Australia to Sierra Leone: Tony Bee’s recent mission (Part 1)

After 15 odd years of fleeing from my land of birth Sierra Leone, I finally made the first visit to the country in February this year.  I left Sydney, Australia, on 14 February and arrived in the Sierra Leone capital Freetown on 17 March.  What an exciting journey it was!  It was like the proverbial lost son returning home at last.  Ironically, I fled my motherland in a hurry, with fear for my life and with barely a shirt on my back, but I was now returning home with ease, with not any hope of hearing the sounds of guns or the whizzing of bullets past my ear or flying through the air. Indeed, it was good to be home!  (Photo: Tony Bee)

The reader may wonder why Tony Bee went to Sierra Leone after sojourning for 15 years in foreign lands.  Well, as one of my favourite Sierra Leonean writers says, nothing happens for nothing.  In his latest novel, The War after the War, which gives a fictional chronicle of the aftermath of the war in Sierra Leone, prolific Sydney-based Sierra Leonean writer Edison Yongai intimated that the war in Sierra Leone did not happen for nothing; it had a purpose. Therefore my journey to Sierra Leone after a long absence had an objective.

First and foremost, my visit was more official than ordinary.  I was sent to monitor the Kanga Schools project in Sierra Leone, an elaborate educational project founded in Sydney, Australia, aimed solely at empowering Sierra Leonean kids to acquire education with free and easy availability of teaching and learning materials.  This project has been running in Sierra Leone for the past six years or so and has rendered material assistance to 67 schools across the country, including the Western Area.  The philanthropist behind the project is an Australian citizen, Ms. Barbara Davis, who felt that Sierra Leonean kids and institutions of learning need tremendous help after the devastating war that tore the country apart and disintegrated its educational system.

Through this humanitarian project, both primary and secondary schools in Sierra Leone have freely received textbooks, computers, generators, solar lanterns, printers, photocopiers, blackboards, furniture (including chairs and desks) etc. The project, which is named after the founder, is dubbed the Barbie Davis Kanga Schools Foundation Project (BDKSFP).

The project is also constructing about 15 modern libraries in 15 schools, with each one containing a computer lab. Other schools under the project (about 52 of them), which will not benefit from an immediate library construction, will have shelves constructed to accommodate the supplied teaching and learning materials for the pupils of the schools to use. This kind-hearted and gentle benefactress, Barbara Davis, is engaged in this enterprising humanitarian work with the support of a handful of patriotic Sierra Leoneans in Sydney. I doff my hat to this philanthropist lady and all those supporting her worthy cause

On my arrival in Sierra Leone, I began my mission by inspecting some selected schools in the city of Freetown and also in the provinces to see whether the numerous container shipments of teaching and learning materials from Australia had really reached the beneficiaries in Sierra Leone and, if they had, whether the beneficiaries are allowed adequate use of the materials. After Freetown, I also visited provincial places like Makeni, Kenema, Magburaka, Matotoka, and Masingbi. I was bound to accomplish my mission within one month, which literally kept me on my toes.

To my surprise and maybe to yours too, I found out that many of the target institutions (primary, secondary, vocational/technical institutes and even colleges) had woefully failed to properly utilize the supplied materials for their intended purpose.  In other words, accessibility of the materials by students had been restricted by the institution authorities. In some institutions the computers, text books and other reading materials were locked in stores so that the students could not reach them. In fact in some other schools, the students did not even know that they had free computer facilities for their use. I had to sensitize both staff and students that the materials were for daily use and that they should be available to the students without unnecessary restrictions.

A bad report card, unfortunately! But to prove my findings right or wrong, the Sierra Leone media can check the Government Independence Memorial School at Kissy Shell, Humariah Secondary School at Bai Bureh Road, and the United Muslim Association Primary School at Kakajama Section in Kenema. I strongly believe that learning materials donated by benevolent Australians should be used as a means of developing the country because the development of any country needs the concerted efforts of all citizens to educate future leaders of the country.  I am pretty sure that the heads of those culpable institutions will take my advice (not with a pinch of salt though) for the benefit of the students.

This does not mean that many of the schools did not do well with the donated materials. In some schools, it was good to see children in remote areas using their time to browse through library books or playing with computers. This shows that while some institutions of learning are trying to make the best out of the goodness of other people’s kind gestures, others are making the worst out of something good.

This notwithstanding, may I add that the Government Independence Memorial Secondary School needs government’s serious attention for its refurbishment, since the school epitomizes the  country’s fight for independence about 52 years ago. Added to that, the school has contributed immensely to Sierra Leone’s educational system and has produced many important personalities in our society who have contributed or are currently contributing to the country’s development in various ways, ranging from journalists, teachers, university lecturers, principals, mayors, doctors, lawyers, business people, and the list goes on.

Moreover, the Government Independence Memorial School is one of the biggest and one of the oldest schools and its aesthetic outlook should therefore befit its status. So the Sierra Leone President and his government should take urgent steps to transform the dilapidated state of this historic institution of learning before it is too late. In fact I suggest that the Sierra Leone government’s priority at this stage is to pay more attention in refurbishing all government owned schools in the country before thinking about building new ones. What is the use of building new schools if the old ones are crumbling down because of lack of maintenance?

Well, I’m afraid that this is all I have to report so far about this great and enterprising Kanga School Project. My final word is that I am appealing to all Sierra Leoneans, especially the government and education authorities, to unwaveringly support this Kanga Schools Project so that children in Sierra Leone can benefit tremendously from the benevolence of some Godly people.  I am also appealing for the end of the unnecessary bureaucratic delays that the project’s containers face at Water Quay when they arrive in Freetown so that the project manager and her supporters will not be discouraged and abandon the project or divert it to another country.

The second part of this installment will focus on my personal experience in my one-month stay in Sierra Leone and how I found the country – politically, economically, socially and otherwise. Questions like “Has there been any infrastructural or educational development in Sierra Leone after the war?” “Have people’s minds and hearts been transformed?”… So please look out for this article’s sequel in this column next time, God willing.

WHEN GOD SAYS YES, WHO WILL SAY NO?

By Anthony Bee-Conteh, Sydney, Australia

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