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.
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.
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 |
1 comment:
Both posits are highly appreciated.
The Government has proffered clarifications.
I think we should now pay more commensurate attention to problems we have now which can be solved - such as improving infant mortality rates; increasing availability of clean drinking water; reliability of constant electricity; unfair air fares to/from Sierra Leone in comparison with a lot of other West African Countries for virtually similar air-miles; progressive, constructive and positive responses to our Auditor-General's Annual Reports taking advantage of President Koroma's exemplary initiative of allowing it into the public domain at all!
I know this is painful for some, but, it cannot be helped. We have to do them.
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