It has been far too long since I last wrote on the pages of this website. Since then, much has happened in both my personal and professional life. Through it all, I can only be grateful to Almighty God for His grace and countless blessings. We pray for the chance and opportunities to keep mounting so that we can keep counting our blessings!

I remain committed to pushing forward on all fronts. My latest focus is Artificial Intelligence: Machine Learning, Predictive Programming, Robotics, Fuzzy Logic, all geared towards Problem-Solving. What a deeply exciting world!

This is not just a passing trend; it is the new reality that has started defining the global educational systems and ultimately will determine the direction of the world. The ability to generate and reshape reality from what was once considered impossible platforms is a ground breaking advancement, one that promises to evolve way beyond the current contours of our human imagination. I am thrilled to be warming up on a small starting pathway of this extraordinary journey—one with the potential to push human progress far beyond the limits of our present understanding.

On the global stage, it is not an exaggeration to say that the world stands at the edge of major transformations. Whether for better or worse, we cannot say for certain. However, we can only hope and pray that these changes will bring good for all.

Africa must come together, now more than ever, to confront its challenges. For me, the priority is clear—though ambitious, its impact would be profound: one continent, one currency, one passport. The obstacles are immense, but so is the hope, and the growing determination!

Meanwhile, it is heart-breaking—and frankly sickening—to see the images emerging from Goma, in Eastern Congo. Why, Africa? Are we such bad players that we can only ever act tragic films? Why can’t we unite and solve our own problems instead of allowing innocent, defenceless people to be rudely displaced and heartlessly destroyed?

How cursed can one be to be slaughtered by their own riches? Even those bedraggled gun-toting boys (and sometimes girls) attired in faded military fatigues are largely victims without necessarily being conscious of their situation. These youngsters should be doctors, pilots, teachers and architects, not thieves, torturers and murderers!

How long is Africa going to languish in this state? Continental unity is long overdue:

Dissolve the suffocating artificial colonial boundaries and develop the bonds that will drive Africa toward true prosperity. We have to stop buying bullets and using lies that destroy our societies and to properly learn to use our brains to improve the lot of our people.

For Africa to prosper, Africans need to wake up, unite and work together!

The SEEDS are dripping down the rabbit hole,

The GRAINS all lying dead in sleepy space

No drop of water dropping down below

To spring to life this baked and barren place

Where many fall, consumed by fiery want

Bound  by chains wrought by their own very hands

Devoid of brains that make the little ant

Crawl along waving the sugary wands

 

 

 

 

 

 

He met her when she’s standing straight and tall

Guarding the gate where men enter to fall

With beady eyes she begged him to step back

And not take another step towards that crack

 

But on he walked, marching straight towards the hole

Where foul men fall, crushing out their every goal.

 

It starts with the WRITTEN WORD;

And then flows like a golden stream of seeds from a pod

Which explodes in myriad varieties of shapes and taste

Like a festival of fruits sprouting in measured haste.

 

THE WORD grows and glows in resplendent majesty

And rises to speak with irresistible dignity

Beautifully bristling through lyrical hands

That create true stories with wordy wands

 

 

 

 

In the teeming dark forest, many Leaves will weaken and drop in droves and fade away in dusty clumps before the tree grows tall and strong.

 

Yes, the fallen leaves are the rising ladder for the rising tree. The dead leaves provide the sustaining manna for the maturing tree!

For each leaf that falls, the surviving tree thrusts itself upwards to kiss the regal sun in grateful supplication for yet another life gone down to make its day, and the ray of a new light!

OUR COUNTRY IS BEING CRUSHINGLY CRIPPLED BY CORROSIVE CORRUPTION AND SNAKE-CRAWLING SYCOPHANCY!!!
❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌               📛📛📛📛📛📛📛📛📛📛📛📛📛

No one can ever describe it half as accurately as it is being felt by those who really suffer it on a daily basis!
I am talking about the pain and the grief wrought by the decades of imposed poverty on our country!

Most of the attempts at crafting solutions are either half-hearted or deliberately ill-conceived!

Now our “democratically” anointed robbers believe that one way to raise funds to dab up this SINKHOLE of a governmental drag-down (in their decided bid to totally mortgage our nation to their greedy pseudo-communist partners) is to collaborate with our new “Slave Masters” in imposing a back-breaking FINE of a teeth-jerking TOLL on a powerless penniless people!

