30 Years Later: Joseph Kaifala on Remembrance and Healing.

Joseph Kaifala is an author, lawyer, human rights activist, and founder of the Jeneba Project. He is also the founder and principal of the Center for Memory and Reparations, an organization which facilitates remembrance and common narratives around the Sierra Leonean Civil War (1991 - 2002).

March 23rd, 2021 marks the 30th anniversary of the start of the 11 year civil war in Sierra Leone. In this interview, Joseph Kaifala talks about the importance of narrative for collective healing, the work of the center, and why it is so important for all Sierra Leoneans to learn from our history.

Poda-Poda Stories: Thank you Joseph for joining the Poda-Poda.  Tell us about yourself and your work as a writer, scholar and lawyer.

 Joseph Kaifala( JK) :  I was born in Pendembu, Sierra Leone. I was trained as a lawyer. I am currently working as a writer and a historian, focusing on Sierra Leone history. I am the Principal of the Center for Memory and Reparations. Our work at the center is to facilitate remembrance and common narratives around the Sierra Leonean civil war.

Poda-Poda: Your memoir AdamaLui  is a book about resilience, surviving trauma and finding hope. What inspired you to write that book? And what was the writing process like?

 JK: As a survivor of the Sierra Leonean civil war, people wanted to hear my story, especially when I lived in the United States, but my experiences in the Sierra Leonean and Liberian civil wars were so complicated that it is often difficult to tell people the entire story in one sitting. So over the years, I decided that the best way to tell the story is to write a memoir, because I wanted my American friends to hear about my experiences. I lived in the United States where many young people had never been through such violence. I also believed that young Sierra Leoneans needed to hear a story of resilience and  hope. I realized that a story like mine - coming from this same country after a decade of civil war, going to Norway and the United States to pursue my education - could inspire the next generation of Sierra Leoneans to keep working hard and become resilient in pursuing their dreams.

 Poda-Poda: What was it like reliving some of those experiences?

JK: Many people who've read the memoir have called me to talk about its authenticity. And for me, that was very important to the storytelling. I decided that I was not going to sugarcoat anything. I was going to tell the raw stories as I experienced them. And that also meant reliving some of those experiences. It went two ways:  It's painful to remember the past, but also remembering the past and reliving some of those experiences can help the individual healing process. It provided a lot of healing for me.  I also believe that when other people read the memoir, they will be confident enough to share their stories because story-sharing has always been part of our culture, and it could help us relieve pain, because if we don't share our stories, we internalize them. And when we internalize them, the trauma remains.

Poda-Poda: I was at the premiere of your documentary Retracing Jeneba, and it's a film that shows some of the many atrocities that took place during the war. In many ways, we are still dealing with the trauma of the civil war. How can we as citizens collectively heal and rebuild?

JK: What we have to do is create an atmosphere in which people feel confident enough to share their story, and the rest of the society is willing to listen to them. Again, we cannot force people to recover from their trauma because the effect of a traumatic experience is different for every individual. But what we can do as citizens is to create a collective atmosphere in which people can share their story and victims are honored and respected. As of now in Sierra Leone, we don't have that atmosphere because people are preoccupied with other things, and talking about the war, the victims and the trauma, has been put behind us. Some people are unwilling to openly confront these issues because we don’t have an enabling environment.

What we are doing at the center is to compel this country to create moments of listening and sharing, to realize that if we are not bringing out our traumatic experiences, we are internalizing them and internalizing them doesn't make them go away. Pretending we don't remember the civil war is not going to eliminate its consequences.

 And I think for instance, in my case, I have decided that it is important to use my traumatic past to help create a country in which other generations of children would not have to go through the kind of experiences we went through as children in this country. Citizenship requires that I take that obligation seriously, because we are often talking about leadership and the requirements of leadership. I believe that leaders are obliged to create a better country, to inspire people, to provide spaces for people to pursue their dreams. And my own way of doing that is to make sure I use this center to provide people with the confidence to share their experiences.

