Weekend at Javouhey House
I participated in a weekend Retreat at Javouhey House which is a Guest House run by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cloney. It is situated about two thirds of the distance to the top of Leicester Peak. (Photo: Dr. Sama Banya)
Hooked to early morning exercise, I was out at six next morning to challenge the remaining one third of the hill, itself quite challenging. There I was, doing it at my usual pace but with shorter strides in order to conserve my energy. The view of our city from different points on the way is simply breathtaking. I would use the coined phrase of “fantabulous!†As I went along, a very much younger man than I breezed past as he jogged up that hill. Just watching him made me breathless, it also brought nostalgia of those long-ago days in Bo School when the weekly cross-country run across Bo was such a joy. I also thought about my friend Olu Ritchie Awoonor-Gordon who with some of colleagues so obsessed with whether I am 80 or 104 and wondered whether I would not be inviting him to attempt suicide by challenging me on Leicester Peak.
Even as I reflected on the picturesque view of our city from the top of the hill, I was saddened at the extent of deforestation that has taken place up there. There is NOTHING LIKE HIGH BUSH, not to speak about forests on the left hand side of the road from the foot right to the very top. It has all been cleared by the expansion of human settlement. How I wish my niece Jartu Fornah of the Environmental Protection Agency and her minister would visit Leceister Peak. The EU which shows so much concern about deforestation in the Western Peninsular have their headquarters mansion up there.
I was listening to a representative of the Freetown City council on an FM radio station as I climbed on Sunday morning; she was extolling the plans and responsibilities of the council from education to infrastructure and environmental sanitation. She was quite good really; but just as I was about to say that the council certainly had a very full agenda of well meaning plans, the voice began to exhort listeners to join the council for its right to its own radio station. I asked  myself, “if council propaganda was so effective using existing radio stations, why do they want a separate radio station, because three FM stations would be more than enough for them and far less expensive than running a radio station. Think over it Mr. Mayor and your city fathers and mothers.
On Sunday morning there was a long stream of the Roman Catholic faithful, winding its way through the hills behind Hill Station, IMATT to “Mt Calvary†at the top of the Senior Seminary. What a commitment and dedication, remembering that they had begun down town and passed right at the foot of Leicester Peak. Your Grace, I am familiar with the physical appearance of some of my friends in holy orders and wondered whether they too joined the congregation or wisely advised themselves to use one or two vehicles that I noticed.
The doctors and nurses in our main hospitals have downed tools; it is not usual for this particular category of public servants to go on strike, not even when it is acknowledged that they have a genuine grievance. There is also their Hippocratic Oath taken at the time of their graduation. Whatever their grievance, they are dealing with human suffering and with life and death. The situation is a difficult one when all the factors are equated, including for the doctors a matter of survival for them and for their families. It is one that calls for dialogue at the highest level; while such serious and genuine efforts are being made to address this very difficult issue, it is most reprehensible, if not irresponsible, for the African champion or any newspaper for that matter, to come out with stupid insinuations that the SLPP are urging the doctors not to yield. It must be the view of the editor that people linked to the SLPP have no need of a doctor at any time. SHE..ORR!Â
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