The Freetown Bond: A Life under Two Flags [1 ed.] 1847010555, 9781847010551

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JAMES CURREY an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com www.jamescurrey.com

THE FREETOWN BOND

Cover photograph: A view across Freetown towards the harbour (© Samuel Akie Ajibade 2012)

ELDRED DUROSIMI JONES

Whose Empire Day were the school children of Sierra Leone in the 1930s celebrating as they tipped their straw boaters to the Union Jack and singing ‘Flag of our Empire waving there above’? These were the same children educated in British church schools who were to lead the liberation from Empire. Eldred Durosimi Jones was born in 1925 and this memoir gives a vivid picture of growing up in Freetown in the latter days of British colonial rule. He was an exceptional young man who was able to take advantage of the unusual style of this city-state. Known internationally as being central to the establishment of the study of African writing, African Literature Today of which he was founding editor in 1968, is a key marker of this growth. In addition, his book Othello’s Countrymen introduced Africa into Shakespeare studies.

ELDRED DUROSIMI JONES

The Freetown A Life under Bond Two Flags

Eldred Durosimi Jones is Emeritus Professor of English Language and Literature, and Retired Principal of Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, Freetown. He attended the historic CMS Grammar School and Fourah Bay College, and then did further studies at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He lost his sight in his middle years and this book, like all his later written work, has been brought to the page by his wife Marjorie Jones. Her gift for story-telling about their lives as Sierra Leone was gripped by civil war has added to this highly individual book

Eldred Jones has led a remarkable and distinguished life ... the memoir not only covers Eldred Jones’ personal and professional life, but also social and educational developments in Sierra Leone over the best part of a century. – Martin Banham, Emeritus Professor of Drama & Theatre Studies, University of Leeds

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The Freetown Bond

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The Freetown Bond A Life under Two Flags ELDRED DUROSIMI JONES with MARJORIE JONES

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James Currey is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB) www.jamescurrey.com and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731 (USA) www.boydellandbrewer.com © Eldred Durosimi Jones 2012 First published 2012 1 2 3 4 5 16 15 14 13 12 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Eldred Durosimi Jones to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-84701-055-1 (James Currey cloth) The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Papers used by Boydell & Brewer are natural, recycled products made from wood grown in sustainable forests.

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Typeset in 11.25/13 Monotype Garamond by Avocet Typeset, Chilton, Aylesbury, Bucks Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

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To the memory of my parents, Eldred Prince William & Ethline Marie Jones

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Contents

List of Illustrations Foreword

ix xi

1 Early Childhood under the British Flag

1

2 Manhood’s Gleam in Boyish Eyes

26

3 In the Footsteps of Ajayi Crowther

37

4 The Gleaming Spires of Oxford

49

5 Home Pastures

60

6 America & New Found Lands

86

7 West African Travels

108

vii

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Contents

8 All Freetown’s a Stage

125

Acting – Walking – Broadcasting

9 Books, Words, Causes

140

African Literature Today – Freetown: A Symposium – Noma Award for Publishing in Africa – Sierra Leone Union on Disability Issues – Politics – National Policy Advisory Committee – Knowledge Aid for Sierra Leone

10 Twilight & Evening Bell

160

Appendix Eldred Durosimi Jones brief resumé Marjorie Jones brief resumé

166

Index

169

viii

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List of Illustrations

1.1 The author, Eldred Durosimi Jones 1.2 Family portrait: father Eldred P.W. Jones, brother Michael; sister Kezia, author, mother Ethline Marie Jones with baby Ethline, 1929 1.3 Street map of Freetown 1.4 Holy Trinity Church, Kissy Road, Freetown 1.5 St John Maroon Church, Westmoreland Street, Freetown 2.1 Pupils of the Sierra Leone Grammar School at Regent Square assembling for the procession to St George’s Cathedral for the centenary thanksgiving service, 1945 2.2 Fourah Bay College original building, constructed 1845 3.1 Mabang Agricultural Academy – exile home of Fourah Bay College 1943–45 4.1 Pelican Quad Corpus Christi College, Oxford 2002 5.1 Fourah Bay College, Mount Aureol. Kennedy Tower building with Administrative building and Library, 1966 5.2 Dr Arthur Porter (Vice-Chancellor) and Professor Eldred Jones (Pro-Vice Chancellor) in procession at Fourah College Congregation, 1979 8.1 Members of the cast of The Alchemist, Freetown, 1965 9.1 Eldred Jones receiving the Honorary degree D. Phil, University of Umëa, Umëa, Sweden, 1996 9.2 Eldred and Marjorie Jones with Certificate from the University of Birmingham Alumni Association, Sierra Leone Chapter, in recognition of the conferment of the honorary degree of D.Litt by the University on the author, Freetown, 2005

xiv

3 12 15 15

33 36 40 50 68

70 129 144

144 ix

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List of Illustrations 9.3 Group of UKSG/KASL members at Corpus Christi College, Oxford 2005 9.4 KASL Fund-raising Planning Group Knowledge Aid, Freetown, 2008 10.1 Ethline Jarrett (author’s sister), author, Marjorie Jones, in the garden of Orchard Quinn, Leicester Village, Freetown, 1995

x

158 158

164

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Foreword

Another of those universally accepted truths seems to be that anyone who is literate and lives to be eighty must write an autobiography. My friends urged this for many years and finally with Marjorie’s help with whom I have shared almost all of my adult life – we have been married for over sixty years – I set to work. Without her help, this work could never have been undertaken. She aided my recollections by ploughing through files, recalling dates, and sat patiently at the computer while I let my memory roam over many years and many lands. My gratitude to her is immeasurable. I have shied away from the word ‘autobiography’ which suggests something more formal than this relaxed reminiscence over a much enjoyed life. When I sent the completed manuscript to my long time friend and publisher, James Currey, he responded with such enthusiasm that we have since been hard put to keep pace with him. Lynn Taylor, another old friend, kept up the momentum and together we got the copy ready for publication. I am grateful to both of them. I am grateful to all my friends who encouraged me to write and made practical suggestions. I am indebted to the following for photographs, and permission to publish: The Vicar of Holy Trinity Church, for photograph of the Church, the Principal of the Sierra Leone Grammar school, for the picture of the school, Professor Kosonike Koso-Thomas for technical advice, Mr Prince Coker of Techsult Sierra Leone, for the sketch maps, Mr Geoffrey Goodall for help with the photograph of Pelican Quad, Mr Samuel Akie Ajibade for the cover photograph, Mrs Jeannette Eno for assistance with typing the manuscript, Mr Victor Janjue-Browne and Ms Zainab Kamara for computer assistance, and Dr Julius Spencer who read the first draft of this book and made valuable comments. For over two centuries, Freetown has attracted elements from xi

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The Freetown Bond diverse backrounds, mixed and moulded them into new creations and new alliances. Our friendship with Minkailu Jalloh is typical. He is Foulah/Temne, Marjorie and I are Krio; he is Muslim, we are Christian; he came up to Fourah Bay College to study Engineering, I taught English. But Freetown stamped us with its brand, and forged between us, an abiding friendship. This is the Freetown of this book.

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1.1 The author, Eldred Durosimi Jones

Page xiv

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1 Early Childhood under the British Flag

In January 1986 a tenant in a house in the middle of Leah Street in the east end of Freetown, prudently gathered up the fag ends of her firewood from the communal kitchen, took them into her room and went to bed to be woken by the heat of flames which wiped out the ambience and the culture of the neighbourhood in which my childhood, youth and early manhood were moulded. Sam Metzger, the veteran journalist and editor of We Yone, a fellow eastender, chronicled the event with reference to our family. Chukwudinka Kawaley wrote from far off Bermuda lamenting the loss of No. 18 Leah Street. The two family houses in which I spent all my years from my birth to the age of twenty-five, were totally destroyed along with the properties of several cousins and family friends. One half of our relations on my father’s side lived in that short stretch of Leah Street. The parallel Vinton Street, housed most of the other half – the grand residence of my father’s elder sister, ‘Big Mama’, the matriarch of the Jarretts. Another cluster of Jarretts lived merely a stone’s throw away on Kissy Road. This close proximity of the Jones/Jarrett clan made for a rich family life with children and adults constantly going in and out of the various houses enjoying the particular characteristics of each. This was the heart of my family on my Father’s side, descendants of the ‘liberated Africans’ who were recaptured on the high seas by the British navy before they had reached the plantations in the early years of the nineteenth century, and were re-settled in the ‘Province of Freedom’, later Freetown. In between these settled Krio families were a few well-established families of Contehs and Kamaras who had settled in Freetown from the ‘Protectorate’ (as distinct from the ‘Colony’, the small peninsular area surrounding Freetown; see maps on pp. xiii, 12 and 13). Two doors from No. 18 was a whole row of apartments, one 1

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The Freetown Bond bedroom and a parlour locally known as ‘ajoining’ aj cinin. Some of the ladies in these apartments were engaged in gara dyeing who, in finishing the cloth laid it out on a long low table and sitting on opposite sides, pounded out a rhythm with stout clubs to give the cloth a shine and a delicate texture. Both the smell of the local herb dye and the rhythm of the pounding gave a special atmosphere to this cosmopolitan neighbourhood. We knew these ladies well and one of them had a close relationship with my sister Ethline. This fashionable lady was the mistress of a well-known city councillor who did not live on the premises and whom we never saw visiting. He however kept up his contact through messages and short written notes. Sister Hawa however was illiterate and needed the assistance of my sister to read these notes and write her replies. Diagonally from our house was another long-settled family from up-country. On my very last visit to the area, long after our family had left it and just before I finally lost my vision, I encountered Sister Isata, a member of that family whom I had not seen for at least twenty years, and who was more the age of my older brother and sister Doc and Kezia. We were both delighted at this accidental meeting. Sister Isata lamented the fact that people like our family with whom they used to associate had left the area and that the whole neighbourhood had deteriorated. She revealed to me for the first time that they were Mandingo. If I had ever been asked before I would have said that they were Temne but the question had never arisen. It was clear that we belonged to different religions as they worshipped on Fridays and we on Sundays and we exchanged festival gifts at different times of year. Sister Isata and I shook hands and parted in a mist of nostalgia. I never saw her again. My mother is described in my birth certificate as a Maroon descendant. The Maroons were Jamaican slaves who had rebelled against British rule and been transported to Nova Scotia in Canada, where they joined the slaves who had escaped from the southern states during the American War of Independence against the British. Both were founding constituents of Freetown. St John Maroon Church still stands as a permanent memorial to this particular wave of settlers, even though the Maroons have now almost disappeared as the entity which dominated the Maroon Town between Walpole 2

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Early Childhood under the British Flag

1.2 Family portrait (standing, left to right) father Eldred P.W. Jones, brother Michael; ( front row) sister Kezia, author (aged about three), mother Ethline Marie Jones with baby Ethline, 1929

3

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The Freetown Bond and Waterloo Streets. My grandmother, Emily John, presided over our clan at No. 8 Liverpool Street while the other family cluster, the Lakes, Awoonor-Williamses and Tregson-Roberts formed another branch in Waterloo Street. The Maroons had remnants of their distinctive culture in their dress – the Maroon kabasl ct and their characteristic celebratory midnight feast, the bapchu (barbecue). They were staunch Methodists in contrast to my father’s people who were Anglicans. When as a child I crossed the city and went to Church with my grandmother for a mid-morning Sunday service in contrast to our 8.30 a.m. Matins at Holy Trinity, I was in a different world. Those week-ends in Maroon Town were magical with grandchildren from various families frolicking about in the large yard in the daytime and, often dressed in my grandmother’s old clothes, telling stories and singing ‘shouts’ in the evenings. My cousin Ida, Aunty Mabel’s daughter, introduced yet another cultural element by marrying Mr Amartey a famous goldsmith from the Gold Coast, as Ghana was then called, who brought in many young children from that country to live with them. Mr Amartey was particular about his country’s cuisine and sent Cousin Ida to the Gold Coast to learn the authentic dishes. On Saturdays, surrounded by children, she would supervise the pounding of boiled yam in a flat bottomed mortar and prepare palm soup all the way from the boiling of the palm fruit right up to the sprinkling of cray fish on the bubbling soup. This was all part of the Maroon Town ambience. My cousin’s daughter Amelie, though only two or three years younger than my sister Ethline, was seriously regarded in the family as her godchild and they were inseparable during our Maroon Town visits. I followed my cousin, Anniemaude, on all her errands around Maroon Town and was introduced to numerous families with whom my grandmother had either church or business dealings. My grandmother’s business, as far as I could make out, was centred on the periodic Customs auction of unclaimed or confiscated goods which she bought and re-sold in the neighbourhood. She brought in some of the most bizarre objects of wood, metal and fabric in addition to more regular things, like garments and household stuff. I suppose in monetary terms she was poor but she led a rich religious life and brought joy to not only her ‘grandchildren’ but the whole of Maroon 4

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Early Childhood under the British Flag Town. She had the inspiration, for instance, of having a row of coconut trees planted along the Liverpool Street boundary wall of the Maroon churchyard in the expectation that the harvest of the fruit could be used to defray minor expenses of the Church. One of my best memories of my grandmother’s cottage is that the walls of the tiniest room were papered with pages from the weekly edition of the London Daily Mirror which I read voraciously, sometimes standing on my head to read those pages which had been pasted upside down. The headline ‘Gandhi Keeps His Day’, which celebrated that Indian Saint’s completion of a spell of protest fasting, remains fixed in my memory. Granny’s wake, which brought together a great crowd from the east and west of Freetown, still remains fresh in the memories of my sister Ethline and myself, and we regale ourselves from time to time with the ingenious improvisations of the professional wake-keepers (waits). Her memorial tablet, in which she is coupled with Aunty Mabel Buller, adorns the wall of the church just above where we used to sit with her. By the time the great fire wiped out our properties at Leah Street, my parents and most of the senior relations had long died and the children had all left the area. ‘Big Mama’,who presided over the families of her three sons, made agidi and ogiri for which she had a large clientele. On Saturday afternoons there would be a lively gathering in the terraced yard; grandchildren were joined by others from surrounding families, around the residue in a great agidi pot. My cousin Buller would lead the festivities with a trumpet-like instrument (when he was not playing football) and the whole neighbourhood would be enlivened until evening. On other days, choristers from Holy Trinity would gather round the piano rehearsing their solos to the accompaniment of the versatile Buller. I spent many hours turning the pages for him and trying to learn the piano myself but without great success. Three large apple trees attracted both invited and uninvited visitors to this nerve centre of family and neighbourhood life in one corner of the east end of Freetown. I was surprised when, many decades later, a contemporary who lived on Kissy Road recalled one of these Saturday afternoons which she had witnessed more than seventy years earlier. We, at No. 18 Leah Street, kept a harmonium on which my father 5