One of the reasons I created this center is that young people were making fun of amputees and victims of the civil war, because there was this lack of understanding between the younger generation and those who survived the brunt of our civil war. I launched the Sierra Leone Memory project back then to allow victims to tell their stories so that I could bring the conversation to a public space where we could all listen and hear what our fellow Sierra Leoneans were going through. That is one of the reasons I am persistently behind the Government of Sierra Leone to officially declare National Reconciliation Day and promote healing in Sierra Leone, because with their official declaration, we can come together as a country to engage in various methods of transitional justice and reconciliation.

Poda-Poda: You’ve mentioned a bit about your work with the Center for Memory and Reconciliation. What is your mission and what does the center hope to achieve?

JK: Our primary aim is to facilitate remembrance and common narratives around the Sierra Leonean civil war, which lasted between 1991 and 2002. What we're doing primarily is to lobby the government to declare National Reconciliation Day as recommended by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). When that happens, the government of Sierra Leone can facilitate reconciliation activities and promote transitional justice to honor victims. As a center, we often promote what we call #DusomtinfoSalone on January 18 (which is supposed to be national reconciliation day), encouraging Sierra Leoneans to take 60 minutes of their day to do community service, because we want people to use the trauma of our past to do community good.

 Moreover, the TRC identified about 99 mass graves and other sites around the country. Other sites simply means places like torture houses and other places of massacre like the Kailahun Slaughterhouse. What we are doing is to re-identify these mass graves and protect them, because ever since the TRC completed its work, nothing has been done about them, and many of these places have been abandoned. What we are doing is going to communities, identifying these mass graves, and protecting them so that they can become sites of conscience and remembrance. We also organize traditional burial rites, bringing communities together to conduct prayers for those they lost in the conflict, because many of us lost our relatives in the conflict without the opportunity to bury them and conduct traditional burial rites. Some of us don’t even know where our relatives were killed.

 We are also currently planning a commemoration of March 23, 2021 - the 30th anniversary of the start of a decade-long civil war in this country. The aim is to really get Sierra Leoneans to pause and remember the issues surrounding the decade-long civil war, and to commit to building a better country.

 Poda-Poda: I can't believe it's been 30 years. I don't think many people realize that.

JK: People forget that the civil war in this country started in 1991 and not in 1999. We are using this 30 year anniversary to dispel some of the myths surrounding the conflict itself. We have a podcast, Memba, which we use to present significant information about the conflict, because we have realized that people are also telling stories about the war that are not really fact-based. One of the issues that we have had to dispel is the idea that the attack on Bomaru on March 23, 1991 was conducted by Foday Sankoh. That is not true. Foday Sankoh attacked Sierra Leone a couple of weeks after the attack on March 23rd, which was really a criminal attack on Sierra Leone by National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) rebels from Liberia, on a raid authorized by Anthony Mekunagbe to retrieve a looted vehicle commandeered by Major Emmanuel Foday of the Sierra Leone Army. After that incident, Foday Sankoh and Charles Taylor agreed that it would be easy to invade Sierra Leone at that moment.

Poda-Poda: You have a podcast called Memba which is the storytelling platform for the Center, and you seem to merge advocacy and storytelling very well.

JK:Well, I think if you want to bring society along, you cannot work without certain elements of activism. And for me, that means primarily beginning with myself. This is why I started by telling my own story, so people can identify with me, and others can gain the confidence to share their own stories. Sometimes there are victims or perpetrators who think that their experiences are shameful for society, and one of the things I try to tell victims is that what they went through is not shameful. You are a victim, you are a survivor, and we want to hear your stories because we are all responsible for what happened to you. In Sierra Leone, for instance, the TRC has said that many perpetrators did not get to give their testimonies to the commission because they were afraid. So what ensued is that many of these perpetrators, like child soldiers, who were also victims, are now living with their trauma because they were never able to testify.