Suddenly, THE ROAD that has for so long been mightily extolled as the exemplary symbol of “development and prosperity” is now being used as a veritable instrument of deprivation: Sierra Leoneans are no longer free to motor through a certain stretch of Chinese patched-up road without a perilous financial penalty that is more punishing to the poor than an elephant dung dropped on the neck of an ailing ant.

Without a doubt our main road in and out of Freetown is being cut off by the slicing scissors of officially sanctioned greed!
Those who have expanded their grabbing realm to the province of toll road “collectors” would be laughing all the way to their banks while the impoverished commuter would be screaming at the next roast cassava seller on the other side of the toll road.

And this in a country where GARI chaff is now gold grain and the cost of imported Burmese rice has risen to become a priceless diamond in the sky.
We are talking about a country where one would need to travel countless countries away to get any meaningful healthcare attention worthy of a cat’s piss, or even a decent coffin for your gran.

This is also the country that has confidently broken WORLD RECORDS in every conceivable negative bracket, including infant mortality and illiteracy rates.

We seem to be eternally destined to wear the ignoble tag for every demeaning category under God’s rotating firmament! But should we?

What is really baffling way beyond the crash is the complacent acceptance of the crap!

We look like a nation that has been successfully programmed into a tortuous addiction to the happy ownership of all the bad things and every ugly stuff our “leaders” can throw out at us!

One would never believe that ours is a country with blessed trees of goodness heavily hanging low in a vast forest with every make of ripened fruit just waiting to be picked!
Only problem is that the FRUITS are being picked by the wrong hands and stored in the wrong places to gather moss and rot away.

For a decade long stretch we have been parading the mantra of “THE WORLD BEST” in our corrupted world-view, like a trapped flock of bleating sheep deafeningly blaring out the “magnanimous virtues” of a knife swinging butcher who cares not on which side of your neck the severing blow lands!

And just when you think the starving poor cannot stomach the piling mess one more morsel of a mouthful, the very FUTURE of their world is being snuffed out of existence: for how many poor desperate parents are going to afford 500,000 leones in our today Sierra Leone just to secure a university application “FORM” for the probability of an admission that is far from been assured? And then a graduation that is as meaningless as a blank page from a bad cheque.

Scandalous, you say?
That is not even half the story!

For those who get accepted into that crumbling roach-hole of a university, the abominable cost of the application form is only the beginning of their chain of woes!
An inescapable ratty lifestyle awaits their soiled existence like a sad river of sores that never runs dry! A river that is ready to drown your body your mind and your very soul!

All you can do is to PRETEND to learn, to PRETEND to be preparing yourself for a hopeful cut of a sizeable take of the poisonous “cake” rolling in the spilling sewage that is the APC world. A world that is menacingly floating around your “university facade” of a dumb intellectual dump!

When a country is dying it jerks out its sagging legs like an electrocuted frog suffering the spasms of a gruesome end.

For the conscious observer, the enveloping sadness engulfing a sober mind is as slaughtering as the very act of the physical and psychological death of a condemned nation!

You are gutted when you KNOW that your people are suffering, NEEDLESSLY, because of the headlessness of those who have weaponised greed to kill a nation they are sworn to save!

Anger gives way to sadness when you KNOW that those been slaughtered (in every sense) are initially incapacitated by a level of debilitating ignorance that prevents men from distinguishing a wolf from a werewolf.

When gloom is accepted as bloom there remains little drive to venture a try to anywhere!
For every forward step seems to sink the hopeful traveller into a sinkhole flaming with hot coals!
It is worse than the fate of a fly being fried using its wings as fuel!

It is either this nation rises to completely CHANGE the system that has enslaved it for so many bleeding decades or we give our country up to those who continue to thrive on perfecting the chains of penury that perpetually enslaves us all!
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

SAVOUR THE JOURNEY!!!
LIFE is counted in breath-filled seconds, not in mere exhaling puffs!
The JOURNEY could be far tastier than the ARRIVAL!
So learn to savour each step                              as you walk along the way                         because you may never be able to actually arrive at your PLANNED DESTINATION.

And who said you would ever be able to retrace, recreate, repair, or repaint the
many rushing SCENES
so long left behind in such a hail of haste?

Give that child the smile he needs to make a happy day,
for when he grows up that may just be the day that will never fade away!

Stare at the wild flowers on that lonely path as their bristling buds capture the sun’s fading ray,
and don’t strut past the sonorous singing birds like they are just some melting clay!
For they may not be there again to light up  your weary way as you retrace your   return steps.

Do something sweetly special for someone today.
UNKNOWN
without undue delay
and not because of some paltry pay!

in everything you do or say
never insist it has to be your way
because only God’s wand has the last sway!

