if de witches — he was a witch — But it is rubbish … You must make de Porroh man take it off, or kill him yourself … It is very silly.’
Pollock swore under his breath, still staring hard at the head in the corner.
‘I can’t stand that glare,’ he said. Then suddenly he rushed at the thing and kicked it. It rolled some yards or so, and came to rest in the same position as before, upside down, and looking at him.
‘He is ugly,’ said the Anglo-Portuguese. ‘Very ugly. Dey do it on deir faces with little knives.’
Pollock would have kicked the head again, but the Mendi man touched him on the arm. ‘De gun?’ he said, looking nervously at the head.
‘Two — if you will take that beastly thing away.’ said Pollock.
The Mendi shook his head, and intimated that he only wanted one gun now due to him, and for which he would be obliged. Pollock found neither cajolery nor bullying any good with him. Perera had a gun to sell (at a profit of three hundred per cent), and with that the man presently departed. Then Pollock’s eyes, against his will, were recalled to the thing on the floor.
‘It is funny dat his head keeps upside down,’ said Perera, with an uneasy laugh. ‘His brains must be heavy, like de weight in de little images one sees dat keep always upright wid lead in dem. You will take him wiv you when you go presently. You might take him now. De cards are all spoilt. Dere is a man sell dem in Freetown. De room is in a filthy mess as it is. You should have killed him yourself.’
Pollock pulled himself together, and went and picked up the head. He would hang it up by the lamp-hook in the middle of the ceiling of his room, and dig a grave for it at once. He was under the impression that he hung it up by the hair, but that must have been wrong, for when he returned for it, it was hanging by the neck upside down.
He buried it before sunset on the north side of the shed he occupied, so that he should not have to pass the grave after dark when he was returning from Perera’s. He killed two snakes before he went to sleep. In the darkest part of the night he awoke with a start, and heard a pattering sound and something scraping on the floor. He sat up noiselessly, and felt under his pillow for his revolver. A mumbling growl followed, and Pollock fired at the sound. There was a yelp, and something dark passed for a moment across the hazy blue of the doorway. ‘A dog!’ said Pollock, lying down again.
In the early dawn he awoke again with a peculiar sense of unrest. The vague pain in his bones had returned. For some time he lay watching the red ants that were swarming over the ceiling, and then, as the light grew brighter, he looked over the edge of his hammock and saw something dark on the floor. He gave such a violent start that the hammock overset and flung him out.