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The Freetown Bond practised for the Sunday services and took rehearsals of the members of my mother’s several church women’s organizations for their ‘Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Gatherings’ (PSAG) in the Church school room. Among family oral tradition is the story that my mother, heavily pregnant with my younger sister, finished acting at a PSAG, walked half-a-mile to Dr Isaac Pratt’s Nursing Home at Sackville Street and delivered her daughter within hours. For many years, my sister carried as a nickname ‘the little stranger’, the title of the play in which my mother had just featured. On this harmonium my brother Doc also accompanied my elder sister Kezia, a notable soprano recitalist, and rehearsed her and friends, for their parts in musical performances of The Mikado, and the Ballanta Operas – Afiwa, Efuah and Boima. Buller had taught Doc music and, while he became organist at Sunday School and at Fourah Bay College, he never showed any inclination to be a church organist, preferring to sing and eventually to become choirmaster of Holy Trinity Church. As a teacher at Buxton and Ebenezer Primary schools, he conducted the school choirs and often won the schools’ singing competitions. He showed a special flair for accompanying music played on our cabinet wind-up gramophone and this could be anything from the ‘Peanut Vendor’ to ‘The Hallelujah Chorus’. He brought his college friends home on their way back to Cline Town on Sunday evenings when, after enjoying my mother’s tasty confectionary bits, they sang an impromptu evensong which ended with one of them, Sammy Allen, announcing the closing hymn with words which became his nickname in our family – ‘hymn two-two’. My parents, Eldred Prince William and Ethline Marie Jones fondly called Pap and Mam, had fifty years of happy marriage, sober housekeeping and general social interaction. They left a reputation in the east end of Freetown which still reverberates, sometimes in rather exaggerated terms. When my wife related to me some of the stories which had been told her about my parents’ acts of benevolence and charity, I was constrained to edit them in the interest of historical accuracy. A lady from a well-known east end family, to illustrate my parents’ lavish entertaining style, reported that the clergy of Holy Trinity Church – some four of them – were entertained to lunch at our home every Sunday after Matins. I do 6

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Early Childhood under the British Flag remember however, that the Rev. Percy Jones, a tutor at the Grammar School, gave voluntary assistance at the church on the first Sunday of every month, and did have lunch on that day with us. I was later to encounter him in a completely different manifestation as Senior Tutor at the Grammar School where he, no doubt, in return for my parents’ hospitality offered me extra Latin after school, much to my chagrin. Another lady recounted how children of the neighbourhood preferred to get water from our domestic standpipe because when the fruit was in season they would surreptitiously climb up our enormous apple tree and gorge themselves with fruit, collecting some to take away. My father discovering them in the act, would, according to her, wait patiently until they came down, calmly collect the fruit from them, make them sweep the leaves around the tree and then distribute their loot among them while my mother prepared food for them after their water-carrying labours. I can never imagine Pap in this indulgent mode although Mam was very generous with food. Our house was indeed full of children, cousins real and acquired, many of whom were sent to my mother from the peninsular villages for ‘training’. At one time, five real cousins, three girls and two boys, arrived from Nigeria where their parents worked, the girls remaining in our family until they married. During these growing–up years, seven girls, from my cousin Sarah to my younger sister Ethline, went from our home to the Annie Walsh Memorial School. One of them, Minnie Johnson, the daughter of a friend of my father’s who worked in the Gold Coast, brought great honour not to say excitement to our family when she was selected as one of two Girl Guides to represent Sierra Leone in London at the Silver Jubilee of King George V in 1936. She and Esther, later Esther Coker, were chaperoned by the redoubtable Mrs Hannah Benka-Coker, the Girl Guide Commissioner. Minnie returned with stories of places and historic buildings of which we had only read of in books, camp fire songs, and a pen friend for me from Southend-on-Sea. She eventually got married and, as Mrs Cummings, lived in the Gold Coast from which she returned only after her husband died. Her sister, Jane, also lived with us and became one of my mother’s favourites, because she took very quickly to my mother’s many activities such 7

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The Freetown Bond as baking, sewing, ‘marking canvasses’ with wool for making slippers and various other crafts. She could do no wrong and we nicknamed her, in the words of my mother’s pet rulings over our children’s disputes, ‘Jane n cba lay (Jane never lies)’. She subsequently got married and went to Nigeria. Life at No. 18 was regularly punctuated with the drums and strings of local musicians like Peter-naL 3p 3t and Kal3nda, as one or other of the girls and my mother’s numerous ‘god children’ got married. Matthew Bultman (Alaba) came from Charlotte and grew up with me, joined the choir, became a lawyer’s clerk and eventually settled in England. Frank Hughes, the son of my childhood nurse, who was born in our house and became a senior locomotive driver on the Sierra Leone Railways, was one of the longest-serving songsmen of Holy Trinity, turning up for services well into his eighties. There were always about twelve children in our household, although exaggerated accounts often put the number higher. These children from the villages and other backgrounds enlivened us with a bounty of traditional tales told while we huddled together at night in the front porch. We were equally goggle-eyed with wonder at the African tale of tr cki (tortoise), who hid his mother up in the clouds and visited her by climbing up a long chain which she let down from above, as we were with the extraordinary feats of the English Jack climbing the magical beanstalk to encounter the giant in the upper air. My sister Kezia added spice to our story-telling sessions by reading or retelling the romances of Marie Corelli and Bertha M. Clay to which she was addicted. She was an excellent dancer who taught us ballroom dancing but was an equally good gumbe dancer. She was considered rather wild and my parents sought to subdue her spirits by sending her to the Annie Walsh Memorial School boarding home for a period. When on moonlight nights we were allowed to stay downstairs late, she taught us dancing and organized games such as ‘dori o dori’, a singing game which involved passing a stone round children sitting in a circle with the one in the middle having to identify who had the stone. We had a strange ritual called ‘moonshine baby’ in which one child had to lie flat face upwards and be surrounded with broken crockery, stones and any small shiny object lying around; the child was then carefully lifted out, revealing 8

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Early Childhood under the British Flag the outline. What we did with this effigy I cannot now remember. When Kezia got married, she left quite a gap in the lives of children at No. 18. An even graver gap occurred with her untimely death at the age of thirty-two, an event which she insisted should take place on our mother’s bed rather than in hospital. She talked almost lightheartedly until the moment of her death. Our father surprised everyone by insisting on playing the organ at the funeral service while my cousin, the organist, nervously waited to take over at the expected collapse. My father however mastered his grief and played his daughter out. My younger sister Ethline (Lady), who was nearest to me in age, grew up with me and we became very close. She of course went to the Annie Walsh Memorial School, which was run by the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS). I went to the Grammar School, its male CMS counterpart, which had a different social atmosphere and an all-black staff. The Annie Walsh School still had a white Principal and a number of white teachers, who even had a separate common-room from their African colleagues. Ethline was very conscious of this and it influenced her attitude to these white teachers whom she found rather condescending. The school produced very good Cambridge School Certificates and she ended with a better one than I achieved. She however consciously decided against going up to Fourah Bay College as I had done. Like our elder sister, she was a good soprano and performed both on stage and on radio with considerable success. She frequently appeared in the Nada Smart productions of British plays and twice acted opposite me in the English classics, Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer and Sheridan’s The Rivals. She worked for a while as a civil servant in the Government Printing Department as I also had done, until she got married to Sylvester Jarrett, a Liberian, and entered with him a diplomatic career which took them to the UK, Japan and the US. My elder brother Michael (Doc) being eleven years older than me was rather distant and, for a time, was away at Fourah Bay College before being engaged in teaching and extra-curricular activities. He was also the family traveller visiting, for instance, our Gambian relations. He was later to study at Achimota College near Accra in the Gold Coast and much later at Loughborough College in England. 9

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The Freetown Bond He was something of a role model bringing news and ideas to us from Fourah Bay College and the outside world. We watched with admiration as he stood in front of the large oval mirror in our sitting room dressed in evening clothes for a dance at the Wilberforce Memorial Hall, making last minute adjustments to his bow tie and impatiently calling for my elder sister, soon to emerge in her evening gown. We always had books all over the house but he had a small collection of novels, detective stories, and light reading in which I lost myself, like Richmal Crompton’s William Brown stories, 1066 and All That, and Three Men in a Boat, following him to his own house after his marriage to continue the experience. He was always cut out to be a librarian and became the first African to head the Sierra Leone national collection. Both my parents were versatile and turned their hands to many activities. Until I was born, my mother had a small shop on Kissy Street where she sold fabrics and accessories. My nurse, Sister Janet, carried me on her back from Leah Street for breast feeding and until her death, teased me with jingles I made up on these journeys. My mother then gave up her shop and worked from home ordering out ladies’ hats, fancy goods and almost anything carried in the catalogues of Great Universal Stores in the UK – from quilts to at least one pianola. She added to her income by baking cakes on order, particularly around the festive seasons of Easter and Christmas and the occasional three-tiered wedding cake. For this, she designed and had built an oven of wood with a lining of tin insulated with sand. These activities augmented my father’s civil service salary. My father was equally versatile and, before he settled down as a customs officer in which job he served for thirty-five years, had worked as a surveyor. We still have his surveyor’s tape measure in its round leather case and with its brass winding handle, and I grew up with a street map of Freetown which bore his initials. Indeed he amused us with the story that what he had really wanted to be was a blacksmith but that his doctor advised that his heart could not stand up to the job. He lived to be eighty-seven! With his technical background he was able to supervise the building of his houses and save himself considerable expense. In addition to two houses on Leah Street he had a farm in King Tom. For a hobby, he kept canaries and love10

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Early Childhood under the British Flag birds in cages and pigeons in lofts, from which the latter were free to roam at will. After his retirement from the Customs, he continued working as an accountant with the Syrian firm of M. K. Bahsali until he was nearly eighty. My mother planted corn and groundnuts in the King Tom farm, the harvests from which not only supplemented the family income but also lubricated our family evenings at harvest time. She supervised parlour games, her particular favourite being Bible searching when we were to find verses within a particular chapter or section in our little Bibles; but we also played more secular parlour games such as the usual ‘Wapee’ with the standard deck of playing cards, more exotic ones like ‘Happy Families’, ‘Ludo’ and ‘Snakes and Ladders’ and, one which I never understood, ‘WHOT’ – curiously never ‘Draughts’. She took her Christmas duties very seriously, particularly the filling of Christmas stockings at dead of night on the eve of the feast, even donning her red dressing-gown for the purpose. We, the children, did not believe in Father Christmas but kept our agnostic feelings to ourselves for fear that any revelation of our true feelings would end the fiction and the accompanying gifts. Whispers actually went round as we exclaimed delighted surprise that one or other had actually caught sight of my mother as she went from stocking to stocking filling them. In any case, I had often been the bearer of the box containing the pre-selected gifts from my mother’s friend, Mrs Wood, who kept the all-purpose shop opposite Holy Trinity. Christmas toys anyway were mere tokens and, frail as they were, hardly survived New Year’s Day. The rest of the year, children had to make their own playthings, the more ingenious building carts with bamboo and other light materials with which they risked getting hurt along the rugged streets. They ‘telephoned’ each other through empty tomato cans connected with wire, ran hoops and organized impromptu sports. The girls played with dolls ranging from manufactured ones to cheap rag dolls ( pisis bebi ) for which they often made clothes themselves. One year, the boys in our house received fret-saw sets and there followed a very busy period when we made photo frames, bird cages, and various other objects until blades gave out, or the fashion passed away.

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Key: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

CMS Grammar Sch. – Regent Square Grandmother’s House – Liverpool St. St John Maroon Church St George’s Cathedral H.M. Customs Government Printing Dept.

1.3 Street map of Freetown

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Key: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

Eastern Police Stn. Holy Trinity Church – Kissy Rd. Annie Walsh Memorial School – Kissy Rd. Dandeson Jarrett House – Kissy Rd. Festus Jones House – Kissy Rd. EPW Jones House – Leah St. EPW Jones House – Leah St. Big Mama Jarrett House – Vinton St.

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The Freetown Bond * In the 1920s and ’30s, Holy Trinity Church was a parish in the essential sense of the word in that most of the parishioners lived within the sound of the church and school bells, and sent their children to the parish school. The children thus grew up under the influence of the church, attending Sunday services, Bible classes and Sunday School. I was born on 6 January and was baptized in the church on 1 March 1925 by the vicar, or as we called him then the pastor, Canon A. E. Williams. The first pastor that I remember, and remember very well, was Canon S. R. Kawaley, a Master of Arts as was the Senior Curate, the Rev. Olubi Pearce. The title Master of Arts, was not a strange one in the main parishes of the Anglican Church because the tradition in these earlier generations had been that bright boys were selected frequently from the Church schools or the surrounding villages, were given scholarships to the CMS Grammar School and thence to Fourah Bay College, where they graduated with Bachelor’s degrees; if they also obtained the Licentiate in Theology, they received the MA degree. The Rev. Canon S. R. Kawaley was a learned and kindly man whom I greatly admired. He it was who made me realize that the hymns were also poems. He read them with feeling and quite frequently ended his sermons by quoting at length from them. By contrast his successor Canon S. O. Nicol was a humourous extrovert and an excellent teacher who not only read the Bible to you but was capable of dramatizing it as well. His representation of God giving the Ten Commandments to the children of Israel through Moses held us spellbound: the thunder and lightning, the commanding voice, and the flight in terror of the people were accompanied with appropriate voice and gesture. Having boned up on the Church catechism word for word for our first confirmation class, we dutifully responded to the first question ‘What is your name?’ with the answer ‘N or M’. After the third or fourth candidate had given the same response he laughingly commented, ‘I see you are all children of the same parents’. Only then did he reveal that ‘N or M’ just stood for one’s particular name and thus linked each of us personally to the catechism. 14

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1.4 Holy Trinity Church, Kissy Road, Freetown. The Jones family homes were near this Anglican parish church. Eldred Jones sang in the choir from age six and his father played the organ 1.5 St John Maroon Church, Westmoreland Street, Freetown. Eldred Jones used often to go to the mid-Sunday morning service with his grandmother at this Methodist church in Maroon Town, where Jamaican freed slaves had settled

