Pragmatic Developmental Approach
A speech given by Joseph Kaifala on the occasion of unveiling St. Joseph's Junior Secondary School Library of Peace, August 2007
I’ll start this morning by quoting the philosopher Confucius: “If your plan is for a year, plant rice. If your plan is for a decade, plant trees. If your plan is for a lifetime, educate children.”
I come to you today as a son, a brother, and most important of all as a compatriot. Only a little more than five years ago we were divided against each other. We were all blinded by greed, corruption, nepotism, favoritism, tribalism, and power consciousness.We ignored the rich values of our ancestors that formed the basis of our national pride before the war. The more we deviated from the moral values of our nation the more we hunted each other’s blood in a calamitous civil war that now defines us in the international community. I still find it difficult explaining to my friends what happened in this country between 1991 and 2002.
As far as I can remember, we failed each other as a country. Parents failed in their duty as the primary providers of nurture to the children, teachers failed in their role as developers of our minds, preachers failed in their role as constructors of the moral fiber of our society, politicians failed as custodians of our social contract, the young in consequence failed as bearers of our common destiny. Thousands of our compatriots perished in those years of madness, others lost parts of their bodies, many of us will live in trauma for more years ahead with our country severely devastated.
The reality is that the horrors of our past have now become the mirror through which we perceive our future. I hope we all now believe in better ways of settling our disputes and sorting out our differences. Too long have we suffered in vain! Now we know that war breeds nothing but destruction and poverty. Long before we started the brutal killings, there were passive wars among neighbors, various tribes, and elites of our society. Maybe the wars in our hearts would have lasted longer than the physical attacks on each other. But no matter what the case may be, we are proud once again to be each other’s keeper.
A few years ago I sat in prison as a child watching my two countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone crumble before me. But even as a child and a prisoner I was thinking of when will it all end, and what will be my role in bringing it about? Even though my father tried very hard to conceal the reality from my infant eyes, the sight of guns, blood and corpses littering the prison yard was enough to reveal to me that we were in the midst of terror. It was during my time in prison that I started having dreams of a man, a prisoner like me, who I had heard of only on BBC Focus on Africa. That man is no other but Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa, who is now the icon of African leadership. I dreamed that like Mandela I was detained for the freedom of my people.
My primary service to this country was when as a child prisoner I smuggled out a letter written by my father and other inmates to former President Joseph Momoh, in care of another Mr. Momoh, former uncle-in-law of Charles Taylor, warning him of RUF preparations to invade Sierra Leone. Since then, in my child’s mind I continued to see myself as the Mandela of Sierra Leone. But rather unfortunately, I understood very quickly that if I survived the National Patriotic Front of Liberia’s prison, I will again witness the collapse of my own country as I had already seen in Liberia. And indeed, I saw it all over again: the killing, rape, and torture of my people.
Unfortunately, my father did not live to see the end. He was a teacher who did not fail his students. He left us no inheritance or fame; but even amidst the sounds of rocket launchers and machine guns he never failed to repeat the words that have now formed the basis of my personal development. “Son,” he said to me, “wherever you find peace educate yourself; because education is the only legacy that cannot be taken from you.” I took these words to heart. When rockets were flying and I was starving during the war, I still kept my eyes on the pages of old novels and sometimes encyclopedias my father left in Freetown during his own school days. I remember on January 6, 1999, when this country laid in blood and fire, my uncle and his wife were struggling to fit under the bed to avoid stray bullets, and I just sat there looking through newspapers. “Eh borbor you nor dae fraid?” (“Ah son, aren’t you afraid?), my uncle asked very puzzled. “Well, uncle die yone wae cam e nor matter if you dae under bed or sidon na chair” (“Well, uncle when death comes it doesn’t matter whether you are under the bed or sitting in a chair”), I said calmly, as if death was not hanging over me.
It was amidst this terror that I gained my West African Senior School Certificate and obtained a scholarship to study at one of the United World Colleges in Norway. In 2002 I left for Norway at a time when the United Nations Development Index determined Norway as the best country to live in and Sierra Leone as the worst. I normally summarize this experience as rising from hell to heaven without going through purgatory. Sometimes God also grants V.I. P status to his humble servants. My experience at the United World College in Norway made me most of what I am today: a firm believer in democracy and peace.
It was at the UWC that I came across other young people from all over the world who were not child soldiers or hooligans, but proud responsible citizens of their individual countries with interests in international understanding and global peace. It was an incredible opportunity for me to reflect on my new life as a survivor. Norway proved to be a country in which I could develop renewed hope for my own self-development and for the future of my country Sierra Leone. One way or another we were all responsible for the ruin of this country, so together we must reconstruct and redevelop our homeland.
