By Essa Thaim Kurugba, USA.
A moment of silence and nostalgia was felt Wednesday August 6, 2008 at the Washington International Airport when Commissioner Saidu A. Turay - of Sierra Leone National Telecommunications-completed the check-in of his suitcases for the departure back to Freetown.
The departing Commissioner (photo) was sad, sombre and solemn when he turned around to say ciao and good bye. He walked into our midst and gave the following pep talk by saying each one of us had faced one or several obstacles in life and that is just the way life is when one looks at individual life.
Comrade Turay stood arms akimbo and continued to remind us to look at our own lives and measure the number of times something occurred in our lives that tried to set us back, bring us down and just make us feel bad.
"And here we are, standing and looking back at those times. It is you that determine your own attitude regarding that which must be endured," he said.
"I am asking each one of you here this evening to please examine your personality as a patriotic Sierra Leonean and how your attitude is going to affect your own ability to pull you through the bad times."
The Commissioner also admonished all the well wishers and diehard APC supporters to have a positive attitude within society, as it will give them the ability to focus on the difficult issues and solve them more quickly.
Those with greed and poor attitude, he added, will walk unsteadily in self pity and despair and will have no ambition or enthusiasm to confront their problems.
He lucidly emphasized that every one of us should face the difficult issues with the idea that they can be overcome and all the solutions will be found.
"So get up and make movement to change your attitude, change the situation to better your country and stay away from character assassination and individualism. Sometimes the same situation always remains unchecked and people wonder why things are going out of hand. Attitude change must be checked. Adopt a different thought, a different idea, a different attitude about your condition."
Walking into the security gates for boarding into the jumbo aircraft, the adept commissioner stopped, turned around to his beloved ones and the crowd of a few supporters from the Washington DC Metropolitan APC Chapter and eloquently spoke these few encouraging words:
“We have to change our attitude, stay strong, unified and grow up to be positive to one another. There is hope of good economic success in the Koroma administration. Based upon your attitudes, it will truly be the arrival of a new and brighter day for yourselves. Moreover, in the eyes of dejected people, it is simply like a train coming towards them. Let your attitude shine in the light beyond the end of each day; then you will be quite pleased," he concluded.
The Commissioner thus ended his sojourn in the United States as he faded away into the crowd of passengers.
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