YOUR BIRTHDAY IS EVERYDAY!!!

(Not just yesterday)

YESTERDAY, one and eighteen years ago,

May be boldly

Written down 

In solid gold 

To spell your

BIRTH, at RVH;

An occasion that was rightly 

Attended with great joy 

And measured pride!

BUT…………………………………………

to me,

EVERYDAY IS YOUR BIRTHDAY!!!

You may look like 

That sneaky shadow 

Always nudging at my back,

Forever spurring me 

To master what I largely lack

BUT to me, 

You are that priceless star in my 

Sky!

When I heard your first  cries

To announce that  earthly stride

I ached my jaws with smiles

Promising to walk and strive

With you, for every mile. 

You are the pouring rain 

On a desert plain! 

You are the flowering forest 

From a blessed grain!

You are the blissful grace

That attends every droopy day!

You are the unfolding rail

Stretching out into all the tomorrows! 

EVERYDAY IS YOUR BIRTHDAY!!!

So to you our God,

My hands I raise 

And bow my head in sublime praise,

Pleading for many better days

For me and this your golden gift 

To share with hm in grace

The very best of all our yesterdays!

 

May  the beautiful happiness of our today, 

And the healthy hope of our tomorrows

Increase our humility

And reload our gratitude to 

Our Almighty Maker!

May I be reminded everyday, 

That your birthday is not just 

A day;

EVERYDAY IS YOUR BIRTHDAY!!!

 

I SAW A PLAITED HEAD,
WITH WHITE TEETH, WARMLY WED
TO SOFT CHEEKS CREAMED IN RED;
ON WHICH MY SOUL, I FED.

I STOUTLY STOOD MY GROUND,
AND WAVED MY WANTON WAND,
HOPING TO MAKE HER STAND,
AND SIP MY SILVER SOUND.

TWO EYES ROLLED IN ONE HEAD,
LIKE WHITE PEARLS SPREAD ON BED.
HER SMILES WEAVED SPARKLY THREAD,
ON LIPS, LIKE HONEY SPREAD.

“IS THIS MY ROSE OF HOPE
OR JUST A SUICIDE ROPE?”

AND YES, SHE SMILED AGAIN,
SENDING SPARKS THROUGH MY BRAIN,
WRAPPING ME IN MY THOUGHTS,
ROLLING ME INTO NUTS.

AND THEN SHE CHANGED HER LANE!
LEAVING ME CHAINED TO PAIN,
PLEADING OUT ALL IN VAIN,
UNDER THAT PORING RAIN!

BUT

SOME SEASONS DOWN THE LINE,
THROUGH THICK AND PRICKLY PINE,
I WATERED WELL MY VINE,
AND LEFT THE SUN TO SHINE,
TURNING MY ONE TO NINE,
MAKING HER WORLD AS MINE.

SO

LOOKING AT THIS SWEET FRAME,
WOULD YOU CHALLENGE MY CLAIM,
THAT SEEDS NURTURED IN STRAIN,
MAY SPROUT A GOLDEN GRAIN?

21st May, 2018

After a three weeks stay in Sierra Leone, during which time I was mostly stationed in Freetown, I boarded a turbulent-tossed Turkish airline flight heading back to London on Wednesday last week.
Normally when en-route to any place I always just want to get the flying bit quickly behind me. Not this time! For the first time in my entire flying life spanning two decades we landed in a transit point city I did not merely want to see but a city in which I so much wanted to take a walk.

Ouagadougou is one of those special places that has a Mecca-like attraction for me. Call it the pull of History!
This is a city of tremendous personal interest to me, not because it serves as a magnet for attracting fetish-seeking tolongbo-devil worshippers who troop into the city during the course of election periods but because this city houses the grave of one of the most revered sons of our entire African history. A man who remains an inspiring icon of the post-colonial struggle to emancipate our people from the punishing yokes of pulverising poverty and acrid ignorance of the self.

Somewhere on the grassy outskirts of Ouagadougou lies the mortal remains of Thomas Sankara, the man who died seeking dignity and decorum for Africans everywhere.

Burkina Faso may be anything or everything to anyone (or perhaps nothing at all to so many) but for me just one name puts that hot African desert spot on the eternal map of political emancipation and collective self-identification………………Thomas Sankara!

If you have not heard of that name or if you do not know about the political exploits of the man who carried (and still carries) that name then you may be one of the sad statistics of our African unawareness syndrome. It is a disturbing innocence fully wrapped in the ignorance of a people oblivious of their own self-worth and relevance on the earthly stage.