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The Freetown Bond In 1929 I enrolled in the parish school under the formidable headmistress, Miss Caroline Thomas, ‘Auntie Carrie’. Her influence on her pupils was permanent. She was very strict but she always rewarded good work; and work involved rehearsing for the singing competition as much as learning your multiplication tables. I do not remember much of what the other infant teachers taught me but Auntie Carrie’s lessons in Primer 3 are firmly etched in my mind. I had difficulty with a piece in our Reader about Jack Sprat, not the poem ‘Jack Sprat could eat no fat’ with which I had no problem, but the succeeding prose piece which dealt with Jack Sprat ‘wheeling’ his wife. It read ‘As Jack Sprat was wheeling his wife by the ditch/he tipped the cart over and in she did pitch./Said Jack Sprat, “I think she’ll drown” but his wife did reply/“I don’t think I shall, for the ditch is quite dry”.’ I could never get over that first sentence. ‘Wheeling’, ‘cart’ and ‘ditch’ were unfamiliar, and inversions like ‘in she did pitch’ and ‘said Jack Sprat’ did not help much either. Teacher Carrie soon made all clear and that passage was for ever ingrained in my memory. Even now, however, I firmly believe that that was a most inappropriate piece of prose to set before a six-year-old African child over eighty years ago! Teacher Carrie gave me my first Bible to take home, for which I brought back the price of one shilling. In the nursery class, we all had our green mats which we spread on the floor for our little sleep halfway through the morning and we often went to the church garden, presumably in some attempt to teach us something about flowers and plants – nature study! At the age of seven, I moved into the Standards at a time when the Normal Course at Fourah Bay College was injecting new life into primary school education with a crop of well-trained teachers. Among my teachers were Mr George Tregson-Roberts and Mr V. E. Eugene Williams, our headmaster. Both of these men were quite remarkable teachers and I shall always be grateful to them for their kindness, their devotion and dedication to the business of teaching. Mr Tregson-Roberts subscribed to The Teacher’s World from which he read to us the Frank Roscoe stories and encouraged us to read them for ourselves. He handed me The New Method English Dictionary, my first dictionary, for which I paid two shillings and six pence. I have 16

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Early Childhood under the British Flag been addicted to dictionaries ever since. He was fond of producing trick questions: ‘Which is heavier, a ton of iron or a ton of feathers?’ Most of us thought that it was a ton of iron; those who suspected a trick opted for a ton of feathers just as a venture, and of course both answers were wrong because a ton of feathers is equal in weight to a ton of iron, steel or whatever. In Standard Six, Mr Eugene Williams taught us short methods of calculation, multiplying by tens and dividing by twenty-five and that kind of thing. He would introduce such lessons with ‘speed and accuracy is our aim this morning’, at which a shudder went round the class. He was an equally good English teacher and I remember his dramatic presentation of that remarkable passage from Dickens’ Oliver Twist, ‘Oliver asks for more’. Learning then was a lot more rigorous than it is now. A great deal had to be committed to memory and sometimes without much of an introduction; now pupils don’t learn rules, they don’t learn lists of words, they don’t even commit passages to memory very much. Our staple was memory. When it came to grammar for instance, you were given a list of words. I still remember learning ‘in, into, through, past, beyond, on, upon, at, by, with, over, above,’ etc. Whenever you saw them they were to be recognized as prepositions. This you came to realize later on was only a rule of thumb, but my memory was trained for life. More significantly, I learnt bits like the opening lines of Milton’s Samson Agonistes, a play which I encountered in full much later: A little onward lend thy guiding hand To these dark steps, a little further on; For yonder bank hath choice of sun or shade, There I am wont to sit, when any chance Relieves me from my task of servile toil, Daily in the common prison else enjoined me . . .

Parish life for a child involved regular attendance at Bible class meetings and Sunday School. Children started about the age of five in the Friday afternoon class, and later graduated to Monday afternoon for boys and to Tuesday afternoon for girls. Then followed confirmation and graduation into the adult classes. The Rev.

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The Freetown Bond Norman Wilson, one of our curates, had studied in America and excited us young choristers with his high-Church practices. But although his speech and gestures in church were impressive, he found it very difficult to control us in the more informal setting of the Monday afternoon class in the school room, which on more than one occasion broke up in total disarray with the Rev. gentleman hitching up his cassock and chasing us all over the place as we made our exit through doors and windows, whichever was handiest. At the parish Sunday School, where my father was secretary and later superintendent, I taught the junior classes until I left for Fourah Bay College in 1944, when I was presented with a Bible inscribed: ‘From Holy Trinity Sunday School to Eldred Jones in grateful appreciation of his being “Not slothful in business serving the Lord” September 27, 1944 S. O. Nicol, Pastor’. I call this my first retirement. I was nineteen. That may also have been the end of days of unquestioning belief before the doubts began to set in and shake the foundations which had seemed so firm at confirmation. I was only six years old when one day the gramophone at home was playing the ‘Hallelujah chorus’ and my uncle Mr Festus Jones heard me singing so lustily along with the record that he thought it was time I joined the choir; but at six I was almost an infant and must have served the longest probation in the history of Holy Trinity Choir which was full of my relations, the Joneses and the Jarretts. My father was senior assistant organist to Mr Ned Moore and, when the latter died, was offered the position of organist which he declined as he recognized that his nephew Buller (A. E. B. Jarrett) whom he had taught was a more accomplished performer. He always said to us that there is nothing more rewarding than teaching somebody and finding that he is not only as good as you, but even better. This is a lesson in humility that has guided my relationship with those it has been my privilege to teach. Buller was an outstanding musician; he was one of those people who, had he been born in a society with better opportunities for the development of musical talent, could have made an international name for himself as a concert organist. The choirmaster Mr Sigis Benjamin ‘Pa’ was, to us little choir boys, ten feet tall. Thorough but kindly, I learnt a great deal under him about church music. I became 18

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Early Childhood under the British Flag leading soprano earning the princely sum of two shillings and six pence, having risen from six pence a month. I watched with the other boys (only trebles and altos were paid) on the last Thursday of the month to see whether Mr Festus Jones had the rolled-up pay list in his hand and whether his pockets were bulging with pennies, sixpences and shillings. * The ‘attic’ was a treasure trove. It came when our No. 18 Leah Street house was refurbished and a loft accessible by a ladder provided both a hiding place and a hunting ground. My mother’s surplus crockery, books, old clothing and other bric-a-brac made it a veritable Aladdin’s cave. There, one day, I came across the remains of a children’s song book. My father had spent the early twenties in Bonthe, Sherbro, as a Customs officer, where he continued his musical interests by playing the organ at St Matthew’s Anglican Church. As the book of songs revealed, he also organized children’s concerts. He retained this interest on his return to Freetown where, as secretary of the Holy Trinity Sunday School, he produced an annual cantata. I leafed through the newly discovered song book and was attracted to a comic song ‘Consequences’, the tale of the fate of Little Billy, the first stanza of which I still recall: Little Billy had twelve sisters Little Billy was so ill Doctor came and ordered brandy Just one glass for little Bill By mistake each of his sisters To obey the doctor hied And only little Billy knew Twelve brandies were in his inside Soon his groanlets filled the air And the consequences were Chorus Little Billy, very ill-y Doctor had to come back in a nick All his stuffing knocked to nothing And his little wives were widows in a tick. 19

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The Freetown Bond There followed a number of other unforeseen consequences of unfortunate first steps. I learnt this ballad and, with the help of Jacob Johnson, a brilliant school pianist, sang it at the annual school dinner in 1938. The annual school dinner and the preceding crosscountry run were a domestic matter. The high point of the school year however was Empire Day when, after the annual inter-school athletic sports, all the schools – boys, girls, primary and secondary – foregathered at the Brookfields Recreation Grounds to march past the Governor, all distant in his plume and feathers, and salute the flag – the Union Jack of course, and at that stage we seemed to accept without much question that the Empire we sang about was ours: ‘Flag of our Empire waving there above/ Greet we this day with joyful song’. Only later did we step back to take a more critical look at our colonial status under the influence of nationalists like Wallace Johnson, Sidney Boyle and Lamina Sankoh and the articles in Nnamdi Azikiwe’s West African Pilot – Tony Enahoro actually wrote an article with the title ‘Whose Empire Day?’, for which he was charged with sedition in the courts of Lagos. In school days, however, Empire Day was a magical day. We rose at dawn, assembled at our separate schools and marched to Brookfields dressed in our ceremonial uniforms where, to the strains of the band of the Royal West African Frontier Force, we marched past the pavilion filled with dignitaries, tipped our boaters to the Governor and took our place in the field to listen to his address and receive our prizes for the schools’ athletics competition. All round the field a large crowd of citizens clapped and cheered their favourite schools as they went past. For many years Mr M.O.J.T. Sackey who led the Holy Trinity School procession was the star of the show. Everybody waited for him to appear in the arena when he did not just march but danced his way round the field with the most exaggerated steps and body movements, thrilling the spectators to the point of near ecstasy. One year, however, the crowds wild with anticipation on seeing the Holy Trinity banner, were shocked to see Mr Sackey almost indifferent to the beat of the band, in a desultory stroll. The groans of disappointment were heartfelt. Empire Day was almost ruined for 20

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Early Childhood under the British Flag many. Why did Mr Sackey suddenly lose his enthusiasm for the Empire Day March Past? Had he become aware of the irony of the victims of the Empire celebrating the glory of their exploiters? Was he expressing doubts, latent but unexpressed among his compatriots? If he had such thoughts, Mr Sackey kept them to himself, but future events were to bring them out in his compatriots more openly but with far less acrimony than in other British colonies. My first Empire Day was ruined for a different reason. May was unreliable for good weather. Although it could produce brilliant sunshine, it could also deliver drenching showers and in this particular year the signs were not propitious. So the authorities declared that if the weather turned out to be bad, the siren would be sounded with three blasts which meant that the March Past was cancelled. Dressed in our immaculate white, we had only gone a few hundred yards when the dreaded siren announced that it was all over even before it started. Bedraggled and disconsolate we returned to Holy Trinity and dispersed to our various homes to be greeted with jeers of ‘DKG and back’, that shop having been the terminus of our Empire Day outing for that year. The thrill of Empire Day in 1938 was specially heightened for me in my first year at the Grammar School when I was selected to play the part of a mosquito in a pageant, before the assembled schools. My part was simple: decked with a pair of wings, I had to walk behind a senior, who represented the health of the country, while a commentator read an informative piece on malaria. At intervals, I was to steal up behind the principal character and sting him with my little wand at which, seemingly struck down with malaria, he bent forward and staggered to a stop. This simple action continued until we got to the other end of the field. It earned me the nickname ‘Mosquito’ but it seems to have given me a feeling for pageantry as I wrote a number of pageants in later years. *

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The Freetown Bond In 1957, under the inspiration of Lucien Genet the Mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone staged its first National Festival of the Arts, for which I devised and produced a historical pageant on the history of Sierra Leone, which represented certain events from the time the country was so named in 1462 by Pedro da Cintra, the Portuguese navigator, until modern times. There were six tableaux: Sierra Leone today; The Temne Conquest of the Mouth of the Sierra Leone River from the Capez and the Crowning of the first Bai Farama; The Visit of Francis Drake in 1579; The Slave Trade and the advent of Christianity and Islam; The ‘Freetown’ Settlement in 1787; and the British Colonial Administration and the spread of British influence throughout the country. Pupils from secondary schools, dressed in costumes of the various ages, carried poles with shields that identified them in their characters as visiting Europeans, indigenous chiefs, and various waves of settlers from England, Canada and the waters of the Atlantic. It was enacted by a hundred secondary school pupils from Freetown Secondary School for Girls, Methodist Girls, St Joseph’s Convent, Methodist Boys, Prince of Wales, St Edwards and Union College, Bunumbu, all of whom met for lively rehearsals on the grounds of Methodist Boys High School on Fort Street. My colleagues on the staff of Fourah Bay College made a formidable supporting team. John Cottrell designed the set and costumes, which were executed by Marjorie Jones, Eric Milton, and Eunice Kirkman. The Government Technical Institute and Posts and Telegraphs constructed the set, while John Akar of the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service read the commentary – a truly national effort. This pageant, the centre piece of the festival, was performed on 7 December 1957 at the Brookfields Recreation Grounds in the presence of the Governor. There was a slight interlude when, as I drove my little car into the grounds laden with the costumes and well before the scheduled start, a young police officer (white, as most of them still were) stopped me and told me I could not enter the grounds because the Governor was expected to witness the show. I replied with a smile that he would look a little silly if the Governor arrived and there was no pageant because he had turned away the producer with all the costumes. Looking a little foolish, he let me pass and all was well. 22

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Early Childhood under the British Flag When in 1977, Fourah Bay College celebrated its 150th anniversary, I wrote yet another pageant, Crowther’s People, to depict the whole history from its foundation under that name in 1827 and even earlier. It opened with the voice of its first student, Samuel Ajayi Crowther, a Yoruba rescued as a boy from a slave ship on the high seas and brought to Freetown: To me Fourah Bay meant freedom. Not just freedom from slavery, but a liberation into the world of ideas; into the thoughts of men, thoughts ranging over vast periods of years and over many lands, and then back to my people of Africa. To me, Fourah Bay meant light. My name is Crowther. Samuel Ajayi Crowther and I am in heaven. Yes heaven. Where else did you think retired Bishops went to? I am in heaven and I see all things very clearly – even more clearly than I did in the great light which Fourah Bay shed over me and over West Africa. Fourah Bay: that great dream – that great dream which has endured now over one hundred and fifty years but which then was a flickering light growing out of the ruins of the early Christian Institution. The Christian Institution, which had been founded at Leicester Village in 1816 and had moved to Regent Village had grown to a compliment of over 600 boys and girls and by 1827, had dwindled to only two pupils.

The ensuing tableaux were brilliantly directed by Dr Eustace Palmer; for instance, he set one of the myths of the college’s history in an Ascot-like scene with three English bishops’ wives who tittered as they repeated the alleged comment of a leading London newspaper on the suggestion that the University of Durham was to become affiliated to a college in far flung tropical Africa: ‘It will not be long before that University would become affiliated to the zoo!’ The affiliation did go through in spite of some adverse reactions, because of the dogged faith of the Church Missionary Society and the selfless and devoted service of missionaries and local teachers. Crowther’s People drew crowds to the Mary Kingsley Theatre and gave a rousing start to the Jubilee celebrations. *

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The Freetown Bond In the early 1970s, on a visit to the vicarage of Holy Trinity, I found them throwing out a trunk with old papers about to be burnt. I prodded and saw a thick note book which looked interesting and which turned out to be a Choir Committee Minute Book. An entry under 23 January 1917 with my father’s name caught my eye: ‘Mr E. P. W. Jones in the due execution of his official duties has been called away to Bonthe and thus he has temporarily severed connexion with us as Ass. Organist’. This precious book now rests in the archives of Fourah Bay College library. Bonthe was a very important port in Sierra Leone in the early years of the twentieth century, at which ships from England loaded piassava, rice and other agricultural produce for export to countries in the North. It therefore had a flourishing Customs department where my father worked. The Anglican Parish Church, St Matthew’s, had a healthy congregation of Freetown ‘experts’, an index of its status being that its pipe organ was a twin instrument to that of the old St George’s Cathedral in Freetown. My father played on that organ during his tenure in Bonthe and one of my brothers, Toot, was a star soprano, and according to my mother, particularly when she was in a teasing mood, the most brilliant of her children. He died suddenly in 1919 of black water fever, a form of malaria, three or four days after singing a solo in church. My father’s story, of how he died in his arms while the doctor was still trying to give him an injection, is one of the legends of my childhood. My mother’s account of her brilliant son was not entirely fiction as he was ready for the Grammar School at the age of ten. Bonthe was not paradise after all! Unlike my brother Toot, my sister’s son Kenneth fulfilled his precocity. At two, Kenneth declaimed the first few lines of Mark Antony’s ‘Friends Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears’ while Rachel, his sister, some eighteen months older who knew many more lines, smiled indulgently as he excused himself ‘and I am only two’. He sailed through school and university, went into banking and at thirtynine as J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. vice-president and oil futures trader, he achieved centre spread in the Washington Post of 21 March 2003 in the middle of an oil crisis, pictured surrounded by his anxious staff and his television monitors waiting for the exact moment in which to strike a deal. His icy coolness in the tense drama was vindi24

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Early Childhood under the British Flag cated when, as he had figured, the bottom dropped out of the market and he made his trade at the perfect moment. Alliances formed in Bonthe continued later in Freetown. The friendship between our family and that of Mr and Mrs Frank Campbell of Soldier Street (Sojat cng) was so strong that I was nearly a grown man before I realized that my ‘Aunty Cassan’ was not a blood sister of my mother’s. I have never visited Bonthe and am still passing up good opportunities to do so perhaps, because providence and I have a reluctance to see the present reality of my childhood fantasies. My parents’ adventures in Bonthe had ended and they had returned to Leah Street before I was born.