 So activism is very important to the work we do, because we want to make sure that victims have what they need to survive by calling on the Government of Sierra Leone to implement the TRC recommendations. The TRC made specific recommendations to take care of certain categories of victims that have not been fully realized. Many amputees are still suffering in this country and I cannot do this work without having to plead on their behalf. That is why we combine activism with the transitional justice work that we do.

Poda-Poda: You have a span in your career as a writer. You’ve written a memoir, a children’s book, a history book and you are also a legal scholar. How do you navigate these different genres?

JK: Driven by my experiences in the Sierra Leonean and Liberian civil wars, I wanted to write a memoir. However, I realized I couldn't write a memoir without fully understanding the history of my country. So I decided to put that aside and spend four years researching the history of Sierra Leone. At the end of that, I wrote a history book, Free Slaves, Freetown, and the Sierra Leonean Civil War. In the beginning, I simply wanted to write about the civil war, but then I realized in the middle of it that I couldn't write about the civil war without providing a clear history of this country. So it ended up becoming a full history book of Sierra Leone.

There were also a lot of emotions I couldn’t describe in both books, so I decided to turn to poetry to make sense of my experiences. And that is what the poetry book is about. It is called Tutu's Rainbow World, because one of the individuals in our world who inspires me more than any other is Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He has a way of describing South Africa as a rainbow nation of diversity, and that is the theme of that poetry book. When Nelson Mandela was in prison Wole Soyinka wrote a poetry book he called Mandela’s Earth - I wanted to give Desmond Tutu the world. So, all of these books are intertwined in the sense that they are all geared towards making sense of Sierra Leone, making sense of my life as a Sierra Leonean, and surviving a decade of civil wars.

Poda-Poda: I always ask writers this question: How has writing saved your life?

JK: I think it was Shakespeare who said that “I write because there is a lot in me I cannot talk about.” When I'm able to express these things on paper, I can convey exactly how I'm feeling. One thing many people do not know about me is that I am an introvert. So, it is often better for me to write than to talk. But really, writing for me has been a way of healing. It gives me the opportunity to express my feelings, to share my  hopes and dreams, and to make sure other people are inspired by it.

Memba Podcast

centerformemoryandreparations.org

josephkaifala.com

For any enquiries about this interview, email editor@poda-poda.com.

Aminata Conteh-Biger on Healing Through Memoir

In 1999, Aminata Conteh-Biger was kidnapped from her family, and held captive by rebels during the civil war. Years later, she wrote a memoir Rising Heart, a memoir in which she shares the story of how she was rescued by UNHCR, found a new life in Australia, and giving back to Sierra Leone through her maternal health foundation. For Aminata Conteh-Biger, writing the memoir was a path to healing and a way to come to terms with what she faced during Sierra Leone’s civil war. Now, Aminata gives back to her country through the Aminata Maternal Foundation, to support maternal health in Sierra Leone. In this interview, Aminata Conteh-Biger shares how she rebuilt her life as a refugee, and wrote through trauma.

Poda-Poda:Thank you for granting us this interview. Tell us about yourself, your background, and your journey as a writer.

Aminata Conteh-Biger: I was born in Freetown and grew up in Kissy. I was raised by my father Pa Conteh, along with my 3 siblings. In 1999, I was kidnapped by the rebels, torn from my father’s hand. I was held by the rebels for months and released as part of an exchange for supplies. In 2020, I released my memoir, Rising Heart, with Pan Macmillan Australia. I wrote Rising Heart with my ghost writer Juliet Rieden, a highly respected journalist and author.  I always wanted to write a book, and had many offers to do so over the years, but I did not want to do it until I had given something back to my home country Sierra Leone.

Poda-Poda: Tells us about your memoir, Rising Heart. What inspired you to write it and share your story?

ACB: I had always wanted to tell my story. I wanted to write it for the women of Sierra Leone who experienced the same as what I went through, and for the men who committed the atrocities against us to understand what they took from us. I also wanted to write it to show the world the realities of war and conflict – and the ongoing experience - of African nations. I feel very strongly there is not nearly enough general awareness of the challenges endured by African people, both now and in recent and past history.