As I sat and starred through the windows of a Boeing 747 onto the glistering tarmac of a grass-hemmed international airstrip of this once colonised and still “enslaved” parcel of “independent” land my thoughts raced back to the suffocating smoke of a burning BOMEH dump in Eastern Freetown where truckloads of slimy garbage and huge dumper machines and Front End loaders were snaking around each other in near-crush obscene wriggles to deposit their smelly loads before crawling away for their next tote of garbage.

In that one flashing scene the unforgettable picture of an energised motley of people came rushing through the thickness of a suffocating smoke that was bellowing from the reeking dumpsite fires. The hazy throng of hardened and determined line-up of human faces began to take their definite shapes in my slowly solidifying reflection.
In the maze of patriotic men and women, one significant face stood out very boldly in the smog of it all. Clad in cloud-coloured blue jeans and a sky-light white t shirt and pouring sweat like the rest of us who were trapped in that apocalyptic-looking time and place was the First Lady of the republic of Sierra Leone, Mrs Fatima Maada Bio. And she was not just “standing” in one place. Mrs. Bio had been seen in several stressful spots that day physically shovelling the dirt that our city had been strangled with for the past 11 years.

And it was not just what Mrs. Bio was doing by way of directly inspiring the crowd that caught my ineffaceable attention but what she said later when I approached her in the company of another member of the National Cleaning Committee. Both I and Mr. Sheku Lexmond Koroma got ourselves in ardent conversation with the first Lady.

Considering the volume of dirt that was piling up on our city streets we were toying with the possibility that the “vehicular ban” may have to be stretched way beyond the initial 12:00 midday deadline. As members of the national Cleaning committee we were concerned that allowing vehicles to ply the roads before fully clearing their paths may lead to major road blockages and leave everyone frustrated . Mrs. Bio’s response to us was thoughtful and endearing. She asked us to “put yourselves (ourselves) in the shoes of all those fathers and mothers who need to go out and fend for themselves and for their children”. She then asked us to imagine how we would feel if we were then asked to stay indoors for another length of time after submissively complying with 6 hours of the same demand. When I tried to counter that sentiment with the rather pedantic view that the cleaning exercise is less than likely to finish by the scheduled time and we needed more time to clear the streets, the unbendable lady was firm and final in her response: “that is not the people’s problem. You should deal with that. The people need to go out and fend for themselves and for their children”. That was like saying, take your bureaucratic argument someplace else.

Clearly this is a lady whose sympathy is exclusively reserved for the people of the land not the arrangements that hinder the people.
Now you see why the events of that Bomeh scene, weeks after its enactment, refuse to leave my focus: what really riveted my attention there besides the significant symbolism of the dirt shovelling jape was the gist of the conversation that flowed.

In Mrs. Fatima Jabbie Bio we have a First Lady who is not always going to be trapped up in the haughty coolness of an air-conditioned office or take lazy pleasure in side-stepping the people or the issues that affect them. In her quest to please so many she is obviously going to irritate a few and attract a waft of unfair criticism to herself.
That is a price for the brave and caring!

In the circumstances of these heavy times it is certainly refreshing that our First lady is not one to quietly sit in some dark still corner and sulkingly baby-sit the sensitive emotions of the rough crop of unrepentant baddies who have always taken Sierra Leone as hostage and dished us out as “cake” for “cows”.
I personally find it quite energizing that the unyielding presence of our First lady is one hopeful sign indicating the fact that those who swallowed our country’s money will not be allowed to strut our streets and call the shots without a shout from some of our own.

Even as our plane took off from that Ouagadougou strip for the Turkish city of Istanbul one thing loomed very large in the enveloping overhead cloud: the corrosively institutionalised robbers in Sierra Leone are in for a rough ride because President Maada Wonie Bio intends to paint the horizon with an ink that is not very familiar or very comforting to the arrogant thieves.
One thick layer of that beautiful ink is laced with the name FATIMA BIO!

We will paint out that cancerous Tolongbo colour using the healing Green White and Blue!

Even as we landed in London’s Heathrow I was quietly satisfied that another plane has just taken off in Freetown and is poised to land on the highest peak of the Lion Mountain where every sparkle will be resoundingly restored without a crackle!

The sky is still blue, the earth is green and white is the colour of angels.
RIP brother Thomas Sankara, this land of the blacks and the brave still has conscientious men and women ready to stand up for and with their people, one little step at a time!