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2 Manhood’s Gleam in Boyish Eyes

I left the Holy Trinity School at the end of 1937 and started at the CMS Grammar School in January 1938. I believe there were entrance examinations to determine into what form boys were placed but I was admitted without an entrance examination, at least not a formal one. One day during the Christmas vacation, on the instructions of my father, I went to see the Principal of the Grammar School, the Rev. Mr P. Hycy Willson. I timidly climbed up what seemed to be an endless flight of stairs, past what I came to know later as the chapel, to the Principal’s living quarters. Mr Hycy Willson was well known, both at Fourah Bay College where he had also taught and at the Grammar School, as a psychologist whose rather unconventional approach to education did not always endear him to the old boys and others who placed, according to him, an inordinately high value on certificates. He received me very kindly and after a few minutes’ conversation sat me down in a large armchair by a window overlooking Kroo Bay with a view across to Prince of Wales School on the King Tom Peninsula. He left me sitting there and went down to his office. Returning after a while, he asked me what I had observed while I had been sitting alone and I described to him the movements of the fishermen in their elongated one-man ‘Kroo canoes’, which were quite abundant in those days and which flashed busily to and from their short fishing expeditions. We talked about the pedestrians who at that time of day walked slowly from King Jimmy or some other market, seamen returning from their sea trips with their folding beds and boxes on the heads of carriers, and people going into and out of the medical offices opposite. He seemed pleased with my account, took me down to his office, handed me a copy of the prospectus and the book list for Form One, telling me to report for school on the first 26

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Manhood’s Gleam in Boyish Eyes day of term in January. This may not have been the usual way of entering the school but it was certainly typical of Mr Hycy Willson’s unpredictable and unorthodox approach. The CMS Grammar School (now the Sierra Leone Grammar School) was the first boys’ secondary school not just in the country but in the whole West African region. It had sent out its old boys, some of them back home, others as trail blazers from Sierra Leone, to found schools and churches and to man important positions in government, commerce and the professions all over the West Coast of Africa. In 1938 we were conscious that we were entering a great tradition. The school was then housed in its original home at Regent Square, ‘the great and massive building’ of the school song, a site which it was forced to abandon during the course of the Second World War while I was still a pupil. It was something of a closed institution as most of the boys came from a predominantly Christian Anglican background, though there were some prominent Methodists; M.Y. Sanusi, one of the few Muslims, was one of the best cricketers in my time. The staff were all old boys of the school and graduates of Durham University through Fourah Bay College. The Principal proposed one year that a master would play the organ at the annual thanksgiving service, at which some old boys reacted angrily saying that there were several available and there was no need to ask one of the masters. He calmly reminded them that every master was also an old boy, a fact which seemed to have eluded them. The Principal, Rev. Mr Hycy Willson, was not only a learned man but also a very sensitive teacher and administrator. He was capable of stepping into any class which happened to be without a teacher and holding the attention of the boys in any subject from Latin to Bookkeeping. He always insisted that his aim was to educate his pupils and not merely to prepare them for certificates. At a time when entry into the junior civil service depended on the acquisition of the Cambridge Senior School Leaving Certificate, or the Junior Cambridge Certificate plus one Sierra Leone language, this was not a popular view. He actually stopped the entry of Grammar School boys for the Junior Cambridge examination on the grounds that Form Two was far too early to be sending boys up for a public examination. I believe that my generation was among the first boys to 27

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The Freetown Bond escape that hurdle. He also maintained that the Senior School Certificate syllabus was a one-year programme which was not to be touched as such before the Fourth Form. His attitude to language was one which I consider most progressive, but it was out of line with the prevailing practice which forbade the use of any language other than English in school. Mr Willson accepted that English was very important in our lives as the language in which we would have to earn our living and in which everyone should strive to be competent. But, he went on to add, that it was psychologically wrong to forbid children from speaking their mother tongue. So, although he had practice days when everyone was encouraged to speak English, at other times the language was not compulsory. Indeed, under the direction of Dr Victor King, we were encouraged to take an interest in Krio and as part of ‘Credit Work’ in Form One we were required to write out twenty-four Krio proverbs with their English equivalents; for this he introduced us to the phonetic alphabet, which I have found useful in my language studies ever since. We were also fortunate, although we did not quite realize it at the time, to have as part-time music master, Professor N. G. J. Ballanta, who sought to teach us things like ‘tetra chords – the Dorian tetra chord, the Phrygian tetra chord and the Ionian tetra chord’; but we were not so much interested in these technicalities. We just wanted to hear his wonderful touch on the piano. In 1961, on a lecture tour in the US, I met a famous black American tenor, Roland Hayes, who had studied with Professor Ballanta at the Boston Conservatory and who spoke with such reverence about him that I felt very proud to be a Sierra Leonean and to have known him. Mr Roland Hayes altered his concert programme that night to sing a special number, ‘An African Love Call’, which he said Professor Ballanta had composed when they were both students. We also had part-time tutors in Shorthand, Printing and Book-binding. Following on the aims of the founders, the School sought to give a broadly-based education to each pupil whether he attained the top form or not. Boys left school at every stage and generally were still able to make a decent career for themselves not only because of the learning they got from books but from that ‘manhood’s gleam in boyish eyes’ which the school aimed to give through cultural subjects such as 28

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Manhood’s Gleam in Boyish Eyes Music, Drawing, Debating, Drama and Sports. Principal Hycy Willson was always on the look out for opportunities to broaden our outlook on the world and often invited guests to speak to the assembled school, some of them of an unusual or even revolutionary kind. One of the more memorable of such speakers was a local self-made entrepreneur who manufactured porridge flour, starch and foofoo from cassava and cocoa and coffee from locally grown beans; he vigorously peddled his products all over the city calling out ‘Recognise, Realise, Patronise your own Local Enterprise’. This was Mr D. B. Curry who, because of his unorthodox ways, was something of a figure of fun in the community. Mr D. B. Curry was a master of his craft but spoke English with a total disregard for the rules of ordinary grammar. As he told us about the need to extract ‘hydrocyanic and prussic acids’ from the cassava, we rocked with laughter at the atrocity of his grammar. But he was not put out. He would interrupt our laughter with words like: ‘I am not here to teach you English. I am here to teach you Economics’. I have rendered this in acceptable English but more bizarre versions circulated among my peers. Another guest was a Nigerian gentleman who was returning home from America where he had studied, and who talked to us about life in America, which in those days was a very distant country. He must have told us many edifying things but the one thing that seems to have stayed in our minds was the American word for a sausage – a ‘hot dog’. To our amusement, he could not pronounce the word ‘sausages’, saying instead ‘saujases’. One old boy who spoke to us was the controversial Rev. E. N. Jones who adopted the name Lamina Sankoh. He held such highly controversial theological views that he had to resign from the Anglican Church. It was a bold decision on the part of the Principal to invite a man with such unorthodox views on all subjects – theological, political and social – to address the boys of a Church Missionary foundation. The phrase that bounced about in our memories was ‘irrational and immoral’. The way we dressed with jackets and ties, the things we believed in, our attitude to politics, were denounced in turn as being ‘irrational and immoral’. Emile Carr and I were sufficiently impressed with his views however to 29

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The Freetown Bond pay good money to him after we had left school, ostensibly for lessons in Economics, but mainly to hear him talk. We were, of course, regulars at his free open lectures at the Wilberforce Memorial Hall at which he spoke provocatively and wittily on political matters. Another old boy was Mr Dispenser Edmondson who had been a brilliant classical scholar at a time when the school taught Latin, two kinds of Greek, and Hebrew. He later worked for Cable and Wireless and was posted to various Portuguese-speaking parts of the west coast of Africa. He not only spoke Portuguese fluently but took an academic interest in the language. His talk to us was on the relationship between Latin and Portuguese. He recited from memory the opening lines of Virgil’s Aeneid: ‘Arma virunque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris/Italiam fato profugus Lavinaque venit/Litora.’ (‘I sing of arms and of the hero who first came from the shores of Troy, exiled by fate, to Italy and the Lavinian shore.’) He then went on to recite these same lines in Portuguese. I remember the relish with which the name ‘Taprobania’, which is the Portuguese word for ‘Troy’, rolled off his tongue. He went on to show how Portuguese words had been derived from the ancestral Latin and gave many examples but, even more interestingly, he told us that some Krio words also came from Portuguese. The word ‘na’ meaning ‘on’ or ‘in’ – ‘put am na tebul’ – was a Portuguese word with the same meaning. He also talked about ‘pikin’ meaning child. He then paused and asked us to promise not to laugh at the next example but at the mention of the impolite Krio borrowing for excrement, ‘ka-ka’, the school collapsed in shocked laughter. The Second World War which started in 1939 greatly influenced life in Sierra Leone since, being loyal members of the British Empire, we were very much drawn into it. Apart from ordinary members of the Sierra Leone army who were drafted as infantrymen for service even as far as the Far East, some educated young men volunteered for the Royal Air Force. Two of these were old boys of our school. Their farewell was a national occasion which fired even more enthusiasm for the war. My friend Emile Carr and myself, aged fifteen and fourteen, actually walked into the office of the Government Information Officer and volunteered for service in the Royal Air Force. When the bemused Englishman innocently 30

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Manhood’s Gleam in Boyish Eyes enquired whether our Principal knew of our intentions, we could not leave his office fast enough. Undeterred however, I volunteered for service as an Air Raid Precaution Warden and duly received an ARP arm band, a steel helmet, a black-out torch, and was given training in First Aid and dealing with incendiary bombs. I never had occasion to practise my craft in anger, though one or two fighter planes from the Vichy French Forces in Senegal gave us scares in broad daylight by flying low over the city. Our ambiguous relationship with England and the Empire – master/victim, patron/protégé, enemy/friend – was never very clear. At choir practice one day during the early part of the war, the organist introduced Haydn’s familiar ‘Austria’ as the tune to the hymn ‘Praise the Lord, ye heavens adore Him’, but the choirmaster stopped him saying, ‘I’m afraid we can’t have that’. It was the tune of the German national anthem, and we were at war with Germany! A few years after the war, however, our dependent colonial state became clear to us and the fight for independence from the imperial yoke, hitherto only tentative and unorganized, began in earnest. * In 1938, when I entered, the whole school was together in its original building on ‘Regent Square’, a name which reflected Freetown’s colonial connections with British royalty and parliamentary power. The name was reminiscent of George IV’s regency days and the surrounding streets which formed this square were Bathurst, Oxford and Wellington, with Waterloo, the scene of that general’s victory, logically next door. The building housed a boarding home, staff quarters, an assembly hall, a chapel, a library, the Principal’s residence, in addition to classroom space for two preparatory forms, two Forms One, two Forms Two, Form Three, Form Four and, for a short time, a class called The Remove. Out-buildings accommodated the printing press, carpenter’s shop, kitchens and the usual ablution and sanitary facilities euphemistically referred to as the upper yard. Even though numbers were not large – I doubt whether we were as many as two hundred – it still seems something of a wonder on reflection that all the activities of the school could 31

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The Freetown Bond have been carried on in such a restricted area. Quite apart from the academic programme, it is remarkable that the high spirits of two hundred lively boys could have been satisfied by the cramped playing space, though the school had a larger playing field across the bay in King Tom. A forecourt in the basement provided a small area for indoor games such as table tennis. The school day was equally compact, starting as far as I remember at 7.10 in the morning and finishing at 1.20 in the afternoon. There were two breaks, the ‘long’ break of twenty minutes and the ‘short’ of ten. This meant that physical activity in those short periods had to be highly concentrated both in terms of time and space as we were not allowed to go beyond the women who sold lunchtime snacks outside the Bathurst Street gate. For me this was particularly frustrating as my grandmother lived at Liverpool Street on the other side of the low wall of the house exactly facing the school gate, where there would be a tasty morsel awaiting me whenever I could manage to avoid the hawk-like gaze of the masters from their vantage point on the top floor of the school. That short stretch across the breadth of Bathurst Street assumed all the hazards of crossing the Atlantic in a small canoe and, on at least one occasion, it earned me the painful attentions of the Senior Tutor. All that could be managed in these short breaks were a few hot games of round table tennis – there was no time for singles – and a peculiar ball game which was played with either a tennis ball or the larger red rubber-ball commonly known by its price, ‘sixpence’. The rules were very simple. Someone bounced a ball in the middle of the yard with the cry ‘u jomp i day’ (whoever jumps, dies). The idea was to keep the ball in the air by volleying it back skywards every time it descended. For some reason jumping to meet the ball in the air was not permitted and if both feet left the ground they were summarily swept from under one, which gave dramatic meaning to the cry with which the game started. It was rough, it was tough, it was dangerous and often led to fights. Once a fight started all other activities ceased in the yard which was filled with a hissing sound, as though from the mouths of a hundred serpents, while other pupils massed to watch the contest. All this was enough to work up a good sweat in ten or fifteen minutes, after which there was a scramble for 32