After a decade of civil war in Sierra Leone the worst affected were innocent children, some of whom like me never had the time to be children. But the most affected of all are the children who are growing up without their limbs, and will always be reminded of the heinous crimes committed in this country. It was in their interest that a few years ago I developed a project called Save the Future Generation. We provided clothes, stationery, and medical assistance to children whose limbs were chopped off and children whose parents’ limbs were also chopped off during the war. A couple of years later I left Norway to attend Skidmore College in the U.S., from where I continued similar services with another project called Beatitude International. One droplet at a time my friends in the West and I have changed lives in this country and brought hope where there was tremendous hopelessness.
A year ago I added a scholarship program for girls to the services I provide. The aim of the program is to encourage motivated girls to remain in school and pursue their education with continuous determination. We hope to diversify the intellect of our country by encouraging girls’ education. It is rather appalling to think that a country with more women than men is still run by a circle of old-boys’ associations. The only way we can break this blatant disparity is to elevate the intellectual status of women to that of their male counterparts. If our mothers can take care of our homes well enough, I believe they can also transform our socio-political development for the better.
I am what I am today not because of magic or the wealth of my parents, but by education and the discipline imbued in me by my parents. I believe like the great Madiba Mandela that “education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor; that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine; that the child of farm workers can become the President of a great nation.”
I have traveled all over the world and met with leaders such as Lech Walesa and Madeline Albright carrying nothing but my education. Today my passport says Republic of Sierra Leone, but I feel just at home in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, USA, and Guinea. No doubt why custom officers always look into my passport and take a second glace at me with a huge question mark on their faces. It is interesting to see that even with the increasing xenophobia in the West, an educated person sometimes become invisible. Education, I believe is an equalizer that can transcend all boundaries of race, ethnicity, color, and creed. In other words, educated people tend to be the same everywhere.
In light of everything I have said to you about the power of education, I unveil to you today the St. Joseph’s Junior Secondary School Library of Peace. The idea of an educational infrastructure was conceived many years ago when I was a student in this country. Text books were very scarce and expensive and our only national library was ill-equipped. Over the three years I spent at the Sierra Leone Grammar School, I had read almost all the books in our mini library. I always tell my friends in the U.S. that my idea of a fake ID card has nothing to do with bending the elbow (drinking). It was an invention of a poor young boy to infiltrate the U.S. Embassy and British Council libraries. I was breaking the law legally.
I have built you a library so that you won’t have to follow in my footsteps. The library contains everything that a modern library should have. It is a gift to every Sierra Leonean who wishes to use it for their intellectual development, and I urge you all to use it wisely in the development of your minds and hearts. I bring you not the wealth of New York, because that could be spent down the road in an instant. I give you education instead, a gift that will be with you in war or peace, in poverty or in copious wealth. In fact I have every reason to believe that it can be a deterrent to war and it guarantees development.
I hope that some day great papers and great decisions will be made in this library for the development of our community. I have no doubt that it will also produce great men and women who will transform this country at large. Ours is a country that is rising from the wreckage of a brutal civil war; we need educated people who can engineer our development. Many years ago this country was known among Westerners as the “Athens of West Africa” because of the high caliber of our educated people. It was right here at the Sierra Leone Grammar School and the Fourah Bay College that most African leaders and clergymen such as Sir Samuel Lewis, Samuel Ajayi Crowther, and J.E. Casely-Hayford were trained. It is high time we placed our country at that level of international prestige and integrity.
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| Students and their parents watch a film in the new library. |
Now you have a library to strengthen your efforts and empower you to rise up to the challenges of the 21st century. Over the past month your teachers have undergone standard computer and other technological trainings. The library has been furnished with audiovisual materials and modern books in order to bring you closer to the rest of the world. An electrical generator has also been added to the library in order to facilitate the operation of your recently acquired technological materials. Now students and teachers will be able to watch movies, listen to music and computerize their data in this library. I don’t believe there is any other library outside Freetown that offers such facilities to our rural communities. I believe we can engage our entire country in the pursuit of development. But prior to that we must all be empowered to work together, and collectively. We cannot progress in the manner of our former colonial masters who developed cities for their own interests while the rest of our country remained in obscurity.
Alongside the library, I have also offered twenty-five scholarships to schoolchildren at the St. Joseph Junior Secondary School and the Lokomasama Secondary School. There is another pending twenty-five scholarships for schoolgirls in Freetown. I will continue to do my ultimate best abroad in order to make education affordable for my brothers and sisters here in Sierra Leone. Boys have repeatedly asked about my current interests in encouraging girls’ education, which excludes them from the scholarship scheme at the moment. I urge you to please continue with diligence, and one day I won’t have to prioritize anyone in this country. Trust me; all I want is a Sierra Leone in which we can all afford the basic necessities of our survival and live in the dignity we deserve.
