JOSEPH KAIFALA CONSULTING (SL) LTD

There probably will be no grand wisdom for many of us in the New Year that might not have existed last year. Therefore, in lieu of novel resolutions, we should attempt introspection. It appears many of us are annually resolving to do or not to do certain things without much self-examination. When we make resolutions merely because they are traditionally expected as we leap from an old year into a new one, we often fail to engage in meaningful Socratic examination of life as has...

In a region of extreme poverty and underdevelopment, religious occasions such as Ramadan and Christmas are usually the only times that most people enjoy the joy of life rightly embedded in these festivities. Christmas and Ramadan in Sierra Leone are not only about the religious meanings of these events; they are also a social opportunity for the haves to share with the have-nots, for families to reconcile their differences, and for neighbours to entertain each other through parties an...

There are those who believe in you from the very first meeting. Mikie was not a professor and never had me as a regular student at Skidmore, but the man had such confidence in me that often made me wonder. He would sometimes text to encourage me to stay on the good path, and every now and then I quietly received a few bucks in the mail as donation to the Jeneba Project Inc., with an accompanying apology that it wasn’t a lot more. As a technician at Skidmore Media Services, he...

The ebola emergency in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia has led these countries to temporarily close schools in order to manage the spread of the disease. It has been estimated that the closure of schools affects estimably five million children in the region, and fears that some of these children might not return to school after the emergency have caused some NGOs to call for the reopening of schools in the region. As founder of the Jeneba Project Inc. and someone who has provi...

One of the greatest pleasures of traveling around the U.S. on public transportation to give presentations and attend fundraisers for the Jeneba Project Inc., a nonprofit I founded to provide educational opportunities to the children of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea after more than a decade of civil war in that region, is the privilege of talking to ordinary Americans about these countries and the work we do. In my experience, when Americans are interested in an issue, they a...