He found himself lying, perhaps, a yard away from the head of the Porroh man. It had been disinterred by the dog, and the nose was grievously battered. Ants and flies swarmed over it. By an odd coincidence, it was still upside down, and with the same diabolical expression in the inverted eyes.
Pollock sat paralysed, and stared at the horror for some time. Then he got up and walked round it — giving it a wide berth — and out of the shed. The clear light of the sunrise, the living stir of vegetation before the breath of the dying land-breeze, and the empty grave with the marks of the dog’s paws, lightened the weight upon his mind a little.
He told Perera of the business as though it was a jest — a jest to be told with white lips. ‘You should not have frighten de dog,’ said Perera, with poorly simulated hilarity.
The next two days, until the steamer came, were spent by Pollock in making a more effectual disposition of his possession. Overcoming his aversion to handling the thing, he went down to the river mouth and threw it into the sea-water, but by some miracle it escaped the crocodiles, and was cast up by the tide on the mud a little way up the river, to be found by an intelligent Arab half-breed, and offered for sale to Pollock and Perera as a curiosity, just on the edge of night. The native hung about in the brief twilight, making lower and lower offers, and at last, getting scared in some way by the evident dread these wise white men had for the thing, went off, and, passing Pollock’s shed, threw his burden in there for Pollock to discover in the morning.
At this Pollock got into a kind of frenzy. He would burn the thing. He went out straightway into the dawn, and had constructed a big pyre of brushwood before the heat of the day. He was interrupted by the hooter of the little paddle steamer from Monrovia to Bathurst, which was coming through the gap in the bar. ‘Thank Heaven!’ said Pollock, with infinite piety, when the meaning of the sound dawned upon him. With trembling hands he lit his pile of wood hastily, threw the head upon it, and went away to pack his portmanteau and make his adieux to Perera.
That afternoon, with a sense of infinite relief, Pollock watched the flat swampy foreshore of Suilyma grow small in the distance. The gap in the long line of white surge became narrower and narrower. It seemed to be closing in and cutting him off from his trouble. The feeling of dread and worry began to slip from him bit by bit. At Sulyma belief in Porroh malignity and Porroh magic had been in the air, his sense of Porroh had been vast, pervading, threatening, dreadful. Now manifestly the domain of Porroh was only a little place, a little black band between the sea and the blue cloudy Mendi uplands.
‘Good-bye, Porroh!’ said Pollock. ‘Good-bye — certainly not au revoir.’
The captain of the steamer came and leant over the rail beside him, and wished him good- evening, and spat at the froth of the wake in token of friendly ease.
‘I picked up a rummy curio on the beach this go,’ said the captain. ‘It’s a thing I never saw done this side of Indy before.’
‘What might that be?’ said Pollock.
‘Pickled ‘ed,’ said the captain.
‘What!‘ said Pollock.
“Ed — smoked. ‘Ed of one of those Porroh chaps, all ornamented with knife-cuts. Why! What’s up? Nothing? I shouldn’t have took you for a nervous chap. Green in the face. By gosh! you’re a bad sailor. All right, eh? Lord, how funny you went! … Well, this ‘ed I was telling you of is a bit rum in a way. I’ve got it, along with some snakes, in a jar of spirit in my cabin what I keeps for such curios, and I’m hanged if it don’t float upsy down. Hullo!’
Pollock had given an incoherent cry, and had his hands in his hair. He ran towards the paddle- boxes with a half-formed idea of jumping into the sea, and then he realised his position and turned back towards the captain.
‘Here!’ said the captain. ‘Jack Philips, just keep him off me! Stand off! No nearer, mister! What’s the matter with you? Are you mad?’
Pollock put his hand to his head. It was no good explaining. ‘I believe I am pretty nearly mad at times,’ he said. ‘It’s a pain I have here. Comes suddenly. You’ll excuse me, I hope.’
He was white and in a perspiration. He saw suddenly very clearly all the danger he ran of having his sanity doubted. He forced himself to restore the captain’s confidence, by answering his sympathetic inquiries, noting his suggestions, even trying a spoonful of neat brandy in his cheek, and, that matter settled, asking a number of questions about the captain’s private trade in curiosities. The captain described the head in detail. All the while Pollock was struggling to keep under a preposterous persuasion that the ship was as transparent as glass, and that he could distinctly see the inverted face looking at him from the cabin beneath his feet.
Pollock had a worse time almost on the steamer than he had at Sulyma. All day he had to control himself in spite of his intense perception of the imminent presence of that horrible head that was overshadowing his mind. At night his old nightmare returned, until, with a violent effort, he would force himself awake, rigid with the horror of it, and with the ghost of a hoarse scream in his throat.
He left the actual head behind at Bathurst, where he changed ship for Teneriffe, but not his dreams nor the dull ache in his bones. At Teneriffe Pollock transferred to a Cape liner, but the head followed him. He gambled, he tried chess, he even read books, but he knew the danger of drink. Yet whenever a round black shadow, a round black object came into his range, there he looked for the head, and — saw it. He knew clearly enough that his imagination was growing traitor to him, and yet at times it seemed the ship he sailed in, his fellow-passengers, the sailors, the wide sea, was all part of a filmy phantasmagoria that hung, scarcely veiling it, between him and a horrible real world. Then the Porroh man, thrusting his diabolical face through that curtain, was the one real and undeniable thing. At that he would get up and touch things, taste something, gnaw something, burn his hand with a match, or run a needle into himself.
So, struggling grimly and silently with his excited imagination, Pollock reached England. He landed at Southampton, and went on straight from Waterloo to his banker’s in Cornhill in a cab. There he transacted some business with the manager in a private room, and all the while the head hung like an ornament under the black marble mantel and dripped upon the fender. He could hear the drops fall, and see the red on the fender.
‘A pretty fern,’ said the manager, following his eyes. ‘But it makes the fender rusty.’
‘Very,’ said Pollock; ‘a very pretty fern. And that reminds me. Can you recommend me a physician for mind troubles? I’ve got a little —what is it? — hallucination.’
The head laughed savagely, wildly. Pollock was surprised the manager did not notice it. But the manager only stared at his face.
