Subject: A NEW HERO HAS EMERGED
Content: It is a great pity we don’t know/ When the dead are going to die/So that, over a last companionable/ Drink, we could tell them/ How much we liked them. There are certain types of violence, crimes and suffering that can not be hidden in sierra leone: Unemployment among the youth is at 85%, prostitution among teenage girls increasing everyday, people of ‘a certain community’ living in danger armed robbery is now employing youths in their hundreds.All very visible, very public, and we can tut-tut from the safe-side of our TV screens. We cannot depend on the police for our security, the police shoting bullet and throwing teargas canisters falling like obscene snowballs on peaceful demonstrators. So, there a hero ( Armed robbery + prostitution = Quick money) who has emerged from this appalling situation. Sometimes it’s impossible to identify one figure when all the players exhibit something of either integrity or innocence. Most importantly, to my mind, we are reminded that we do not ever have to suffer in silence when we are ourselves wrong, or accept that someone else’s suffering is ‘their own problem’, safely distant from us. Rather, we are humbled into the realisation, the healing realisation, that we all suffer when the innocent suffer, and that we can all, all of us, no matter how ‘little’ we are made to feel in comparison to the so-called ‘Big Men’, ( bomba) be better, be good, be human. let just work together and settle our differences peacefully.
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