Poda-Poda: We recently commemorated the National Day of Reconciliation in Sierra Leone on January 18th. You have shared your story through your memoir. For many survivors of the war, sharing the story of what happened to them is a difficult process. We do not have adequate psychosocial services in Sierra Leone to fully deal with the trauma of war amputees, victims of sexual violence, and refugees. What can we do, as a society, to help heal through our trauma, even when we lack those professional resources?

ACB: The answer to this is in the government. It is the duty and responsibility of our leaders to look after the wellbeing of their people. People in a position of power must create and make available safe spaces for the vulnerable, in order to allow them to live their best life.

In a country like Sierra Leone, where there is such recent national trauma, there must be assistance and services for them. Current services in Sierra Leone are not strong and there is one major reason why. There is a lack of acknowledgement and awareness of the war and its impact, not just from the government, but from the population as a whole.  

Poda-Poda: There was so much unimaginable trauma because of the war, and so many of us still carry that and walk with that. How can we carry that trauma, and still try to change the story of our country for good?

ACB: This is difficult to answer, as we Sierra Leoneans can’t even face the truth of what happened to us. I have witnessed for myself the lack of knowledge young people have of recent events.

This lack of knowledge is because the previous generation, the people who lived through it, do not discuss the realities of what happened. So, how can younger people learn their own country’s history? As a nation, we cannot heal from trauma when the events and actions that caused the trauma are not acknowledged, let alone discussed amongst families or taught in schools.

Africans are so strong, and have faced so much adversity.  I feel this inner strength needs to be applied to having uncomfortable, upsetting conversations in order to change the story of our country for good. Even here in Australia, where Sierra Leoneans support my foundation work, I promise you, maybe only two Sierra Leoneans would have bought my book, Rising Heart. They are scared to face my story because it will remind them of theirs.

Poda-Poda: Tell us about your work with maternal and child health in Sierra Leone. How did that come about and what are your plans for your organization?

ACB: The Aminata Maternal Foundation came about following my near-death experience while giving birth to my daughter Sarafina in 2012. Sarafina suffered from shoulder dystocia at the time.

During my pregnancy and Sarafina’s birth, I had access to high-quality healthcare here in Australia, like all women do. This compelled me to give back to the women and girls of Sierra Leone and help to improve the unacceptable maternal health and infant mortality rates. I immediately felt a sense of responsibility. My papa always taught us, “we get, we must give back”. He showed his children that it is more of a blessing to give than to receive. I do not have any family in Sierra Leone and this actually inspired me to go back home to contribute, especially because of my two children, Sarafina and Matisse. I want them to know where their mama comes from because I incredibly proud of my homeland Sierra Leone.

My vision now is to buy the hotel in Freetown my father owned and make it a hospital. But before then, my goal is to get as many midwives as possible trained, and hopefully open a children’s ward in the Aberdeen Women’s Centre so the staff can increase their capacity for check-ups and vaccines. My foundation has been working with the Aberdeen Women’s Centre since 2014, but I need the government to help us get this land. The funds are ready but we need land.

Poda-Poda: How did writing your story save your life?

ACB: It didn’t save my life. However, writing my book was a very important process, as it allowed me to establish the fact that I own my story – my story does not own me. I am not ashamed of what happened to me. I am proud of my scars because they have shaped and continue to shape the human being that I am. I always knew I was born to do something good and greater. My grandpa and my older brother, Alieu, always spoke so powerfully on my life ever since I was a baby. So despite my story, I was born for something greater, and I’ve always believed it is as a humanitarian.