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2.1 Pupils of the Sierra Leone Grammar School at Regent Square assembling for the procession to St George’s Cathedral for the centenary thanksgiving service, 1945

the single standpipe for a quick wash of hands, feet and faces before the resumption. Soon we were even deprived of these restricted in-house games facilities because after the beginning of the war, first the school yard, the basement and first floor of the main building were requisitioned from the school to be used as an internment camp. Mr Wallace Johnson and Mr Sidney Boyle, two fiery nationalists, were both held there for a while along with captured sailors and prisoners of war of various nationalities. The school then occupied the boarding home on the top floor, the Principal’s quarters, and gradually moved into places like the basement of Freetown Lodge, Oxford Street, and into Waterloo Street. Indeed by an interesting coincidence, part of my penultimate year was spent in the sitting room of the family house at Waterloo Street of the lady who later became my wife. There is no connection between these two circumstances. Half of the school then moved to the premises of the old CMS Technical School on the upper part of Rawdon Street. This was the situation 33

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The Freetown Bond when I left in 1942. Later, the whole school was re-united in the Bishop’s private cricket field on Fourah Bay Road in a series of long corrugated iron buildings on two sides of the perimeter of the field, which now houses Bishop Johnson Memorial School. This was where I rejoined the school as a teacher in 1947. * Between school and college I spent about a year in the Government Printing Department, which exposed me to life in the real world of work, to adult companionship and to the responsibility of managing money. I lived at home and paid neither rent, nor the full cost of my domestic needs, my parents having insisted on my opening a Post Office savings account, paying my church dues, giving a small sum to my aunt who had done my laundry while I was at the Grammar School, and a token to my mother when other things did not get in the way; all this on a third grade clerk’s monthly wage of three pounds fifteen shillings plus a cost of living bonus of ten shillings and nine pence. I watched football, went to dances at the Wilberforce Memorial Hall, bought books and paid for coaching in preparation for college by two of my ex-tutors, Mr Ned John and Mr J. A. Garber. Emile Carr and I enjoyed a peculiar pastime on Saturdays – when we were not watching football – of visiting cemeteries! We were familiar with the more famous tombs: three sisters burnt to death in a fire accident while their brother, a medical student in the UK, reportedly survived a similar near tragedy at the same time; a mausoleum where a widowed husband spent whole days and had his lunch brought to him; the statue of an old lady who sat high over her grave and had her head knocked off several times by boys who used it as a cockshy; the tombstone of the Dutchman, the first two words of whose inscription became a kind of password for a box of surplus stock or unwanted materials in our work place, ‘Der nagad jaskasen’. The Government Printing office, unlike other civil service establishments (apart from the hospitals) had women, employed mostly as book-binders and operators of what in 1943 was a novelty, an electric duplicating machine. The men still operated the old litho34

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Manhood’s Gleam in Boyish Eyes graph letter case of which now only the names, upper and lower case, survive in modern typography. When the first modern linotype (hot metal) machines were introduced, parties of school children were invited to see it at work, just as in the 1930s we were herded to see the first rice mill at Cline Town. I was one of a small clerical staff, equipped with only pens, ink and the occasional typewriter, who mingled with a much larger technical staff of proof readers, typesetters, letter pressmen, guillotine operators and above all, the women book-binders, sedately seated along two sides of their long table, brightly and smartly adorning the otherwise drab environment. The stationery store was the central procuring agency for the whole civil service, from which requisitions for everything from typewriters, typing paper, official minute papers, to various inks – purple, red, green and black, according to rank – were supplied to every office, from the Governor’s to the smallest Native Administration’s. The store also distributed the government Gazette, the annual Blue Book, and other government publications down to Tide Tables, all expertly printed and bound in the adjoining works. But the crown of the holdings for me, though not printed in Freetown, was the multi-volume Bannerman’s Birds of West Africa, which first stimulated my interest in birds. We, the junior clerks, led by Wilmot Smart, a brilliant touch typist, a church organist and band leader, risked our livelihoods by producing in our leisure moments a scrappy satirical paper with sketches and lampoons which touched on some of the most feared of our bosses. The Printos Depos even attracted the sneaking admiration of some of the more senior civil servants in the majestic secretariat office nearby, including Mr J. T. Roy-Macauley who greeted me with the soubriquet we gave to a towering and venerated figure ‘Sir Solomon Castle’. We bore charmed lives. This gap year 1943/44 brought me into contact with very seriousminded family men who managed their small salaries to bring up their children through school, and with others who never got their lives together and were constantly engaged in digging holes to cover even bigger holes. Some came to work in suits, others in near rags. One made extra money by acting as an agent for a tailoring firm in the UK and ordered out outfits for the Sunday wear of his fellow 35

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The Freetown Bond

2.2 Fourah Bay College original building, constructed 1845

workers. Another kept us supplied with periodicals from Picture Post down to Pitman’s Magazine which he ordered from the UK. Yet others were small money-lenders who thrived on their fellows’ improvidence. It was from this heady mix, not least the attractive lady book-binders, that I entered the virtual cloisters of Fourah Bay College at Mabang in October 1944. My gap year left permanent marks. Keeping files had become a habit and the strict accountability governing the sale of even the sixpenny Gazette – a receipt in triplicate, one for the customer, one for the file, and one left in the receipt book – had ingrained a financial discipline which influenced my control and expenditure of far greater sums in larger institutions, as I taught, wrote, edited and exercised authority in later years.

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3 In the Footsteps of Ajayi Crowther

My first year at Fourah Bay College 1944/45 was spent in Mabang, the historic building at Cline Town having been commandeered in support of the British war effort, as were the buildings of almost all the secondary schools. The College was still a small institution whose influence throughout West Africa and beyond was out of all proportion to its size. Only 787 students had signed the register before me since Samuel Ajayi Crowther in 1827; he was Yoruba and was to become the first African bishop in the Anglican Church. Fifteen freshmen in 1944 – Sierra Leoneans, Nigerians and Ghanaians – compared more than favourably with only three the previous year. The very existence of the college was threatened by the minority recommendations of the Elliott Commission report on Higher Education in West Africa, which the British Secretary of State for the Colonies accepted, and which recommended the closure of university work in Sierra Leone. Fourah Bay was saved only by the resolute resistance of the citizens to this outrage. The monastic institution – the few female students had withdrawn when the college had been transferred from Freetown to the spartan conditions of Mabang – had to struggle with the demands of the Durham University Bachelor’s Degrees without running water, electricity, telephone, shops, fresh food and other amenities of city life. The massive building had been the brainchild of a Freetown merchant, S. B. Abuke Thomas, whose combination of foresight and benefaction had impelled him, a Freetown gentleman, to leave a bequest of £70,000 to found an agricultural academy in the Protectorate. The Government’s almost simultaneous foundation of a similar training centre at Njala had doomed the private venture from the start. Its building however provided Fourah Bay with a temporary refuge in its hour of need. Every 37

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The Freetown Bond time we saw a live cow in the area, we celebrated because it meant fresh meat for a brief while – there was no refrigeration. The one link with Freetown was the single track railway train which trundled irregularly past a couple of times a day. In spite of all this, life in Mabang was surprisingly agreeable in the large building which accommodated chapel, library, lecture rooms, students’ common room and residential quarters for students, the Principal and one bachelor member of staff. Other lecturers lived in comfortable mud and thatched houses. Among my senior contemporaries in that first year to achieve distinction were: Daniel T. Decker, Vice-Principal, Sierra Leone Grammar School and Warden of Students, Fourah Bay College; Michael A. Ajasin, Governor of Ondo State in Nigeria; Emmanuel O. Alayande, Archdeacon of Ibadan and David Carney, lecturer Fourah Bay College and executive officer of the United Nations. Other contemporaries were: Solomon Pratt, ILO Geneva and Sierra Leone Cabinet Minister; S. A. Adams, Principal, Milton Margai Teachers’ College; Adeyinka Olumide, Canon of Lagos Cathedral; Godfrey E. A. Lardner, Permanent Secretary, Nigeria and UNECA Addis Ababa, and Tejumade Odebiyi, Nigerian Senator. Students worked for the degrees of BA General and B.Com. Economics, which had been introduced that year (1944) by Robert Gardner, a Cambridge graduate, who taught alone the whole syllabus for the B.Com. Later on Mount Aureol, N. A. Cox-George was to play a similar heroic role in Economics when in 1946 he took over as head of the department with Solomon Pratt, Godfrey Lardner and I among his final year students. The tension of academic work was relieved by football, when the long grass had been manually chopped down to reasonable levels, some desultory cricket, and tennis on a black anthill surfaced court tenderly supervised by Rev. Harry Sawyerr, himself an enthusiastic player of both the court and table versions of the game. Harry Sawyerr on the sports field was only one aspect of that extraordinary polymath whose influence in Fourah Bay College spanned over half a century. Students engaged in various forms of social service to the communities around. The ministerial students did teaching and evangelical work and I used to walk the four miles along the railway track to Masanki prison once 38

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In the Footsteps of Ajayi Crowther a week to teach prisoners, though what I taught them I now cannot remember. Both the walk and the unusual social contact however were quite stimulating. We also made sorties to neighbouring towns like Rotifunk and Moyamba for games and other social activities. Even in the isolation of Mabang, as later in Mount Aureol, on Friday night (Union night) we wore black ties and gowns for a special dinner followed by a debate, a special lecture or light entertainment. On Mount Aureol, as in the pre-Mabang Fourah Bay, academic gowns were compulsory at lectures, chapel and other formal occasions. The very structured college day ran from morning Chapel to the last service, Compline at 10 p.m. My first Principal, the Rev. E. A. H. Roberts, an Oxonian, greeted us at our first Sunday morning Chapel with a sermon based on the text ‘Ye are come to Mount Zion’ in which he emphasized what a great tradition we were entering. Whether intentionally or not, he made a slighting comparison with Mount Aureol, though whether he had had any inkling of our eventual move to that location is doubtful. But it was to the old military barracks and hospital in Mount Aureol that we moved in October 1945. I was one of two or three students who stayed behind under the leadership of David Carney to eat up the remaining food stocks of the college and pack up its few belongings for transportation to Freetown. It did not take long! We had said goodbye to the well water, kerosene lamps and rural simplicity of Mabang for the sophistications of cosmopolitan life. That first year on Mount Aureol saw an interesting interruption in my pursuit of the second year of the general Arts programme. Mr Hugh Thomas, who had taught me English at Mabang, thought that I should not pursue the general course but read for the preliminary English honours programme with a view to reading for the honours degree. Durham University had only allowed Fourah Bay students to read for the general degree and so special permission had to be sought from the parent university. I was excited and embarked with Mr Thomas on Chaucer and Shakespearean tragedy while we waited for Durham’s reply by the slow method of sea mail. We were well into the term when Durham’s reply came refusing permission and I had to hurry back to pick up my three other subjects and the 39

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The Freetown Bond

3.1 Mabang Agricultural Academy – exile home of Fourah Bay College 1943–45

general English course. It is not clear to me what would have happened had I continued with and passed the preliminary honours examination. Would I have been forced to go to Durham as teaching would not have been available at Fourah Bay for the full honours programme? Where would the funds have come from? Two years later however, I graduated with the BA General. Three years were to pass before I was to read for an honours degree in English, this time at Oxford. Much later, Fourah Bay College students in a similar position were taken out of the General degree programme and given scholarships to the parent university to read for honours degrees there. George Coleridge-Taylor, one of these students, successfully read Philosophy, becoming in the process president of the Durham University Union Society, the first non-Englishman to hold that position, winning the Robson Shield as the best debater. He returned to a distinguished career in his country’s civil and diplomatic service, always maintaining the effortless elegance with which he spoke and wrote. Similarly, Cyril Foray, after reading History under the same programme, taught at Fourah Bay, later becoming its Principal. He also served as a cabinet minister and High Commissioner in 40

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In the Footsteps of Ajayi Crowther London. Yet another student, Jock Sawyer, went on to take a degree in Zoology, later becoming professional head of the Fisheries Department in Sierra Leone. A decade later, after I had returned to join the staff, Durham allowed the college to teach and present students for its honours degrees. Mount Aureol saw the return of women undergraduates, their numbers being boosted by the amalgamation of the Women’s Teacher Training College with Fourah Bay. This in turn led to a number of college romances which later blossomed into marriages, including mine. Some Sierra Leonean ladies went with husbands to new homes in Nigeria and Ghana. A few non-Sierra Leoneans stayed on permanently in the country – Joseph Morkeh-Yamson, Ministry of Information, Jonathan Adenuga, photographer and business man, and James E. Mahoney, barrister and Attorney General, to name just three. Clubs and societies flourished in the fresh co-educational community. The dance club which had been formed in the unlikely all-male student environment of Mabang by a Ghanaian, Kweku Abaka Boison, now took on a more congenial ambience. This club took itself very seriously with regular instructional classes in ballroom dancing and formal end-of-year balls for which men and women had to wear evening dress. The Tea club had been adventitiously formed in Mabang when steaming buckets of tea had been hastily abandoned because the irregular goods train had unexpectedly stopped outside the college to take some visitors back to Freetown before they had had the planned tea party. The students who consumed the abandoned tea, formed themselves into a club which later found new life on Mount Aureol. Its motto was summarised in three words, ‘tea-ing and clubbing’. Various records in the consumption of cups of tea were set and broken during its sessions. The Glee club under its famed conductor, Ben Okagbue (white tie and tails), was similarly transported to Mount Aureol now enriched with female voices. The Areopagus was the first of several fraternities, six out of whose original eight members became distinguished lawyers. Oleander sorority similarly led the foundation of women’s societies. From time to time, in addition to debates and special lectures on Union nights, there were variety concerts featuring talented students. 41

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The Freetown Bond W. E. Byron-Pratt, who later became a Methodist minister, was a one-man entertainer who also led the ministerial students in a variety of comic songs, memorable among which was ‘When father papers the Parlour’. In his chorus line, were such later venerable figures as Michael Keili, Bishop of Bo and S. D. Williams, Archdeacon of the Anglican Diocese of Sierra Leone. Ali Ganda, an extremely talented song writer and comedian, honed his talents on this same stage and later earned countrywide fame with his calypsos and other work in the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service. Lois Thompson, later a renowned teacher and founder of a nursery school in Gloucester village, was a popular recitalist of comic verse with her famous party piece, ‘Woman’. Joseph Owusu-Ansah, one of the 1945 crop of Ghanaians who almost all became either ambassadors or cabinet ministers under Nkrumah, regaled one such evening with a recital of proverbs in twenty-two languages ranging from Ancient Greek to Krio, with translations. The Rev. F. M. Snelgrove who acted as the first Principal on Mount Aureol, was a polished after-dinner speaker whose cracks, delivered with his usual dead-pan expression, remained long in student memories. To the usual complaint by the students about the quality of food, he promised on one occasion to spend part of the long vacation studying the peculiar anatomy of the Sierra Leone fish, ‘which seems to have a head, a tail but no middle’. Referring to a group of young ladies who had no connection with the college but had been housed in a large building on the outskirts of the campus, he announced for the benefit of male students, that these ladies were under the control of the government education department and that permission to visit them should be obtained from the lady education officer ‘who will not grant it’. Another acting Principal was the renowned Bishop T. S. Johnson, an old student of the College who was a stickler for university discipline and decorum. He introduced a system of ‘collections’ by which every university student appeared before the teaching staff at the end of term to have his or her work reviewed. I was to encounter this institution again in Oxford. This strict disciplinarian was visibly shocked when the son of a Nigerian canon used the opportunity of grace before lunch to ‘thank God for this unpalatable food’, but asking Him ‘to 42