The only request I have for parents present today is for you to take the education of your children very seriously. Since independence, the entire African continent has been at war with itself. We have several scapegoats and people to blame, but the greater responsibility is ours to bear. Our fate has always been in the hands of the white men, our former colonial masters. Most of what they offer us has been in their own interests. Our people massacre themselves in the diamond mines and oilfields while the developed countries enrich themselves on our wealth. Our leaders continue to be unresponsive vis-à-vis our sufferings, and our societies have become places for survival of the fittest even in the midst of plenty. It is high time we Africans undertook the responsibilities of our own destiny. The West can give us all we require for growth, but if we ourselves do not embark on maintaining the foundations they provide we will be doomed to eternal destitution.
I will now extend my deepest thanks and gratitude to all those who have in some way or another contributed to the success of this vision. Primarily to Shelby and Kathryn Wasserman Davis, whose generosity has made it possible to for young people to take pragmatic actions towards the achievement of international understanding and world peace. To the students of the Skidmore International Affairs Club, a very special thank you. I appreciate the efforts of Fr. Peter Mansaray, my father Sahr Joseph Tolno, staff and students of the St. Joseph’s Junior Secondary School for their indefatigable contributions to the success of this project. My thanks and appreciation also goes to the Church of St. Peter in Saratoga Springs for making me feel at home in their congregation, and their enormous financial and moral contributions to education and reconstruction in Sierra Leone.
I also extend immense gratitude to Catherine Minnery and Carol Springs for serving as parental figures in my life abroad, and their persistent contributions to education in Sierra Leone. I thank Professor Michael Steven Marx and family for guiding me in my academic development and also working with me over the years to ameliorate the lives of children in Sierra Leone. Nothing I say here can speak to the generosity of Barbara Opitz and Darren Drabek. I often refer to their phone numbers as my personal 911. A very special thank you to Professor Roy Ginsberg and Mary-Beth O’Brien, Patricia Rubio; James Chansky, Sandi Jeska, Wendy LeBlanc and the entire staff of Skidmore Summer Programs.
I appreciate the support of Lorraine Bittel, Br. Robert Coleman and the entire team of Skidmore Dinning Services; Skidmore International Affairs Program, Office of Residential Life, Health Services, Michael Popowsky and the staff of Media Services; SkidTv, Office of admissions, Staff of Scribner Library (Nancy, I promise to leave on time this year), the United World Colleges, Humanity in Action and all my friends in Europe and America, including those whose name I have not been able to mention in this speech.
Personally, I will now extend my love and gratitude to my host families in Norway and Sweden. To Desiree, Inge, Alias, Anna Kamila, Johannes and Jacob. To my brother Erik; Ulla, Magnus and the entire Bolmstrand family. To my own family; my beloved brother Francis; Hawa, Amie, and Watta Sandouno. I thank Aunty Kadie Aberdeen, Jowo, Miniatu and Josephine; Sahr Kendemah, Zainab Kamara, Fatmata Kamara and the Bainda family. And to my most beloved mothers Magdaline Tewa Tolno and Angeline Tolno. To Valery and Aunty Winifred Tolno.
I also extend my sincere gratitude to my compatriots abroad who often advise me on matters relating to our country’s reconstruction: Leonard Gordon, David Sengeh and Sia Bundu. Most especially to Sadiatu Kamara, a.k.a African Queen. And now on behalf of all Sierra Leoneans, I extend my most sincere gratitude to Peter Brock and Danielle McCourt—two of the most beautiful Americans I have met, and who were here with me to complete this project. They have demonstrated that in order to help the poor it is absolutely necessary to know the poor. African development will become a practical reality when Americans like these ascend to leadership positions. I wish them well from the bottom of my heart!
Finally, my most gracious thanks and appreciation go to Sarah Loomis and Liat Krawczyk. You may deem your services too little, but it means the world to those in need. Your tiny contributions make their lives a little better everyday. Without your help this library would not be complete.
Now I must leave you with the last verse of our national anthem; one that we all should pursue together as one country and one people:
Knowledge and Truth our forefathers spread
Mighty the nations whom they led
Mighty they made thee, so too may we
Show forth the good that is ever in thee.
We pledge our devotion, our strength and our might
Thy cause to defend and to stand for they right
All that we have be ever thine own
Land that we love, our Sierra Leone.
Joseph Kaifala was born in Sierra Leone and spent his early childhood in Liberia. He later moved to Norway, where he attended the Red Cross Nordic United World College before enrolling at Skidmore College. Joseph is an International Affairs & French Major, with a minor in Law & Society. He speaks six languages and is very much interested in learning Swedish. Joseph is also a Human Rights activist, a Rastafarian, and a votary of ahimsa. He upholds a philosophical belief that the highest state of love is experienced through dancing or singing, and every human being is capable of one or both. He is a filmmaker and loves to play scrabble, when not hibernating in reggae music.