Find out more about the Aminata Maternal Foundation at aminatamaternalfoundation.org

Akindele Decker on Sierra Leonean History and Patriotism

Sierra Leoneans have contributed in rich and diverse ways to global history and culture, from flying fighter jets in World War II, to building global fashion brands. Sierra Leonean-Americans Akindele Decker and Adrian Labor are on a quest to document these contributions and make them accessible to everyone. They have co-authored a book “20 Icons of Sierra Leone Who Shaped History”, along with the children’s version, to highlight the historic connections and contributions of Sierra Leoneans in world history and culture. Poda-Poda Stories interviewed Akindele Decker, a poet and writer, to talk about his writing journey, and the new book.

Poda-Poda Stories: Thank you Akindele Decker, for joining us in the Poda-Poda today. Tell us a bit about yourself, your background as a writer and a Creative.

AD: I really appreciate the opportunity. I am a big fan of Poda-Poda Stories. I think it's a very revolutionary venture and it’s needed. So, about myself. I was born in Freetown. I am Krio  with Fula, Themne and Yoruba ancestry. I attended the Sierra Leone Grammar School, and I was there for about two years, before relocating to the US. Growing up, I was inspired to write because I had a book of folk tales by my grandfather, called Tales of the Forest where I learned about characters, like Bra Rabbit and Bra Spider, before I started   watching Disney. So, I was more in tune with characters that I could relate with from my own country.  I started writing poetry around ninth grade and by 12th grade I had about 300 poems. A lot of my poems are inspired by my heritage and living as an African immigrant in America. I think the only way I've been able to express that is through storytelling, poetry, and short stories whenever I can.

Poda-Poda: Tell us about your book Sierra Leone Icons. How did this project come about and why is it being published now?

AD: My co-author, Adrian Labor and I were doing genealogical research on our families and Adrian found a lot of fascinating things about his family history. He was able to trace his family roots from West Africa to Virginia and back to Freetown through the middle passage. The more we talked about our family history, the more we realized that it was almost impossible to talk about it without talking about Sierra Leone history, and the many connections between Sierra Leone and the black diaspora. Initially we both had a strong eagerness to develop these family histories into something we can pass down to our children and their children.

But the moment we came across the history and information about Sierra Leone, we were stunned that a lot of it was not mainstream, especially in terms of access to the younger generation. So, we came up with the project to highlight  icons of Sierra Leone. Each of these icons would be a gateway for young Sierra Leoneans to then go deeper into Sierra Leone history.

Poda-Poda: How long did this project take?

AD : It took a very long year (  laughs) . I  travelled to Sierra Leone in 2019 and since my return in February 2020, until  December 2020 , we  worked  on this project. It took a lot of research. Adrian is a civil engineer, and I am a creative professional. We were spending so much time on this, but we couldn’t stop. The more we researched, the more we found out about Sierra Leoneans in World War II for example, and we wanted to document these things. We looked everywhere we could. We looked at primary sources and old newspapers and academic books. We did research everywhere. We culled academic journals and documented as much as we could. One of the challenges with that specifically was that we are not scholars or academics and a lot of written history about Sierra Leone has been done by academics who spend years on this topic. We were just two ordinary guys that  had a passion and we wanted to write something about our history and make it available. So, there was definitely a lot of challenges getting the information, and also processing the information as well into something that people could read easily. We had to make sure that we were being as accurate as possible and being able to purge out the colonial stuff, as well as   incorrect spelling of names, places, and incorrect accounts of events. It was a very interesting process.

Poda-Poda: What do you hope that publishing this book will achieve?

AD: Good question. I think for one, we want students in schools to have access to this book, and for the books to be available in libraries and  places where students can access them in Sierra Leone.

We want young people to develop awareness of Sierra Leone’s contribution to world history as well. I think what a lot of these stories tell us is that about every point of history, Sierra Leoneans have been there. We've been active, we've been a participant, a contributor to history, and not just as byproducts of it.

So I want young people in Freetown, Moyamba, Rotifunk ,Kono, everywhere, to  become aware and conscious that their community actually is active in this world. I think that could help their empowerment and development. We also need more children’s books about Sierra Leonean history so our children will know these heroes.