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In the Footsteps of Ajayi Crowther strengthen our digestive organs to cope with it’. He and his chairman barely escaped expulsion. The Rev. F. R. Hilliard joined the college from Ely Cathedral where he had been precentor and raised the chapel choir to a high level of performance. An outstanding alto in that choir was F. O. Segun who later became Bishop of Northern Nigeria and later of Lagos. The colourful Rev. Solomon Caulker enlivened college services with his eloquent sermons spiced with anecdotes of American college life. I believe it is to him that we owe the introduction of the word ‘campus’ into the vocabulary of the College. Arthur Porter, later Vice-Chancellor, the lone bachelor lecturer of Mabang, left for Cambridge to read History at the end of the 1946 academic year; he returned in 1952 to the college and higher achievements. A remarkable pair, Elizabeth Hirst and Lindis Dolphin, who shared a cabin on the boat from England when coming out for the first time, and who continued to share accommodation in the College for several years, made a profound contribution to the life and work of the college and the Sierra Leone community. Miss Dolphin taught Classics while Miss Hirst headed the Teacher Training Department and almost single-handedly started the course for the postgraduate Diploma in Education of Durham University with William Conton, a History lecturer, and myself as her first students. The Mount Aureol campus during those years was heavily wooded with a large number of mango trees which propagated themselves naturally over the years to the delight of students. It also harboured some wildlife including a population of snakes. In later years, when I was a hall warden, one of my students reported that he had encountered a large snake on his way to his room (all snakes are large). I consoled him with the assurance that snakes never attacked human beings unless they were first provoked. He was only momentarily impressed however, for he soon countered ‘But what if the snake misunderstands my intentions?’ To this I could find no adequate response. When our daughter Esse was about five years old, we returned from town to be greeted by her excited narration of a large animal having been chased by dogs through our compound and down into the college. She may only have exaggerated the height of the animal for we later confirmed that a deer – 43

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The Freetown Bond possibly the last of its clan – seems to have been worried out of a trap by dogs and had indeed been chased to its death in the middle of the campus. In the semi-urban housing development of Kortright and on the road to Leicester Village, we often picked out the dazzled eyes of unidentified small animals in our car headlights. The most spectacular encounter was that of the head of the Department of Zoology, Mr Phipps, with a small mountain crocodile stranded in a drain. He had left a party at our house, when he suddenly returned with the story that he had seen this animal. To our incredulous reaction, he exhibited the tip of his walking stick which did show teeth marks. We followed him to the scene and there was this creature obviously disorientated. It was captured and remained a guest in the Zoology laboratory until it was presented to a zoo in Germany. Mountain crocodiles are, indeed, a known species of small size which inhabit mountain streams of which there was one on Kortright. Only a few of the old military buildings now remain, all the staff houses, hostels, faculty buildings, lecture halls and indeed the whole of the Kortright development except the historic Kortright House itself, coming after my student days. As at Mabang, the College encouraged students to worship with the local community once a month, and from Mount Aureol we adopted Bishop Elwin at the foot of the hill. On our first Sunday there, without notice, an English lay-preacher who had apparently been used to saying a few casual words to the familiar congregation at sermon time, was completely put out by this band of eager college undergraduates in their academic gowns looking up to him expectantly for inspiration. He was obviously not ready for this and after stumbling confusedly for a few moments, leaned over the pulpit and asked if someone could kindly hand him a copy of The Book of Common Prayer, from which he found something around which to collect his thoughts. We were greatly amused but I think he took his congregation more seriously thereafter. We belong to what Harry Sawyerr frequently referred to as ‘the Durham breed’; we struggled with the rigours of the Durham degree programme in adverse circumstances but with the help of devoted and hardworking teachers, achieving some remarkable results. Communication between Mount Aureol and Durham being 44

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In the Footsteps of Ajayi Crowther slow by ship, even news of syllabus changes took some time to arrive and sometimes not at all. Joseph Owusu-Ansah, who later read ‘Greats’ at Oxford, went into his final examination in June 1949 and found that the set text for his Latin paper had been changed. He calmly pointed this out to the equally surprised invigilator but went on to do his translations ‘unseen’. He obtained a first division pass which itself was a surprise because the General degree was classified for the first time only that year, also without prior notice to Fourah Bay. He later became one of Nkrumah’s ambassadors. Many such graduates of high quality went from Fourah Bay College to all parts of West Africa and beyond, became leaders in various spheres of life and led in the march to independence from colonial rule. Elizabeth Hirst, my teacher, friend and later ‘anonymous’ benefactor, invited me to join her postgraduate Diploma in Education course which she was launching in the 1948/49 academic year. As it turned out, there were only two of us, Willie Conton and myself – another liberating experience. We were let loose on the Durham syllabus with minimum of tuition but with the obligation to read an essay fortnightly to a coffee party of friendly staff who cared to come. One element of the course ‘Health of the School Child’ left a permanent impression on me. It was taught by Dr Egerton, a lady missionary doctor, whose treatment of physiology and the importance of exercise on the human body converted me to regular exercise, which I have practised ever since. The study of psychology has also guided me in a long career of dealing with personalities of all kinds. I liked the freedom and developed a thirst for venturing out on my own to follow any subject that caught my fancy. Krio, the lingua franca of Sierra Leone, the subject of my dissertation, was another piece of my tether to the country. I have always been content to live and work in Sierra Leone. A reasonably happy childhood, an easy transition from school and college to work, further study, more work, travel, all was undertaken with Freetown as a tethering post. I was always attached. After our undergraduate years at Fourah Bay College, my two best friends went to Nigeria – ‘Yinka Olumide returned home, and Godfrey Lardner made a break with Sierra Leone to go to a receptive environment, where his father had worked. I had no tempta45

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The Freetown Bond tion to follow though in the 1940s and 50s, that country seemed still hospitable to qualified Sierra Leoneans. I took the easy road, to a welcoming old school and had a very happy time teaching and playing sport with pupils some of whom were quite close to me in age. Prince of Wales School, where I did my teaching practice among junior boys who still quote to me Latin limericks and English verses which we composed together, was equally happy but I declined an invitation to stay on there. I preferred my old school from which after another year Oxford, by a series of happy coincidences, beckoned – again, a natural falling together of various strands to strengthen the tether not sever it. Not that there were not temptations to strain at the rope and break it. After my first degree, I had applied for a Sierra Leone Government scholarship to study for an honours degree abroad. My preference for Oxford may have irritated the panel of interviewers and I was offered instead a scholarship for the one-year postgraduate Diploma in Education at Fourah Bay, my only ever government scholarship grant. I made the best of it and fulfilled my obligation by teaching for a year afterwards, when a series of fortunate events made Oxford once again a possibility. I applied once again to the education authorities, this time not for a scholarship – I could now have support from my generous father and a soft loan – but for a sponsorship, no more than a friendly word from the local education authorities to the British Council in London which met new students and sought to make their first days in the UK comfortable, and to the Colonial Office which would offer some protection if it was needed. I was refused, but as it happened, the British Council met me anyway. Mr Fenton, a kindly British Colonial Officer who had served in Sierra Leone and who was now with the Colonial Office in London, was quietly outraged at the attitude of his Freetown colleagues and paid me a friendly visit in Oxford. When he was apparently questioned as to how a student from Sierra Leone had come to be admitted to Oxford without government sponsorship, he reportedly replied that he had thought it his duty to assist students if he could, to get into universities and not to obstruct them when they had got in on their own. Years later, when I was almost at the end of my principalship 46

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In the Footsteps of Ajayi Crowther at Fourah Bay College, someone sent me anonymously a copy of the notes of my 1950 interview for sponsorship. I reproduce it as an illustration of the blinkered attitude of some colonial government committees, which had the conduct of public affairs in those times, even when they had no avowed intention to be vicious: Mr E. D. Jones: Aged 25 years. Educated at the CMS Grammar School and Fourah Bay College. Holder of the Cambridge School Certificate, BA Degree and the Diploma in Education of the University of Durham. Desires to pursue an Honours Degree in English Language and Literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. The question whether a candidate should be sponsored by the Committee to pursue what in this case was considered a ‘fancy’ degree was raised. That member pointed out that Mr Jones already had a good General Degree and gained a First Class Pass in his Diploma in Education examination and in view of the dearth of teachers, he did not think the Committee would be justified in sponsoring such a candidate to pursue a course which would mean his absence from the Colony for at least three years. The Committee was unable to agree that sponsorship should be denied merely on those grounds. When he was interviewed, Mr Jones told the meeting that although he felt he was fully qualified for his present job he had doubts whether Education Department would regard his qualifications as the best required in one who wished to make teaching his life profession. Regarding funds for financing his course, he produced a letter from Lloyds Bank which indicated that Mr Jones had successfully negotiated an interest free loan of £250/00 per annum for three years with one of the Bank’s clients who had made £750/00 available to him. The condition attaching to the loan was that it should be repaid by installments within ten years of completion of his studies and on the understanding that he should return to Sierra Leone to ‘help in the cause of education’. The candidate agreed that it was impossible for a student to live on £250/00 per annum in Oxford, and said that his father would be willing to provide the differences required. He had already been accepted by Corpus Christi College. His object in applying for sponsorship by the Committee, therefore, was to enable him to get Colonial Office backing. The Committee gained the impression that Mr Jones’s desire to obtain an Honours Degree was to qualify for a lectureship at Fourah Bay College. Members were very favourably impressed by the keenness and personality of the candidate but felt themselves unable to recommend that his candidature be

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The Freetown Bond sponsored as it was not thought that a student should start off with a debt of £750/00, which might tend to weigh on his mind and had a deterrent effect on his studies and his work after completion of the course.

History offers the best evaluation of the worth of this committee’s judgement, but on such verdicts the hopes of others have been crushed. My loan was repaid within five years of my return to Sierra Leone, to which I have largely devoted my energies for the rest of my working life. Interestingly, the loan scheme by which I received my Oxford education is not dissimilar from that which is operated by some of the most developed countries today.

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4 The Gleaming Spires of Oxford

In Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, Charles Ryder’s cousin advises his young relation against taking rooms in the quad of his college. My rooms in my second year in Corpus Christi College were in the Pelican Quad, within a few paces of the hall, chapel and junior common room but, unlike Ryder’s cousin, I never felt either besieged or misused by other undergraduates always popping in and out of my rooms, depositing their gowns after chapel and otherwise disturbing my peace. Friends did after dinner in hall occasionally drop in for coffee as I did on others in this small college where lifelong friendships could easily be formed. Over the years half a dozen of my college friends were to turn up in Freetown, some with their wives, mainly as a result of our meeting at Corpus. Time was to reveal to me and evidently to them, how we had influenced each other. Conversation started in hall hardened into more serious discussions making deeply etched impressions. One of my friends, Frank Oakley, later President of Williams College, Massachusetts, presenting me half a century after our first meeting for an honorary degree, wrote, ‘As an undergraduate at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, during the twilight years of European rule in Africa, you nudged your fellow students out of their metropolitan provincialism by a winning combination of patience, and the gift of lasting friendship’. Another friend from southern Africa confessed to me that I was the first black person with whom he had shaken hands and talked on equal terms. For such a small college, the junior members of Corpus in the early 1950s were drawn from a wide range of countries, and this mixture led to a rich collegiate life. Several of the British undergraduates had undertaken national service and most of the overseas ones had taken their first degrees in their home countries before coming up. The matriculants of 1950 had been 49

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4.1 Pelican Quad, Corpus Christi College, Oxford 2002

admitted to Corpus by Sir Richard Livingstone who, however, had retired before we came up. He kept in touch by inviting undergraduates to tea, at which he served his own honey. Bowls in the Fellows’ garden on summer evenings, play readings and dramatic performances, sing-song sessions in rooms, coffee evenings with the chaplain, choir practices, music ensembles in addition to the usual college sports, brought this small community into constant contact with each other, though there were, of course, sets of friends. We cycled on summer afternoons to Blenheim, to tea in Burford, Banbury and villages in the Cotswolds and spent others floating in punts on the river. The staples of undergraduate social life were the afternoon teas – integral to which were toasted crumpets (among one’s earliest purchases was the six-penny toasting fork from Woolworth’s) – and the after-dinner coffee before the late evening study-session began. There were other parties of varying shades of grandeur and expense, the standard one being the wineand-cheese party. For a short while there was an attempt to popu50

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The Gleaming Spires of Oxford larize mead, and wine shops offered cheap bottles of the drink as an alternative to wine. I recall the grand finale in 1953 when a group of undergraduates including John Zochonis, Martin Kenyon and Nick Thomas, organized a champagne garden party on one of those brilliant mid-summer afternoons which memory has made even more glorious. Eights Week was one of the highlights of the academic year and Corpus men gathered on their barge to cheer the boats as they raced past. The Jesus College barge was moored next to ours and I remember a particular afternoon when that barge glittered with a bevy of summer-frocked ladies, and a fellow undergraduate looked with admiration tinged with envy across and, tipping his boater, exclaimed: ‘Stand up, stand up, for Jesus.’ I had my first introduction to Oxford by a Ghanaian, Alex Quaison-Sackey, who had entered Exeter College the year before. We met in London and had travelled on the same coach at the start of my first term. He pointed with evident satisfaction to the top of the Tower of Magdalen College where, after an evening of revels at the end of the previous term, some intrepid undergraduate had climbed at the peril of his life to place an upturned chamber pot as a sign of victory. He showed me more elevating sights in due course and we often dined as each other’s guest in our respective colleges. He was a keen table tennis player, which sport I also much enjoyed, becoming captain of my college team. The serious business of learning was mitigated by Oxford’s own traditions, customs and practices. Breaches of convention at dinner earned a ‘sconce’, which required the offender to drink the contents of a two-pint sconce pot in beer in one continuous effort of swallowing. If he paused, he had to pass the sconce pot round the table and pay the cost of the beer. If however he could swallow the contents without pausing, then whoever had imposed the ‘sconce’ paid. A sporting victim merely took a sip and passed the sconce pot round the table. He could however appeal against the imposition to the head of the Fellows table in Latin. I saw that done once successfully. I offered Latin in my English prelims but never attempted a hastily drafted appeal in that language during dinner. But Oxford was primarily for study, hard study. Oxford education was based on the tutorial system, each student 51