With the address of a doctor, Pollock presently emerged in Cornhill. There was no cab in sight, and so he went on down to the western end of the street, and essayed the crossing opposite the Mansion House. The crossing is hardly easy even for the expert Londoners; cabs, vans, carriages, mail-carts, omnibuses go by in one incessant stream; to anyone fresh from the malarious solitudes of Sierra Leone it is a boiling, maddening confusion. But when an inverted head suddenly comes bounding, like an indiarubber ball, between your legs, leaving distinct smears of blood every time it touches the ground, you can scarcely hope to avoid an accident. Pollock lifted his feet convulsively to avoid it, and then kicked at the thing furiously. Then something hit him violently in the back, and a hot pain ran up his arm.
He had been hit by the pole of an omnibus, and three of the fingers of his left hand smashed by the hoof of one of the horses — the very fingers, as it happened, that he shot from the Porroh man. They pulled him out from between the horse’s legs, and found the address of the physician in his crushed hand.
For a couple of days Pollock’s sensations were full of the sweet, pungent smell of chloroform, of painful operations that caused him no pain, of lying still and being given food and drink. Then he had a slight fever, and was very thirsty, and his old nightmare came back. It was only when it returned that he noticed it had left him for a day.
‘If my skull had been smashed instead of my fingers, it might have gone altogether,’ said Pollock, staring thoughtfully at the dark cushion that had taken on for the time the shape of the head. Pollock at the first opportunity told the physician of his mind trouble. He knew clearly that he must go mad unless something should intervene to save him. He explained that he had witnessed a decapitation in Dahomey, and was haunted by one of the heads. Naturally, he did not care to state the actual facts. The physician looked grave. Presently he spoke hesitatingly. ‘As a child, did you get very much religious training?’ ‘Very little,’ said Pollock.
A shade passed over the physician’s face. ‘I don’t know if you have heard of the miraculous cures — it may be, of course, they are not miraculous — at Lourdes.’
‘Faith-healing will hardly suit me, I am afraid,’ said Pollock, with his eye on the dark cushion.
The head distorted its scarred features in an abominable grimace. The physician went upon a new track. ‘It’s all imagination,’ he said, speaking with sudden briskness. ‘A fair case for faith- healing, anyhow. Your nervous system has run down, you’re in that twilight state of health when the bogles come easiest. The strong impression was too much for you. I must make you up a little mixture that will strengthen your nervous system — especially your brain. And you must take exercise.’
‘I’m no good for faith-healing,’ said Pollock.
‘And therefore we must restore tone. Go in search of stimulating air — Scotland, Norway, the Alps’ —
‘Jericho, if you like,’ said Pollock — ‘where Naaman went.’
However, so soon as his fingers would let him, Pollock made a gallant attempt to follow out the doctor’s suggestion. It was now November. He tried football, but to Pollock the game consisted in kicking a furious inverted head about a field. He was no good at the game. He kicked blindly, with a kind of horror, and when they put him back into goal, and the ball came swooping down upon him, he suddenly yelled and got out of its way. The discreditable stories that had driven him from England to wander in the tropics shut him off from any but men’s society, and now his increasingly strange behaviour made even his man friends avoid him. The thing was no longer a thing of the eye merely; it gibbered at him, spoke to him. A horrible fear came upon him that presently, when he took hold of the apparition, it would no longer become some mere article of furniture, but would feel like a real dissevered head. Alone, he would curse at the thing, defy it, entreat it; once or twice, in spite of his grim self-control, he addressed it in the presence of others. He felt the growing suspicion in the eyes of the people that watched him — his landlady, the servant, his man.
One day early in December his cousin Arnold — his next of kin — came to see him and draw him out, and watch his sunken yellow face with narrow eager eyes. And it seemed to Pollock that the hat his cousin carried in his hand was no hat at all, but a Gorgon head that glared at him upside down, and fought with its eyes against his reason. However, he was still resolute to see the matter out. He got a bicycle, and, riding over the frosty road from Wandsworth to Kingston, found the thing rolling along at his side, and leaving a dark trail behind it. He set his teeth and rode faster. Then suddenly, as he came down the hill towards Richmond Park, the apparition rolled in front of him and under his wheel, so quickly that he had no time for thought, and, turning quickly to avoid it, was flung violently against a heap of stones and broke his left wrist.
The end came on Christmas morning. All night he had been in a fever, the bandages encircling his wrist like a band of fire, his dreams more vivid and terrible than ever. In the cold, colourless, uncertain light that came before the sunrise, he sat up in his bed, and saw the head upon the bracket in the place of the bronze jar that had stood there overnight.
‘I know that is a bronze jar,’ he said, with a chill doubt at his heart. Presently the doubt was irresistible. He got out of bed slowly, shivering, and advanced to the jar with his hand raised. Surely he would see now his imagination had deceived him, recognise the distinctive sheen of bronze. At last, after an age of hesitation, his fingers came down on the patterned cheek of the head. He withdrew them spasmodically. The last stage was reached. His sense of touch had betrayed him.
Trembling, stumbling against the bed, kicking against his shoes with his bare feet, a dark confusion eddying round him, he groped his way to the dressing-table, took his razor from the drawer, and sat down on the bed with this in his hand. In the looking-glass he saw his own face, colourless, haggard, full of the ultimate bitterness of despair.
He beheld in swift succession the incidents in the brief tale of his experience. His wretched home, his still more wretched schooldays, the years of vicious life he had led since then, one act of selfish dishonour leading to another; it was all clear and pitiless now, all its squalid folly, in the cold light of the dawn. He came to the hut, to the fight with the Porroh man, to the retreat down the river to Sulyma, to the Mendi assassin and his red parcel, to his frantic endeavours to destroy the head, to the growth of his hallucination. It was a hallucination! He knew it was. A hallucination merely. For a moment he snatched at hope. He looked away from the glass, and on the bracket, the inverted head grinned and grimaced at him … With the stiff fingers of his bandaged hand he felt at his neck for the throb of his arteries. The morning was very cold, the steel blade felt like ice.