For me, I want to see more young Sierra Leoneans be inspired to tell our stories. Like I said, Adrian and I are not scholars. We are just two ordinary guys who had stories to tell and we took a leap.  But there was a fear for me, especially as a writer, on how Sierra Leoneans would receive it. However, we took the leap. We didn't go with a traditional publisher. We chose to self-publish the book, so there was, there was definitely a lot of challenges there as well.

Poda-Poda Stories: What can we learn from these icons highlighted in your book about what it means to be patriotic?

AD: The first thing is to take a leap in doing what you feel is right for your country. No matter where you are, what discipline you're working in or what challenges you're facing, take a leap.

Learn from Adelaide Casely-Hayford, for example, she wanted to see a   vocational and technical school available for girls.  She did it, even with limited financial support at the time, she took a leap.

There’s also Harry Washington who was an ex- enslaved person of George Washington. He was part of the American revolution. He fled the plantation, fought in the war for the British, because they promised him his freedom if he did so. He eventually  settled with the other settlers in an established Freetown in 1792.  The British then who had told the settlers that they were going to come to Freetown and govern themselves, decided instead to govern them. Eventually in 1800, Harry Washington and a few others revolted against the British.  I always say that that was maybe the first effort towards independence early on, because the settlers wrote their own constitution.

Also, learn from someone like Dr. Arthur   Abraham who wanted to portray a clear, authentic representation of Sierra Leone history. He advocated  for that all the way, till when he passed.

Let us just start with just that little step of doing what we know is right for Sierra Leone and doing our best at it.

Get the book and the children’s version on amazon !

Author bios:

Adrian Q. Labor extended his interest for everything Sierra Leonean by taking up two new hobbies over time alongside his current profession as a Civil Engineer.  His first hobby focused on building an online genealogy of the founding settlers of the city of Freetown. He then followed up with a second one to conduct literature research on the Icons of Sierra Leone who shaped the country's diverse national and rich international history. Through the insights gained, he was drawn to the opportunity to create this illustrated history book series. This first book, “20 Icons of Sierra Leone Who Shaped History”, which he co-authors, remakes historic connections and highlights contributions of national ancestors of all young adults of Sierra Leonean parentage.

Akindele Decker is a poet and writer born in Sierra Leone. His first breakthrough in poetry was at the age of 15, with his first published Poem, ‘What If’ in 1998. His poems cover topics dealing with the middle-passage, identity, and African history. In 2004, Akindele received an Editors Choice Award for outstanding achievement in Poetry from the International Library of Poetry. In 2012, he performed “Dancing in Blue Waters” at Busboy & Poets in Washington D.C., chronicling the middle passage of the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade. One of his most recent work was in 2016 with GWB Commission’s ONE Campaign, celebrating the diverse ancestral heritage of Sierra Leoneans.

Oumar Farouk Sesay on the Transformative Power of Poetry

Oumar Farouk Sesay is a published poet, novelist, and playwright. He was resident playwright of Bai Bureh Theatre in the '80s, and he has written several plays. He has been published in many anthologies of Sierra Leonean poets, including Lice in the Lion's Mane, Songs That Pour the Heart and Kalashnikov In The Sun. He is the President of PEN, Sierra Leone chapter. Using vivid imagery and metaphors, Sesay’s poems are beautifully woven, richly capturing the heartbeat of Sierra Leone. It was an honor to interview him, and he shared his creative journey with Poda-Poda Stories.

Poda-Poda: Thank you for granting me this interview. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and your career as a poet.

FS: Thank you very much and I am delighted to a part of this. I started writing as early as in my teen years when I was in sixth form. Those were the days of theater groups in Sierra Leone. I was commissioned to write a play for Bai Bureh Theater Group, which was performed at City Hall, and that was my maiden work as a writer. Then I started dabbling with poetry here and there, but not in a serious way as I had engaged with theater. It was later in life that I started writing poetry. Then after university, I worked as a journalist briefly, for local newspapers like The Chronicle newspaper, and International papers like West Africa magazine. Later, the calling for poetry was so strong, so I became a poet. Occasionally I do articles for newspapers, but I am much more engaged in poetry writing than other forms of writing.

