AN ANALYSIS BY ALIMAMY LAHAI KAMARA
Mattru Jong again! I know that place. I conducted several public education activities in the township when I was manning the public education unit of the Anti-Corruption Commission in Bo, southern region. Center for Accountability and Rule of Law (CARL) is very supportive of me! Thanks to Jeremy Simbo.
Jong received the Honourable Chernor Bah, Minister of Information and Civic Education, who had traveled to the district to celebrate the Christmas festivity with his people. He traveled with an entourage comprising former vice president Victor Foh, government ministers and deputies, members of parliament, heads of parastatals, family members, and friends to associate with his compatriots and contribute to the development already taking place in a district that is now unfamiliar with its miserable past.
The Minister found the district in a mechanical workshop: the Bo-Mattru-Jong Road, which used to predict or conjure the death of its users, is under construction; the township electrification project under installation is envisioned to end decades-old traditional moonlight and ‘burn-fire’ electricity, which used to get the children delirious at night as they play their ‘kuku’, and excite the adult as they perched about in verandas and underneath mango trees encased in their love affairs; and the Senehun-Crossing-Point Bridge, which is under construction, will link Jong with the mineral endowed Rutile and revamp trade and create a short route to Moyamba. The jetty at Yargoi is under construction to end the native method of mounting passengers into the arms and depositing them onto the launch.
Chernor Bah (AKA Cee Bah) described this as ‘development in vision’. This means you hear development, see development, and touch development. People feel it; it defines their behavior and shapes their way of life. While addressing throngs of locals at the SLPP office in Jong, Cee Bah said he had come to live with them, discuss with them, and understand their version of governance and development to be able to initiate programmes or strengthen existing ones in a manner that would give meaning to their livelihoods. Two chiefdoms had informed him of a lack of mobile networks in the said places. Commitments were immediately made by heads of mobile companies who had traveled with him to fix the problem. This is what ‘live with your community’ means. You get to understand their challenges and devise mechanisms to address them. Cee Bah has come to stay! He has come to play his own part!
Honourable Alice Kumabeh said she was pleased about the Minister. She said she had got a backbone, a driver, and a pragmatist whose experience in the civil society world would attract development to Bonthe District, whose lobbying skills and connections would mobilize resources to fund domestic projects, and whose authority in government would confer respectability on Bonthenians. ‘Cee Bah is a blessing,’ she said.
It was rewarding to explore Mattru beyond the pleasantries at the SLPP hall. We took a boat walk to some riverine areas. The scenes were dramatic and boisterous unseen years ago. You get to see a network of rivers, which forked at many intersections, streaming in their gentleness, whispering in the wind the abundance of what lies beneath them. And the breath-taking patchwork of mangroves flourish along the river banks, providing home for fish and thousands of other species, and overlooking from afar the many crossing points and the villages that linger around them.
The rivers are on high traffic: canoes overloaded with the content of the earth – from the Gambia Crossing Point, in villages such as Mobefah and Gbangba, where the lands exhibit their yields in competition; from Borlleh Crossing Point, in villages such as Madina and Maami, where the farms hurl up their contents of cassava, tomatoes, pepper and palm oil; and in Mongrewa Crossing Point, in villages such as Vaama and Lubai, where fish, hens and cocks, and goats compete for space in canoes – waddle caressingly on the rivers, slamming on shores populated with the finest and endearing women on earth, who trade in commodities that they themselves cannot even eat at their homes. Everything is sold! You cannot get fish and meat at Mattru and even on the Island. They sell everything. Fish and meat are for business. Not for the homes! Bonthe District! Hard-working people.
The entourage was to leave for Bonthe city. Bonthe Island! The thought of the waters; the thought of where the fresh and the salt water meet – the ocean, the current, the turbulence! Panicking! At Yargoi, before boarding for the journey, Cassillar (a jinn kind) was invoked: ‘your children have arrived; we ask for a smooth ride’. But some of us are not his children. We are stark strangers.
On the launch, as we rode deep into the Sherbro River, you get to see on the right a snake-long of several miles beds of swamp rice laid on the foot of towering mangroves overlooking the river as it streams downward in tranquility created by the harmattan. We were told the sea calms during harmattan.
On approaching the Island from afar we heard in the wind massive chorus whirl-winding about. And as we got closer and on disembarking onto the jetty, we were greeted by tumultuous crowds of people dressed in party colours. They yanked the Minister out of the boat and commenced dancing with him in exhibition of love for a son and in demonstration of clannishness unnoticed anywhere in the world. I wish not to state any further that our Minister was buried in the crowd. His slimness is part of his humility.
Cee Bah wept! He could not hide his impression. His tears flowed from his eyes in utter humility and compassion; and the rivers burst their banks in excitement; and the rhythm in the high-pitched songs drove into the wind, circulating word of his arrival, of his personality, and of his ardour.
His entourage; Victor Foh; Paramount Chiefs of Sittia, Bendu-Cha, and Imperi chiefdoms; Deputy Speaker of Parliament; Bonthe District Officer; Honourables; Mayors and Councilors, Oswald Hanciles (the Guru) and the people of Bonthe city – we all marched along Medina street at around 7:00 in the evening in a ballyhoo-type jamboree onto city council hall for the Minister’s address, where he was cladded with a country clothe by female councilors while his wife looked on tenaciously and with pleasure, perhaps.
He told the people of Bonthe city that he was humbled to join the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Sengepoh Thomas and others to mobilize funds to undertake community projects that would support the physical wellbeing of his people, enhance their social livelihood through agriculture and trade, and increase access to and retention in schools.
Today, as I understand it, the Fullahs, ethnicity of Cee Bah, have transformed themselves into one of the productive layers of society. Fifty or more years ago, you will locate them at Dove cut pushing ‘Omorlankay’ or shinning or mending shoes, and in abattoirs trading in cattle and in cola nuts, and in tiny shops engaged in tailoring or selling bread-and-butter and needle-and-thread. Cee Bah’s grandfather immigrated to Sierra Leone from Guinea through Kabala and got attracted to trade in Bonthe city, where he traded in cattle and cola nuts, and where he produced Cee Bah’s father right at Bonthe Island municipal hospital in the 60s.
The Fullah’s productivity spans beyond business with almost half of the bigger shops in Sierra Leone owned by them. They are now into governance in political administration high up there at cabinet level discussing matters of state survival, state security, and the economy of the state. President Bio embraces them all. He has provided them space to exhibit their competence in the administration of the state.
Today, Chernor Bah speaks for and on behalf of government; speaks for the people of Sierra Leone; and speaks with outright command and authority unrivaled with anyone of his time. Minister, Bonthe District is proud of you. I am equally impressed with you. May the good God see you through! Oops, Cassillar, thanks! Oswald Hanciles (the Guru) and Osmond Hanciles, thanks. I stayed in their family house on the Island during the trip. Cee Bah, I remain yours! Alimamy Lahai Kamara.
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