{See also the following study -
Click & Read

Fear of forced initiation into the Poro Secret Society in Freetown

http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/49db6ccb2.html }


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LEAVE ANNIE WALSH SCHOOL ALONE.COM -3 THE DEBATE WIDENS TO NATIONAL CONCERS!!!

  ANNIE WALSH SCHOOL RE-LOCATION OR NO RE-LOCATION: A WIDER VIEW

As we eschew the bombshell about Relocating The Annie walsh Memorial School and turn the Property into a Market, ( a charge which State House Press Release tried to clarify last week end) we gradually see the debate/discussion/argument being directed to araes that have not been comtemplated at the origin. The principle of unintended consequences is certainly at play here. It would appear that some pundits were waiting for an opportunity to posit some heart burning issues far beyond the current issue - by this I mean the Colony vs Protectorate problems which go far beyond our contemplation and distance away from the issues facing the Annie Walsh School today. Such pundits must not take advantage of this opportunity and painfully divert attention from the reality and seriouness of the situation the School faces.
Here below I reproduce two postings (from The Patriotic Vanguard (one week apart) by the two authors named therin. Whilst I sympathise with the views of both authors, I will refrain from further commentary and leave my readers to judge for themselves and make up their own minds as to the original posting from Imodale Caulker-Burnett (USA) and Anthony K. Kamara (Snr) of Winnipeg, Canada.
 
I have also deliberatly left  out postings from early commentators on these articles so that my readers can apply freash feelings and clear interpretation of these postings. [Hope all AWOGAS are on the BALL]

 Thanks to The Patriotic Vanguard. READ ON
   (Israel Ojekeh Parper Snr - Wednesdy 20 Februry 2013)

The AWMS issue - A symptom of the larger Sierra Leone issue

- Monday 18 February 2013.                                                         
                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                                                                         

Opinion

By Imodale Caulker-Burnett, USA.

During the debates over the controversy regarding the location of the Annie Walsh Memorial School, as an Old Girl of the school, I added my voice. It occurred to me that the Annie Walsh issue was really one symptom of a larger problem which the country must deal with.

If one considers the location of most of the schools (maybe with the exception of the Grammar School, the Collegiate School, and the Methodist Girls High School) , there are crowds of traders around most of them. If the argument is that the vicinity around the school is packed with market people, and it is therefore no longer conducive for learning, and that building a ‘Markit’ (according to Professor Blake), is the alternative, then all other schools are in danger of going the way of the Annie Walsh. The Albert Academy and the Government Model School, are examples of crowded environments. The bottom of Berry Street is loaded with markets, and Okada and Taxi stands. A new highway even runs parallel to the Albert Academy encroaching on the campus.

Yes, there is a serious need for re-planning the city of Freetown, but we must always have in the forefront of our planning, the preservation of our historical monuments both in Freetown and in the Provinces, for the benefit of future generations. (This will also benefit the Tourism business, as visitors are always interested in the history of the country they are visiting.)