I came to the U.S. and I was fortunate to publish my first collection of poems “Salute To The Remains of a Peasant”. Those are poems that captured, events during the war in Sierra Leone.  I later published another collection of poems, written post-war poems and some other themes of corruption and antisocial activities within the country. That collection was “The Edge Of A Cry.” Then after that, I was able to publish my first novel, “Landscape of Memory”, which addresses the theme of the war and its impact in Sierra Leone. I was also a Cadbury visiting Fellow, at the Birmingham University in the U.K and a fellow at the Baptist University in Hong Kong.

Poda-Poda: You mentioned you were into journalism and then you took up poetry later. How did that transition happen?

FS: It is difficult to place a finger on it, because poetry has a magnet that pulls a writer than other forms of writing. I felt preoccupied with issues happening around me, mostly during the war, and I started capturing it in metaphors that were so strong that I thought if I put them in prose, I might not have been able to capture them as exactly as they were.

Poda-Poda: Tell us about your new book, 400 Years of Servitude. Why did you decide to write this anthology?

FS: 400 Years of Servitude is mostly a collection of poems that deal with the theme of race relations and the impact it has on African Americans and Africans. There are cultural forces in international politics that tend to dictate the way we (black people) are treated all over the world. For example, policy makers in America and in the Western world, have a tendency of treating Africans in a manner akin to the way African Americans here are treated, like a lower caste of people. I was basically trying to see a correlation between the treatment of Africans and African Americans here in America. I saw that the connection is race. I started putting together poems that largely deal with race and race relations, and I did a span of 400 years, from the time the first slave was transported from Africa to the New World to date. There are poems that deal with the Middle Passage, and that deal with African Americans. That is why I called it 400 years of servitude.

Poda-Poda:  That is a very good title.  I interviewed Ishmael Beah and asked him a similar question to this: As a black writer living in the U.S, do you think it's your duty to write about global blackness or the global perception of blackness?

FS:  Well, I think so. I wrote a poem about race relations called “The Look”. When you go into places here in the US , you are given a look that carries with it the burden of servitude, the look carries  the historical baggage that was given to our brothers when they were chained in the plantations of yesteryears.

This look follows like a chain on your soul wherever you go. It became apparent that my African-American brothers were also giving me a look of a similar slant as if I am the Judas who sold a brother for thirty pieces of silver.

An excerpt from the poem is “brother, don't look at me. The look that they look at me for looking like you.”

Yes. the question of race relations must be addressed by authors for the benefit of the entire race. Writers do not write in a vacuum, you must really make sure your work has affinity to the reality around you, and race relations concerns writers everywhere in the world. I think as Sierra Leonean writers, we should be concerned with that too.

Poda-Poda: Your work has a lot of imagery and touches on a lot of themes. Some recurring themes in your work are patriotism and healing. How do you think literature, especially poetry, can help heal our nation and move us forward?

FS:  Interestingly, we had a group that was formed during the war that was called Falui Poetry Society. Most of the prominent Sierra Leonean poets were members of that group, and we were able to organize poetry reading in public places and in private places. The reason being, poetry itself has a healing power.

As a collective, we published our poems at a time when the Special Court began in Freetown. Fortunately, the prosecutor, David Crane, was present when we launched the book that we published. “Songs That Pour The Earth” was the first collection we ever put together as an anthology that captured the poems of the war. He was at the launch and he bought the book. During the opening remarks of the Special Court, he read a poem by Sydnella Shooter, which chronicled the atrocities during the rebel war.

So as poets, we are witnesses. Just as Walt Whitman and other poets were witnesses to the American civil war, Sierra Leonean poets bore witness of the war in Sierra Leone. And we captured it in ways that will forever be there for posterity to see. We happened to be the first prosecution witness called upon to account for what we saw and felt during the eleven-year war.

