The Sierra Leonean Refugee
By Teddy Foday-Musa
Yes! On the 23rd March 1991
When the Sierra Leonean civil war broke out,
And actually reached its fatal peak,
Transforming Sierra Leone from the vessel of God,
Into a slaughtering house of Satan
Whose butchers were all graduates from the school of Satanism
Sierra Leoneans became the drowning man,
Clinging on to the sharp, double-edged sword of other countries, for their survival
The only option left at their disposal,
Was to become refugees mostly in foreign lands
Oh! My God! How difficult a choice it was for a Sierra Leonean to make
Whose passion and love for strangers is so great,
That he will not want to leave his country,
And have anybody at his back,
To take care of his coming strangers
Yet the Sierra Leonean refugee did not reap what he sowed
In his own country for strangers to harvest: (Kindness)
Yes! He was not paid in his own coin at all
Instead, he became a wandering stranger,
Wandering like a grasshopper in an acre of land
The Sierra Leonean refugee was forced to even demonstrate,
How his Father and Mother were both killed in front of him
Recalling imageries he will never want to think about, if only left on his own accord
All in pursuit of him getting if not his badly needed safety, which he has been denied,
But at least, a warm welcome and a place to spend the night for another challenge ahead
In some cases, the Sierra Leonean refugee,
Became a prime suspect of crimes he never committed
Our respectable traditional paramount chiefs,
Were no longer custodians and owners of their chiefdoms
But refugees in displaced camps, standing in long queues
Awaiting humanitarian food supplies from charity organisations
All over the globe,
From the north pole to the south pole, and from the east sunshine to the west sunset,
The last atom of human pride and dignity was beaten out of the Sierra Leonean refugee
But thank God!
Whether Jonah swallowed the fish, or the fish swallowed Jonah,
The war is now history
The battle is neither lost nor won
But our badly needed Peace has come home
Sierra Leone is once again the harbinger of peace,
Smiling with the aroma of Development
And you know what?
One thing they could not beat out of us,
Was our identity and pride as Sierra Leoneans
So let us now come together as one,
And make that identity meaningful for our unborn generation
Let us now come together, and prevent history repeating itself
Let us now take back home, our troubled and wonderful experiences,
And put them together for a better Sierra Leone
Come! Come! Come at once!
For there is no place like home! Home sweet home!
Photo: Part of Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Teddy Foday-Musa
,
The Netherlands,
E-mail: tfodaymusa@yahoo.ca
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