Regardless of what is finally decided about the AWMS, we need to begin a dialogue with each other, and with the powers that be in the government, in order to seriously discuss the future of Sierra Leone. I think it is time to take a look at our history and determine how it has impacted where the country is today, and where we want to go from here.

I would argue that the division of the country into Colony and Protectorate in the early days, (when the British purchased the Peninsular, for the newly arriving Freed Slaves, then annexed the rest of the country as a Protectorate) is the source of the problem and is where we must begin. I would also argue that our problems have little to do with which party is in power, but much to do with the limited education the colonialists provided in the provinces in comparison with that which existed in the colony at that time, as well as the quality of education offered today. With the exception of schools like the Bunumbu Teachers College, the Harford School for Girls, the Magburaka Secondary school and Bo Secondary School, there were precious few other schools in the provinces and not everyone went to school then, (not everyone goes to school even today). African History was not taught in any school in those days, and neither was Sierra Leone History. As a result, up until the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, but for people like the late Dr. M.C.F. Easmon, who established the Freetown Museum and took students in Freetown, on a few tours of historical sites such as the Banana islands and Bunce island, many of us knew nothing of African or Sierra Leone history. Not many people from Freetown had been to the provinces, and indeed, many of the provincials knew even less about Freetown.

In the Old days, as far as the provincials were concerned, the Colony was ‘Sierra Leone,’ which they saw as different from their various ‘Countries’. When Independence came, with the ‘Majority Rule’ of Democracy, whether we liked it or not, the country was primarily ruled by those from the provinces, with their limited education and limited knowledge of Freetown. In my opinion, many of them were not really well equipped. The fact is, the way things are done in the provinces is very different from the way things are done in Freetown. Now with the Rebel war, (which brought many of the provincial people to Freetown for safety, and caused an exodus of many of the ‘colonial’ people – the Krios, as well as many of our educated elite,) the Colony and the Provinces have finally merged and we are not prepared for it on any level. But we must find a way and be willing to merge the two.

We have to have ‘Wan Wod’ in order to solve our problems We cannot now begin to talk as if we are ‘One Country’. WE ARE NOT YET ONE COUNTRY. That does not happen automatically, and it will not happen by one Tribe looking down on the other, nor will it happen by criticism from the Diaspora who are 6,000 miles away, and can only visit home infrequently. It will also not happen if the statistics are still showing that 80% of the population is illiterate.

We have a long way to go before we get there. But we have to begin somewhere. In order to develop a vision for our country, we must begin by respecting our differences and learning about each other, and determining how we see ourselves as Sierra Leoneans, (not as one tribe or the other, or one party or the other) but as one country and one people. There are some of us who are of mixed culture – children of Colony/Provincial parentage, and we may have the advantage of being familiar with both cultures. We should be part of the dialogue and the process of building a Sierra Leone which we can be proud of.

One of the buildings at AWMS.

 

 

 

 

A Rejoinder to Imodale Caulker-Burnett’s Article on AWMS

- Wednesday 20 February 2013.

By Anthony K. Kamara (Snr) of Winnipeg, Canada.
I want to thank Imodale for expressing her opinion on the above. True it is only by the clash of opinions that the truth can prevail. I also want to make it abundantly clear that I personally have no opinion on the rumoured misinformation on the relocation or non-relocation of the Annie Walsh Memorial School. But relocation or no relocation of the school, readers understand your message and a response is therefore in place.
The writer is right on the need for “serious re-planning” of Freetown. But she failed to realise that to re-plan an over-congested city like Freetown of today would entail huge expenditure. It will cost a government billions of Leones first to compensate property owners whose homes have been brought down for development reasons. Does this writer realise how many billions of Leones have been paid to property owners for bringing down their homes for the expansion of the Regent to Jui short-cut road starting from Spur road currently undertaken by a Chinese construction company? Yes people have to sacrifice for the good of the nation and Freetown in particular, and the government has been reasonable enough to mete out reasonable compensation in cash and offer alternative land site should they choose to rebuild. Look at the newly constructed short-cut road near the new Law court at Pademba Road right up to Bai Bureh road. Is this not an amazing development?
Yes the writer is suggesting a dialogue “with each other and the powers that be in government” to seriously discuss the future of Sierra Leone. Any dialogue would stall from the word go until the settlers’ descendants of today admit that their forefathers (the Black Poor and the Nova Scotians and others) were illegally settled on land ruled by a Temne ruler of the Koya kingdom Bai Kompa. There is no reasons to blame the settlers or their descendants for squatting on land whose acquisition they themselves did not understand to this day; and Sierra Leonean writers on Sierra Leone history all without exception did no research of their own to narrate the true history; instead, they relied on the false accounts of the colonial office in London which were used by British historian Christopher Fyfe to write his Short history of Sierra Leone which was first published in 1962 by Longmans. Fyfe’s account on the founding of the colony of Sierra Leone is flawed by all accounts. It was and is still intellectual dishonesty by any local historian to keep re-cycle Christopher Fyfe’s account which was a mere justification of his home government’s activities in Sierra Leone. I must mention that in 1950, this British author was appointed by the British colonial government to come over to Sierra Leone to organise the archives on Sierra Leone. Fyfe did just what he was paid to do, namely to embellish and justify the British activities in Sierra Leone and their claim to have purchased land from King Tom for whatever amount and goods they claimed to have paid.