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The Freetown Bond being assigned to a tutor to whom he read an essay once a week. His tutor also arranged other tutors for special parts of the course. For Anglo-Saxon (Old English), my tutor, F. W. Bateson (‘Freddy’ among his students) sent Alan Davies and myself to Mervyn Atkins for the rudiments and to another Christ Church don, Mr Horgan, for Philology. Freddy, once when he went into hospital, sent us to Mr J. B. Leishman at St John’s, a delightful man with an astonishing memory who could recite reams of Chaucer, for example, until he was stopped. He always wore a bow tie. The Oxford English syllabus in those days was sometimes criticized with some justification as having three options, namely, ‘too much Anglo-Saxon, much too much Anglo-Saxon and nothing but Anglo-Saxon!’ In the nine papers of the finals or the ‘schools’, there was very little after the early nineteenth century. Freddy himself did not like the syllabus and indeed campaigned against it. He sent a questionnaire to his past pupils asking for our opinions on the scope of the syllabus to bolster his representations which, with the views of others, led to a change and the inclusion of later periods of English. Freddy, in sympathy with my views, indulged me by listening to my essays on, for example, the novels of E. M. Forster and the plays of Ibsen, which were not part of the basic syllabus. This illustrates both his humanity and his attitude to education in its wider sense, rather than to strict conformity with rigid structures. His attitude was not universally welcomed even among his pupils, some of whom were quite alarmed at his relaxed approach and its possible effect on their class in the final examinations. A pupil from another college who was also assigned to him complained, that at the end of reading his essay, he did not feel that the ‘heavens opened’. However it was one of Freddy’s comments at the end of my essay on Othello that later led to my research into the treatment of black characters in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama and my writing of Othello’s Countrymen and The Elizabethan Image of Africa. He forgave me for missing his optional classes in Bibliography on Saturday mornings and still invited me to play tennis on his neighbour’s court in Brill. Of the numerous clubs and societies outside the college for which one was canvassed, I joined the renowned Oxford Union and spoke twice in debates, becoming eventually a life member. More 52

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The Gleaming Spires of Oxford predictably, I joined the West African Students Club, of which I became secretary. In addition to our regular talks, debates and social gatherings, we made journeys to Cambridge to debate with our contemporaries there. On one such occasion, I took the unpopular side in a debate on the hot topic of the proposed East African Federation. On the opposite side, which easily won, was Alex Kwapong, who became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana at Legon and later of the United Nations University. He was then a scholar at King’s and a notable classicist. In our Oxford club were fellows like Alex Quaison-Sackey, Richard Akwei, John Sagoe, Edward Quist-Arcton and Austin Amisah, to whom it was my pleasure decades later to present the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa for his book Criminal Law in Ghana. Harry Maurice Jones, a fellow Sierra Leonean, spent the 1950 academic year at Queen’s College, during which we both visited our old tutor in the Grammar School, Mr A. P. Davies, who was spending the year as a visiting lecturer at Culham College near Oxford. The tutorial system threw the student on his or her own resources with guidance from the tutor. One read as widely as interests led and, quite often, well outside the immediate subject. Lectures were not compulsory. One’s only obligation being to the tutor with whose guidance (or without it) one could sit figuratively at the feet of some of the great names of the age within and outside one’s own particular field. J. R. R. Tolkien lectured on the older forms of the language, Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, but became even more famous universally for The Hobbit and for his trilogy The Lord of the Rings on a whole invented ancient nation, for whom he devised a completely new language. C. S. Lewis’s Prolegomena to Renaissance Literature fascinated us with his references to the Spanish philosopher Vives, but he also had an even wider reputation for his famous mystical books such as The Screwtape Letters and his childrens’ books The Chronicles of Narnia. Dame Helen Gardner, on the metaphysical poets, and Lord David Cecil also attracted crowds. We were drawn to other lecturers outside our immediate field of study if there was a controversial attraction, like the debate between the historians A. J. P. Taylor and his antagonist, Hugh Trevor-Roper. A speech in the Oxford Union led to a brief association with a 53

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The Freetown Bond Balliol man with whom I read slices of British Colonial History. This had nothing to do with the English ‘schools’. As one browsed freely in Blackwells, Oxford’s leading bookshop, a book might lead down an alleyway into a new interest. Much of my working time was, however, spent in the Radcliffe Camera, a reading room for Law, History and English texts. My first visit to this library gave me a rude introduction to the English climate. Two hours of reading in artificial light in the comfort of the Camera had turned the afternoon into night and I emerged into a totally different landscape. Where had the afternoon gone to leave me without a compass in this academic wilderness? In the carrels of my own college library, I spent many hours with the volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary following the journeys of individual words down the meanderings of English history. It was this freedom (and still is, I hope) that helped me to make an Oxford education such a liberating experience. Some students in the University did not seem much concerned with their final examinations once they had secured their places by passing their prelims or moderations, often because, by then, they had a clear view and a path to what they wanted to do later. Some of those whom I met in the Union and the OUDS, the dramatic society, went on to make great careers in politics and the theatre. Tony Richardson, for instance, with whose production of The Duchess of Malfi we toured France in 1951 after a run at the Oxford Playhouse, later had a brilliant career with films like Tom Jones and The Charge of the Light Brigade. There was a bustle backstage one night when the news spread that Sir Barry Jackson, the director of the Birmingham Repertory was in the house. I believe Tony got his first job with him as a result. My college too had its stars of the theatre: David Thompson who with a miniature copy of the text of Richard the Third stormed the Playhouse when his lead, John Wood, lost his voice during the run of that play. Alistair Macintosh’s Murder in the Cathedral, Voyzek and Twelfth Night were among the outstanding productions of the time. An unlucky turn of events interrupted what seemed bound to be a brilliant professional theatre career but instead Alistair realized his varied talents in printing and publishing. Some of his theatre programmes are works of art in their own right. My one opera appearance (it was little more) was in Berlioz’s The 54

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The Gleaming Spires of Oxford Trojans where, among other things, I carried Dido’s umbrella for Arda Mandikian. One footnote to that production was that many years later, at home in Freetown, I was singing with Logie Wright’s choir The Cecilians, when I noticed something familiar in the turn of the conductor’s feet. I looked up to his face with renewed interest and there was Royd Barker who had been the assistant conductor to Sir Jack Westrup. He had meanwhile joined the diplomatic service and was now on the staff of the British High Commission in Freetown. Another after-echo of Oxford was when my wife Marjorie and I were driving along Freetown’s famous Lumley Beach and we passed a lone figure strolling along the road. I remarked that, if that would not have been the most absurd suggestion, I would have said that we had driven past John Zochonis. John’s champagne party after the 1953 ‘schools’ was one of my pleasantest memories of Oxford. The next day Marjorie was shopping at one of Freetown’s bestknown department stores when the same figure jumped out from behind the counter and offered to carry her purchases to her car. How had I failed to connect John with the renowned trading company Patterson Zochonis? ‘P. Z.’ remains a Freetown landmark, even though the grand department store has disappeared! John Zochonis’s appearance was in the natural pursuit of his family business, and our meeting in Freetown was a pleasant coincidence. The visit to us in Freetown, of Garry Clarke and his wife Daintry was, by contrast, planned. Garry had been my best man at our wedding and shared the agonizing drive from West London to North Wembley when all the traffic lights seemed to be against us and we arrived to see a be-ribboned bridal car parked outside St Andrew’s church. We were late. Where was the bride? The experienced driver reassured us ‘I never collect the bride until I see the groom in the church’. All was well. Garry, the son of a well-to-do and influential Toronto family was the natural heir of the family publishing firm of Clarke-Irwin, but his mind was set on ordination into the United Church of Canada. The sudden death of his father compelled a temporary alteration of his plans, and he devoted seven years to the firm before handing over to his younger brother and returning to pursue his careful preparation for the ministry. Before coming to Corpus, he had obtained a first-class degree in Classics at 55

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The Freetown Bond the University of Toronto. At Corpus, he added a first in ‘Greats’— Classics and Philosophy – and finally a doctorate in Theology. He chose to work among the under-privileged in Canada and sought opportunities to work further afield in Africa. In his characteristically thorough way, he made an exploratory trip to West and East Africa, and broke his journey to spend a memorable week with us. His letters describing his trip were full of his witty wisdom and chuckling humour, particularly one in which he described his adventures trying to catch an internal flight from Lagos airport. During a year as a Commonwealth visiting professor at the University of Toronto, we visited him at Laurentian University in Sudbury in North Ontario where he had arranged for me to give a course of lectures. At the end of the visit, Marjorie and I had just finished an interview at the local radio station and were on our way to the airport when we were hastily summoned back for a further session as news of a coup in Sierra Leone had just broken. This was something of a shock because Siaka Stevens, head of the All People’s Congress, after having been properly elected to serve as Prime Minister, had been unseated and finally re-instated, seemed secure. This was however another attempted coup – the Bangura coup – whose details are still shrouded in mystery. At the end of our year in Toronto, our respective responsibilities tended to slacken our ties and I only became aware of Garry’s early death two years after it had happened. He was a dedicated, deeply sincere man who had abandoned a secure career in the family firm, for an uncertain, hazardous and sometimes troubled life of service to humanity, seemingly indifferent to fame or fortune. Garry’s mother, Mrs Irene Clarke, President of Clarke-Irwin in succession to her late husband, was one of the most influential women in Toronto and a grand hostess. An invitation to dinner could yield meetings with dignitaries of church, city or university. Professor Northrop Frye, author of The Anatomy of Criticism, one of our fellow guests on one occasion, thrilled the rest of the company on his way out when he paused by the open piano and casually gave a rendition of whatever was open on the music stand. * 56

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The Gleaming Spires of Oxford We got married on 23 June 1952 and had a short honeymoon in Geneva as guests of our Fourah Bay College friend Solomon Pratt and his wife, Victoria. We settled down to studying and housekeeping in a newly refurbished flat in Kingston Road in north Oxford. It was a happy year. Marjorie gave up studying Law and enrolled at Oxford Polytechnic, now Oxford Brookes University, where she studied design in fulfillment of her own inclinations rather than her mother’s wish for her to follow in the footsteps of her father. She also bought a portable typewriter, taught herself to type and dedicated herself to typing my notes, lectures, speeches, articles and books, as she has done to this day, having exchanged the typewriter for the computer. Our friends came to tea and a couple of them celebrated their 21st birthday with Marjorie baking a cake for the occasion. My visits to the college became rarer and, in my new state of happy domesticity, I even forgot to turn up for the annual college photograph in 1953. The final ‘schools’ year in Oxford, particularly as the final examinations approached, was stressful and I was shocked at the number of nervous breakdowns and even suicides that occurred just before and after this ordeal. A fellow student from another college living in the same house, usually a self-assured leading athlete, completely broke down a couple of days before the examinations and asked whether I could let him have some of my notes – we were both reading English. This was too late of course to do him any good that they might otherwise have done but I let him have something. On the first morning of the examinations, another student had to help him dress and accompany him to the bus stop, encouraging him to brace up and have a shot at the exams, which he did and got a degree. Some similar breakdowns had more tragic results. I had a relaxed year and took a good enough degree – I received my examination results by cable on the ship bringing me back to Freetown and, for the rest of my working life, to Fourah Bay College and an active social life in my own country. My return was something of a disappointment to some of my friends. I had left Freetown with a BA and had returned with yet another. Why had not I chosen to work for a different set of letters to adorn my name? To me the programme was much more important than the letters and in the course of time, my decision seemed 57

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The Freetown Bond justified by the array of letters which I can now legitimately claim. Oxford lived up to its great tradition. It gave me further enlightenment and opportunities for developing interests for work elsewhere. I must have left some impression on Corpus for after many years I was invited to contribute a chapter to the College’s volume Corpuscles. A history of Corpus Christi College, Oxford in the twentieth century, written by its members and published in 1994. Even more unexpectedly, I received the honour of being elected an Honorary Fellow of the College in 2002. * During my third year, I had applied for a position at my old college, Fourah Bay, and I was invited to an interview at Church House in London by the Inter-University Council (IUC), which then recruited staff for the new universities and colleges in British West Africa. Our arrival in London – Marjorie accompanied me – coincided with one of the rehearsals for the Queen’s coronation at Westminster Abbey which was just a few yards from Church House. We made our way through the thronging crowds and I left Marjorie to mingle while I went in to Church House and collected myself for what turned out to be a very pleasant interview, at the end of which I was promised an appointment on the condition that I got a good degree. This was satisfactorily accomplished. Years later, John Spencer, who was to spend many years at the University of Ibadan, teaching and researching in linguistics, told me that we had both gone up for the same interview. He and I only met later as our research interests brought us together and I indeed wrote a chapter in his book, The English Language in West Africa. * Ten pleasant days on the MV Aureol were to bring us back to Freetown but we made a short stop in Bathurst, Gambia, my wife’s birth place. This was to prove more than a mere sight-seeing. Marjorie’s aunt met us on board and quickly dispatched her to change from the shorts and top with which she had planned to go ashore, into a 58

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The Gleaming Spires of Oxford more suitable outfit as befitted her status as the daughter of the city’s leading lawyer three decades earlier. I was overwhelmed at the greeting which awaited ‘nyara Pratt’ – that was the mantra from the crowds which lined our route! Mr Mordecai Julius Richard Pratt, after a short spell of practising law in Freetown, had migrated to the Gambia. It was then almost virgin ground for lawyers and he had indeed encouraged another barrister from Freetown to help with the work load; this was Mr Salako Benka-Coker, who later became Chief Justice of Sierra Leone and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. Mr Pratt’s reputation obviously outlasted his early death and had left enough to give his daughter celebrity status. This was only the beginning. After a grand luncheon at Marjorie’s aunt’s, we were hustled from one feast to another all around Bathurst. I looked at my watch and uneasily indicated that it was time to return to our boat but was assured that the harbour master was present at this last party and that the boat could not leave without his permission. ‘In any case’ came an authoritative voice ‘there is a plane to Freetown on Monday’. At this point, I became really alarmed, gathered my wife and beat it back to the Aureol. Gambian hospitality had once again lived up to its famed reputation! We arrived in Freetown, having barely recovered, on 8 August 1953.