Poda-Poda:  You were a resident Playwright for the Bai Bureh Theatre, and you have also published several books. Of course, it is not a secret that it is a challenge being a creative person in Sierra Leone. What are some of the challenges that you faced and how have you been able to hold on to your craft for so long?

FS: From a personal point of view, writing is a very private project, a very private exercise. It starts as a migration from your mind to the public and that route is hurdle- prone in ways that affect the tenor and texture of the work created.

In the creative process you sometimes think in your native tongue and haul the thought to the page in another – this process done mostly at a subconscious level. You do not even know you are doing that. You may not even know that you are doing that until an idea from one culture refuses to yield meaning in another language.   In the process of doing that, the question of how you maintain the balance to make sure that the purity of your thoughts is not is not diminished in another language?  Those are creative challenges and poetic license sometimes help us navigate through those hurdles.  

The bigger challenge though, is how seriously people in Sierra Leone and mostly other African countries take their writers. Writers have been on the forefront of the struggle for the independence of the continent. If you check South African history for example, writers like Dennis Brutus played an important role in making sure the of apartheid was exposed. In Nigeria, Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe contributed immensely in enhancing the creative image of the country and in promoting democracy. Thanks to them the expectation of the public from writers goes beyond the literary. The image of writers as agents of change put them in direct confrontation with authority sometimes with disastrous effect to the writers.

 We come into writing with the onus of not only doing art for art's sake but with a manifesto to usher change. Ours is not art for art sake but art you can use to usher change; those who wants the status quo to remain unchanged perceive writers as opponents.

And of course, the question of readership is another big problem that we have. Most people started reading me when one of my poems made it in the West African exams’ syllabus- hence reading me becomes a matter passing or failing exams.

So, we must create a climate whereby we grow big at home, then seek recognition outside. In our own case, it’s the other way around. I think it’s because we have the “made in  UK mentality” wherein we grew up buying sneakers that are made in the UK, so we also think that our talent must be made somewhere else before it is respected at home.

Poda-Poda:  That is also an issue that's very interesting because I do agree with you that we tend to value creative work that’s acknowledged in the US or the UK, while people are making good work here at home too. That’s why I want Poda-Poda Stories to highlight the work being done at home too.

FS: The work Poda-Poda is doing is so good. There was a famous Sierra Leonean playwright, Kolossa John Kargbo. He was one of the best back in the day. He died in Nigeria and he was buried there. And just this year his play “Let Me Die Alone” is also been included in the West African exam syllabus. He also wrote Tabita Broke Ose, a comedy, and I’ve seen fragments of his work being projected in some social media posts lately, and I wonder about the fate of his many manuscripts.  

We must have pride in who we are as a people. It's very important that some of us keep writing. It is difficult for a nation to exceed the potential of the story they narrate to themselves. The stories we tell each other, the stories we narrate of ourselves determines who we are as a nation.  A story that constantly says “Salone nor betteh” might just create a failed state.

Poda-Poda:  In what ways do you think literature, and the creative arts, has the function to shape our society as Sierra Leoneans, especially for the younger generation ?

FS:  When we start to use language in the abstract, we start to use language to imagine a reality that is not yet in existence. Language give us the ability to create fiction. It is the creation of the fiction that sets human beings apart from other species.  

In A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Harari says because we can use language, we are able to create that which does not exist. And we create institutions that are creation of our imagination. We talk about human rights for example. You know, these are not concrete things, but because we are able to use the language to create that, we are able to organize society around the concepts that are not concrete.  That is the power of language. We can imagine things that are not in existence and we can use that imagination as a signpost to guide us into greater good. Literature inspires, and it helps young people to imagine. For most people, the truth of fiction is the only truth they cling to in their journey through life.

Find out more about Oumar Farouk Sesay’s work at farouksesay.com

Questions and interview by Ngozi Cole.