Did any Sierra Leone writer ever ask the following questions?
Was there an interpreter when the said negotiations were conducted? This question is important because the naval captain who transported the settlers to Freetown Bouldie Thompson had never been to Freetown or West Africa.
Did King Tom understand English and conversely, did Captain Bouldie Thompson understand Temne? If the answer to this is No, then how did they negotiate and arrive at whatever settlement the British claimed to have reached?
Who witnessed the said discussions between King Tom and Bouldie Thompson?
From my research on this topic was that when the ship bringing the Black Poor reached the watering place, the settlers were not allowed to disembark and stayed on board for about 48 hours while the captain went ashore to see the king Tom. Who led him to King Tom?
Unless these questions are answered no debate on anything Imolade is proposing would take off. I am not challenging the accounts on Sierra Leone history in its entirety but on the founding on the colony of Freetown. True all African history was about European activities in our continent. To them Africans have no history. Similarly all that is written about the history of Sierra Leone is about British exploits in this country. This was the history we were taught at school and given excellent grades for writing answers acceptable to them. Sierra Leonean history writers have a duty to re-visit this aspect of our history otherwise it will be seen as intellectual dishonesty to keep telling our school kids the same lies of land purchase with no proof. There was no land purchased from any chief as the two sides did not have a common language to conduct negotiations. This aspect of our history is totally false.
Does anyone think the Temne people were just inconsiderate in burning Granville town? They felt cheated by the British in settling people from nowhere on their land, people whose real origins were unknown apart from the accepted fact that as Blacks their forefathers must have come from Africa, but not Sierra Leone in particular. It was racism and not philanthropic reasons that made the British find those Black Poor a home in Sierra Leone as a dumping ground. They did not want their presence in London and other cities. Why did they not consider Nigeria or the Gold Coast at the time? Probably they preferred to bully the small West African country. But thanks to the Church Missionaries Society (CMS) who made efforts to educate them with the starting of schools beginning at Leicester and more later followed including the Annie Walsh School. Let’s not forget that the Black Poor were destitute illiterate discharged slaves by their masters. It was in Sierra Leone they first had a taste of western education. For over two centuries, they were busy labouring in plantations in all the scattered islands of the Caribbean sea.
So once again, what debate does Imolade want the government to engage in with a people whose total population today in the country is around 80,000? I want Imodale to accept the fact that there has been no documentary evidence of any land purchase by the British from any ruler in Sierra Leone. The British simply wrote in their archives to justify their action in this country which no Sierra Leonean has ever seen. No Sierra Leonean historian can claim to have seen any such document. It’s all bogus. But we keep teaching our children the wrong aspect of our history because a white historian Christopher Fyfe said so.
Imodale must also realise that the British divided the country into colony and Protectorate for administrative convenience. The culture of land grabbing in Sierra Leone was started by the British and has continued to the present. Let me also enlighten Imodale on this issue. The Temne people did not come to Freetown to stay. They have always been there until other groups came to live with them including the settlers; that’s why the Temne are found in all villages in the peninsular like Leicester, Regent, Goderich, Waterloo, Wellington Kissy and others. They have been generous enough to accommodate and integrate with strangers on their land. There is nothing to debate with a people under 100,000 in population for land they did not own. The British lied to the settlers prior to leaving England that they would grant them land in Sierra Leone. We want to see the document that gave them other people`s land.
Imodale is right that most people did not go to school in the early days and even today people in the interior. Here again you need some history lessons. Did you know that the British colonial government did not start any school in Sierra Leone until 96 years after their arrival? And their first school was the Bo school. Their first secondary school was the Prince of Wales (1925). The Creoles educational benefit was due to the CMS. These distorted facts of history. The natives of Sierra Leone are today in the millions in population. The Black Poor started with 411 in 1787, and by 1961, their population was 55,000 and today still under 100,000. What futile debate does Imodale really want from government? Let me also enlighten Imodale that the Christian Missionaries did not at first open schools in Temne area because they did not want to come to a clash with Islam which was already well established in all Temne areas. Besides, no African country can provide western education for populations in the millions. The settler descendants` population, I repeat is under 100,000. This is simple logic. The people you`re trying to provoke are in millions.
True in 1961, we had our Independence with majority rule, by which power passed to the leadership of the indigenous people of the country and Sir Milton Margai who the Creoles ridiculed as "Mende Doctor" became our first Prime Minister. Thanks to his efforts, we are what we are today.
But on the eve of Independence, the British asked the settler descendants to decide whether to stay in Sierra Leone as Sierra Leoneans or become British citizens and be free to migrate and live in England. Many opted to be British citizens and left the country rather than be ruled by natives. No one quarrelled with their choice. But the poor who could not go to England had to stay and live under native rule at independence.
Yes, we are one country and one people and we’ll remain so forever. We must accept this fact.   

