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!
abdulai braima blogs 