I am currently working on a comprehensive national history book for Sierra Leone. Since the publishing of "A New History of Sierra Leone" by Joe A.D. Alie, no other historian has offered a comprehensive understanding of our national history. I hope this book will offer the next generation of Sierra Leoneans another picture of their national journey as a country and how they have arrived at where they are now.
Those who commit to writing their national history should be prepared for encounters with the demons and angels hidden beneath the fabric of the nation. The imperative is to offer the people an opportunity to learn from the past in their race towards the future.
Knowledge and civilization are stored within the pages of books, and those without libraries will leave little instruction for the next generation as roadmap into the future.
None should become leader who does not know and understand the history of those he/she aspires to lead. Therefore, a great leader is one who also makes historians companions in leadership.
I am guided in all matters by my own personal gurus, Mandela, Gandhi, and King. Jr. According to Machiavelli, "A prudent man should always enter upon the paths beaten by great men, and imitate those who have been most excellent, so that if his own virtue does not reach that far, it is at least in the odor of it." The speaker in the picture also keeps me going with music, because I believe as Shakespeare wrote in Twelfth Night, "if music be the food of love, play on."
In books I reside, and there are those who would compare people like me to the luddites, but my preference for printed books will never succumb to the electronic alternative as long as printers continue to print and libraries remain in business.
In final analysis, wisdom loves those who make books their friend.
KATEHUN (pronounced Ka-te-hun)-is a Mende word for a symposium or community center where disputes are settled. Everyone is permitted to make his/her case before a presiding chief in an open forum.
On this forum, I write primarily for those who stand committed to the Rule of Law in Africa and to the value that our future is better determined by the government of the people, by the people, and in service for the people. To advance the African value of Ubuntu through International Law and the Principles of a United Nations, which propels us towards Life in Larger Freedom.