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Annie Walsh School Band in action

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LEAVE ANNIE WALSH SCHOOL ALONE .COM - 2- GOVERNMENT ( STATE HOUSE ) RESPONSE

Press Release from Stae House- An Explanation!

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT,
STATE HOUSE,
TOWER HILL,
FREETOWN.

FEBRUARY 14TH 2013

PRESS RELEASE: RELOCATION OF THE ANNIE WALSH MEMORIAL SCHOOL

The Office of the President notes with grave concern the acrimony and vitriolic attacks coming from some sections of the public over its letter addressed to the Lord Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Freetown and the North, proposing the relocation of the Annie Walsh Memorial School to a more conducive environment.

The fact of the matter is that prior informal discussions were held between His Excellency the President and a very senior clergyman of the Anglican Diocese who confirmed that plans were already afoot for relocation of the school, and explained that they were constrained by the huge financial outlay involved.

The President saw this as a golden opportunity to kill two birds with one stone by helping to actualize the dreams of the proprietors of the school while simultaneously securing a suitable site for developmental purposes. The President was encouraged to have the proposal officially forwarded to the Lord Bishop for initial consideration by the church and school authorities.

It is pertinent to mention that contrary to what is being rumoured, government has neither presented the Anglican Diocese with a fait accompli, nor has it given any indication that it intends to subject the said property to compulsory acquisition. The onus is now on the church and school authorities to take a dispassionate view of the situation and revert to the Presidency with their reaction. Such reaction could include concerns about preservation of the monumental value of some of the buildings housing the school and other issues that require critical examination.

A response to the letter under reference is awaited.

E N D

STATE HOUSE
14TH FEBRUARY 2013

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Sierra Leone President praised by Alumni of Oldest Secondary School in Sub-Saharan Africa as State House Clarifies 'Market' controversyBy Awareness Times
Feb 15, 2013, 17:17

Click Link http://news.sl/drwebsite/publish/article_200522099.shtml

LEAVE ANNIE WALSH SCHOOL ALONE.COM - 1

WE CANNOT TURN ANNIE WALSH SCHOOL PROPERTY INTO A MARKET!! No SIR!

Folks , this is the report of the news published in AWOKO Newspaper- Some kind friend e-mailed it to me yesterday. (SEE AT THE END OF MY COMMENTS)

 Sometimes Governments tend to attempt some woeful policies which eventually hurt them in the end. We've just seen the embarassing backing down by the British Government on Education Policy - viz- to scarp the GCSE. The Secretary of State , Michael Gove curt a 'humiliating U-turn' admitting the policy reforms were "a bridge too far". Whosoever advised our beloved President to embark on this road to MOVE The Annie Walsh School from their location of nearly 200 years does not apppear to love the President because that person or persons must realise the trouble this announcement will cause. There are better options in the lacation of a Market in the Center of Freetown. Do we want to turn that area of Freetown into one gaigantic Market crowded village - once that Market is built, within a short time we surely will be bosting of one great Shanty sub-town and the whole of Kissy Road, Mountain Cut, Magazine Cut. Fireburn will merge with Upper and Lower Bombay Streets to make one sub-district of a Shanty town. If Annie Walsh School is moved , will the Gibralter Church be moved too? If the Annnie Walsh School is moved, will The Holy Trinity Church with its Primary School be moved too? Will the policy spread to the Cathedral School and the St Marys School? Where will this policy end? Yes there is great need for de-congestion but wiser policy action is needed not this frivolous and disturbing approach. Government and the City Council must now come up with policy action plan to move the illegal traders from the vicinity of The Annie Walsh- that is the focus that must be embraced now. It is clear that some action be taken , but not the one revealed by this news. I dare say I am not impressed by Mr Osho-Coker's letter. It evokes PROVOCATION- and I do not like it. I am seeing this separately from my personal point of view - yes as an APC dedicated member and I serve the Party for very long but I separate this issue totally from the Party and the Government. THIS to me is not an APC policy but a government policy which I dislike totally. The Annie Walsh is my mother's school. It is the school my mother's Grand Aunty, Miss CLARA BELFORD, (that is the sister of my maternal Grandmother from Benguima) taught for decades: many of my relatives and friends including Mrs Elizabeth Lavally-the former Deputy Speaker of Parliament, went to that school even the President's wife - The First Lady, and the wife of the Former High Commissioner of Sierra Leone to the UK Mrs Challobar and many other prominent women. THE HERITAGE MUST BE PRESERVED. Kissy Street Market and the area surrounding it can be buldozed and clear to build a SUPPER MARKET: or a Shopping Centre- this can go all the way down to 'BIG WARF'; Or Cow Yard and its visinty can be used to build this market for the Market woman dem. or Maket man dem.   BUT LEAVE ANNIE WALSH  SCHOOL ALONE .COM -

PLEASE READ THE AWOKO REPORT BELOW. 

 *****************************************************

For the construction of a Modern Market Annie Walsh School to relocate

Bishop Julius O.P Lynch, proprietor of the Annie Walsh Memorial School has received a letter from the Secretary to the President, proposing the relocation of the school from its present location at Kissy Road for the construction of a modern market.
The letter written by E.B. Osho-Coker, to the Lord Bishop of Freetown and the North states, “as you are no doubt aware, when the Annie Walsh Memorial School (AWMS) moved to its present location on Kissy Road, Freetown in 1865, the environment was ideally suitable for a school that pursued excellence in all areas including high academic performance, sound discipline and a solid Christian foundation.
However, the passage of time, has witnessed a massive growth in the city’s population and
concomitant expansion of trading activities eastwards, the area occupied by the school has become an unsuitable environment for the pursuit of academic excellence.
As Government intensifies its efforts at waste management, improvement of road safety and decongestion through “Operation WID” the compelling need for relocation of the AWMS to a more ideal site has been identified.
The selection of the site will be at the behest of the proprietors of the AWMS and arrangements will be concluded with Government for acquisition of the land and construction of the new school. The land vacated at Kissy Road will then be utilized for the construction of a modern market to be occupied by traders that are being removed from the streets of Freetown.
His Excellency the President, has instructed me to bring this proposal to your attention, so that it can be initially considered by the Church and School authorities.
Please be informed that His Excellency looks forward to a favourable consideration of the proposal contained herein,” the letter concluded.
Bishop Lynch’s first reaction to the letter dated 29th January 2013, was to write the Secretary of the Improvement Relocation Committee of the Annie Walsh Memorial Old Girls Association (AWOGA).
In his letter, he stated, “I hasten to bring this letter received on 30th January 2013 from the Secretary to the President to your notice, for a speedy consideration of the proposal contained in the document. Kindly advise me, so that I can respond appropriately alongside our proposal for privatization.
He ended his letter on this note, “This matter cries haste and must be treated as such.”
However, most Old Girls are of the opinion that there is a need to maintain the present location.
Another school of thought lamented that “but it seems we don’t know what to do with our monuments, relics and historic sites.”
The lady further affirmed “Look at the old FBC building at Cline Town. So far, no effort has been made to preserve it, stressing on “it is our history..our story we need to preserve it. What do we show our kids tomorrow?
Tourists, visitors and Sierra Leoneans need to be able to go on tour to the old FBC building at Cline Town and even the AWMS on Kissy Road. That site needs to be preserved, not destroyed. Do we know what we want to do willingly? Look at what the Islamists are doing in Mali and the attention it got from the international community. Then to think, we want to willingly destroy our heritage”, she lamented.
By Samuel Dennis JohnSee more