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5 Home Pastures

The term at Fourah Bay College was to begin in October 1953 so we had a little time to re-acclimatize, which we spent visiting relations. I squeezed in a small class for second year repeaters, one of whom I had casually met in the city and who had asked for help. My enterprise agreeably surprised Mr Grant, then head of the university department and later Principal, but it gave me a little taste of what I was to be engaged in for practically the rest of my working life. Fourah Bay, when I left for Oxford was already beginning to grow but it had been given a transfusion by the 1950 Fourah Bay College Act by which, for the first time in its more than a century’s existence, the Government had taken over responsibility for the financing of the institution from the Church Missionary Society which nobly, and at great sacrifice by individuals, had struggled to keep it alive. The tens of students in the 1940s had grown into hundreds and the college was now set for the thousands which make up the University of Sierra Leone as it later became. Staff had hitherto been mainly missionaries recruited by the Society in London or other committed persons who were prepared to come out on paltry salaries. One or two local staff were also recruited on even smaller stipends on a full- or part-time basis. With the Fourah Bay College Act however and the backing of the Inter-University Council in London, staff were to be recruited on a more open competitive basis. This change of staffing policy to meet the demands of a growing student population resulted in the recruitment of a large number of expatriates which overwhelmingly outnumbered the African staff. We were a tiny minority. The small English Department was still headed by F. Hadow Harris, a missionary who had served in India and who had taught me in my final year. His students had attributed the following summary of his approach: ‘When I talk 60

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Home Pastures of Literature, I mean English Literature and when I talk of English Literature, I mean Milton, and when I talk of Milton I speak of Paradise Lost ’. He may never have put his position in these words but his attitude was certainly antiquarian. The other member of staff was Bob Robert with whom I worked very amicably and with whom I produced Henry the Fourth Part 1 and The Taming of the Shrew. Mr Hadow Harris died suddenly on his return from leave in England at the beginning of the 1956 academic year and, when I was appointed to act as head of the department in preference to him, Bob Robert resigned and returned to England. I held the department together until John Copley was appointed Senior Lecturer and Head. I was appointed Senior Lecturer in 1963 and a year later, Professor and Head in succession to Professor Tom Creighton. My teaching and research followed four areas: Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, Modern African literature, the English Language in West Africa and the lingua franca of Sierra Leone, Krio. My work in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature culminated in the publication of Othello’s Countrymen: The African in English Renaissance Drama, which won the criticism prize in the first World Festival of Negro Arts held in Dakar in 1966. The book had been entered without my knowledge by Oxford University Press and I only knew of the award when our landlord in Leeds, John Wood, came bounding down the stairs with a copy of the Guardian one morning, with congratulations. I followed this up later with The Elizabethan Image of Africa published by the University of Virginia Press for the Folger Shakespeare Library. After those two books on that period, I concentrated on the new African literature whose origin and growth coincided with my early years on the staff at Fourah Bay College. The rest of my teaching life was devoted mainly to the stimulation of critical appreciation of the work of the new African writers. Indeed, my work in this area earned me an almost patriarchal status mainly because of my work in African Literature Today which I founded in 1968 and edited over a period of some thirty-two years with help from Professor Eustace Palmer and my wife, Mrs Marjorie Jones. At the invitation of Hans Zell, I edited the seven-volume critical series, New Perspectives on African Literature. In order to further popularize this genre I lectured 61

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The Freetown Bond and taught extensively on the new authors in many parts of Africa, Britain, Germany, Sweden, the United States and Canada. I set myself the task of introducing African writers not only to general readers but even to African teachers, who had seemed reluctant to prescribe these new authors whose status had not yet been sufficiently established, in contrast to the classics of English literature. I took a particular interest in the work of Wole Soyinka whose writing was often greeted with bewilderment and even anger for its apparent density and obscurity. The reception of his first novel The Interpreters was typical. I had difficulty eliciting the interest, never mind the admiration, of some of my most intelligent literary friends. Even colleagues in my own department were initially dismissive. Eustace Palmer and Derek Elders were almost irritated by the novel’s ‘tedious formlessness’. Later, however, in spite of some continuing reservations, Palmer pays tribute ‘to the comprehensiveness of the scope of its satire and to the powerful views of life that it presents.’ Soyinka remains difficult but my work has been to plough through the difficulties to demonstrate the unique importance of this writer. From my first encounter with ‘Telephone Conversation’ – a poem which he himself did not bother to include in his first collection – I recognized an extraordinary talent and devoted some effort to demonstrating his genius in the more complex works. This led to The Writing of Wole Soyinka, one of the earliest books on this writer, who went on to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. The first edition was published by James Currey at Heinemann and the second edition under his own imprint. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart needed no such guardianship and sailed easily into universal acceptance. The Fourah Bay College Literature Conference in 1963 advocated the introduction of African literary texts into the literature syllabuses of universities side by side with the more usual English classics. I gave a paper using this novel as capable of the kind of rigorous examination to which the accepted literary canon was subjected and it led to my first article on a single African work, ‘Language and Theme in Things Fall Apart’ being published in Review of English Literature. Later I was to edit Kole Omotoso’s intriguing study of the two Nigerian giants, Achebe or Soyinka? for the series New Perspectives on African Literature. 62

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Home Pastures I had written a dissertation on Krio for the postgraduate Diploma in Education and continued my study of the language and its literary potentialities using the works of Gladys Casely-Hayford and Thomas Decker. Articles in Sierra Leone Studies and The Sierra Language Journal led to my starting a word collection aiming towards the publication of a dictionary of the language; this project might have continued indefinitely if my colleague Clifford Fyle had not taken charge of the index card collection and pushed it, with the help of his assistants, to the publication of A Krio-English Dictionary in 1980. With the advice of Julian Behrstock, a colleague on the committee of the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa who was head of the publications department in UNESCO, I obtained a grant from that body without which the material might never have seen the light of day. This publication illustrates the intellectual cooperation within the College during some of its finest years in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, which manifested itself in the flourishing of journals, pamphlets and dramatic productions. Strange as it may appear, one of the leading world centres for the study of Sierra Leone Krio language and literature is at the University of Umëa in northern Sweden, which has been driven by the enthusiasm of Neville Shrimpton, an Englishman. Over the years, that university has built up an impressive database incorporating almost everything that has been written in the language including the original plays, the translations of Shakespeare and the Bible by Thomas Decker, the poems of Gladys Casely-Hayford as well as the plays, stories and poems of contemporary Sierra Leonean writers. This coincidence of interest brought Neville Shrimpton and myself together and led to the running of a number of workshops in Freetown on various aspects of the language and literature. These workshops were scholarly but had the practical aim to settle – in so far as any linguistic feature can be finally settled – the orthography, lexicon, grammar and syntax. The 1990 workshop led to the publication Reading and Writing Krio, jointly edited by E. D. Jones, Karl I. Sandred and Neville Shrimpton, which has been included in the series Studia Anglistica Uppsaliensia. The 1993 workshop had a more practical and adventurous aim, to introduce the orthography to a number of market women some of whom could not read at all while 63

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The Freetown Bond others were literate in English. After about a week, they could read Krio, some only haltingly, but they then raised the important question: ‘What are we to read after this workshop?’ They suggested that something in the language related to their trading would be helpful. The ‘experts’ were then commissioned to write a number of pieces published under the title, Ridinbuk f c Makituman (A Reading Book for Market Women). It is hard to think of a more useful product of a workshop. It deserves a wider circulation. In September 1996 I visited Sweden to give a series of lectures and seminars at Umëa and Uppsala. At the University of Umëa I received the honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy and, as part of the celebrations, the university mounted an exhibition of my publications, a touching gesture that I had not encountered before on such occasions. Marjorie and I very much enjoyed living in an exquisite apartment totally insulated from the cold outside, which was no less bitter for being described as autumn weather. We also paid a short visit across to Vassa in Finland for more lectures and seminars. The intervening sea between the two countries was one of the most dreadful stretches of water we had ever experienced. Over a number of years, two strands of my academic interests, African and Elizabethan literature, brought me into contact with the University of Birmingham and in 1974 I gave seminars at the Centre for West African Studies and the Shakespeare Research Institute. I had also spent several summers in Stratford-upon-Avon attending meetings of the Executive Committee of the International Shakespeare Association and seminars organized by Birmingham University. Of course we went to see the plays of Shakespeare performed at the Memorial Theatre. It was also in Birmingham that the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom (ASAUK) met in 2002 and presented myself and my wife jointly with the Distinguished Africanist Award. It was a great honour, therefore, to return to Birmingham in 2005 to receive the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters. The Public Orator paid the following tribute to my contribution to Shakespeare Studies: Eldred Durosimi Jones was the first person ever to write about Africans in Shakespeare and single handed he has sparked a research field which

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Home Pastures he still dominates. In 1965, not long after his country’s independence, his seminal work characterizing an African view of Shakespeare’s Othello called Othello’s Countrymen, a study in English renaissance drama appeared. It was a timely and for then a controversial and certainly innovative contribution to Shakespearean scholarship, and other works in this field appeared, including in 1979, The Elizabethan Image of Africa. Shakespeare was now finally freed from being the exclusive property of the white Anglo-Saxon world.

I in turn must acknowledge my debt to numerous scholars before me whose work informed and inspired my research in this field. In particular I remember my tutor, F. W. Bateson, whose chance remark after my essay on Othello made me look more deeply into the subject and H. T. Price, a senior researcher at the Folger, who came out with casual remarks which sent me burrowing in the stacks. Professor Clifford Leech expertly and benevolently guided me throughout my work, often from long distance. Indeed, it was Professor Clifford Leech who encouraged me to research this subject for a Ph.D. I had then no intention of working for a higher degree and had occupied myself fully with teaching at Fourah Bay which was then still affiliated to the University of Durham, for whose degrees Fourah Bay College students worked. I did not see the need for a doctoral degree but Professor Clifford Leech joked: ‘Eldred, don’t be proud. You can get your book and your Ph.D. at the same time; a Ph.D. is fast becoming a union card in the academic world.’ I got the degree in 1962 and the book was published in 1965. * My work was centred on Fourah Bay College at the top of Mount Aureol. Nevertheless I kept up my associations with Freetown and the rest of the country through Holy Trinity Church, where I served as a member of the parochial committee, and with my membership of cricket and tennis clubs and dramatic societies. I took part in the vital work of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), and I wrote occasional articles in the Daily Mail. I took part in activities such as the foundation of the Mountain Rural Secondary School at Regent Village, the Sierra Leone Union on Disability Issues, and 65

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The Freetown Bond Knowledge Aid Sierra Leone. Extra-mural classes also brought me into contact with community groups in the city as well as in the surrounding villages. These classes consisted mainly of adults – village elders, pensioners, school teachers, indeed anyone who cared to come. When I met them once a week, often to the light of kerosene lamps and the attention of mosquitoes, they taught me far more than I taught them. Free from the trammels of syllabuses and examinations, we talked about village and community history, local customs and traditions. There was little writing as many of my participants, while they had plenty of wisdom in their heads, had never learnt to read and write. These mixed groups banged heads together on local and even national affairs. I suppose this is now what is fashionably called ‘awareness raising’. It was at a time when I was collecting vocabulary items for what later became A KrioEnglish Dictionary. It was from, for instance, Mr E. P. Nicol, headmaster of the Lumley Primary School and patron of the village group, that I learnt the Krio names of medicinal and food plants, trees, fish, vegetables as well as Krio proverbs and wise sayings. From others I learnt snippets of local history which never found their way into learned books. Sometimes a school boy would find his way into a class, and I had the pleasure of watching the progress of one such young man who finished school, went up to Fourah Bay College, joined the civil service and rose to become a senior permanent secretary. I ran into one of my adult students at the community class which I had held at the small Amaria schoolroom at the top of Ellebank Street some fifty years earlier, and he reminded me of our ‘history’ classes from which I had learnt so much about the foundation and growth of the largely Muslim Foulah Town community. Such contacts rescued me from the academic isolation to which an exclusive life on the hills of Mount Aureol and the Kortright plateau might have condemned me. Perhaps the most unusual of my extra-mural classes was one of army officers, which included a tempestuous young captain, Andrew Juxon-Smith, who produced some revolutionary ideas arising out of our study of the works of Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Soyinka. I was to encounter him again when as Brigadier he emerged as the head of the junta, the National Reformation Council (NRC), 66

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Home Pastures which seized power in 1967. The idea of a military coup as the solution to Sierra Leone’s problems was unpopular enough but the highhanded and dictatorial approach of the Brigadier made the regime intolerable. Not least among the opponents was Fourah Bay College, which made its view clear when the Brigadier appeared in person to speak at a public meeting in the college. The Principal, Dr Davidson Nicol, at question time advised speakers not to identify themselves for fear of possible reprisals, but the first student who rose, announced boldly ‘My name is Jomo Macauley’ and proceeded to denounce the coup and urge the junta to return to barracks. The applause was deafening and set the tone of defiance for the rest of the meeting. The Senior Staff Association of the college later met the junta and again strongly opposed its continuation in office. As chairman, I led the delegation, but the most impressive speaker at this meeting was the mild Classics lecturer, Miss Lindis Dolphin, who in other circumstances would not hurt a fly. Attempts were made to scare non-Sierra Leoneans by suggesting to them that they risked deportation if they persisted in joining nationals to challenge the government. Hugh Glanville, my deputy chairman, for instance, quietly ignored such a threat. The junta however persisted until it was unseated by a counter-coup led by a group of non-commissioned officers in 1968, after which Juxon-Smith was charged with treason along with the others, convicted and condemned to death, but was reprieved in 1972. I had determined to stay in Sierra Leone and consequently resisted offers of attractive appointments elsewhere. But I was equally determined not to remain stale or unduly restricted in my intellectual activities. I therefore took advantage of opportunities to spend periods of up to a year from time to time teaching and researching abroad. * Although Fourah Bay College grew rapidly in scope and numbers in the 1960s and ’70s, it was still small enough particularly in the earlier years for significant and beneficial contact to be maintained between staff and students outside the lecture rooms. Before the expansion of staff residences to the Kortright plateau, staff lived within easy 67

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5.1 Fourah Bay College, Mount Aureol. Kennedy Tower building with Administrative building (left) and Library (right), 1966

reach of students so that, for example, I took tutorials in my house – my wife often producing tea and cakes – played tennis and engaged in extra-curricular activities like drama and choral music with both senior and junior members. I was also a warden of students and discussed personal problems with them in an easy atmosphere. Members of staff and their wives were invited to become senior members of student clubs and societies, and a warm collegiate climate made it easier to become aware of potential problems which could be solved before they became crises. The College came to be organized in halls, with senior members and a master, to which students were assigned on admission in an attempt to foster regular formal dinners, sports meetings and other activities. Some senior members were particularly committed to this kind of activity. Dr Victor Strasser-King, later Principal, for example, almost singlehandedly arranged inter-hall quizzes and similar intellectual contests, while the warden Mr Jenkins Smith organized the choral society and for a short time a brass band. When I became Principal, in order to 68

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Home Pastures strengthen this collegiate spirit, I instituted a Fourah Bay College week which was intended to bring the whole college community as well as its alumni together in an annual celebration around Foundation Day. In addition to departmental and faculty exhibitions, and a get-together of alumni, I was keen that there should be an annual inter-hall sports meeting at this time. Fourah Bay College week has become a regular feature of college life except that, for some reason, it seems difficult to integrate alumni activities into this particular celebration. It was my good fortune to be in office when two significant anniversaries occurred. 1976 marked the hundredth year since Fourah Bay College became affiliated to the University of Durham and presented students for the degrees of that university. The following year was even more significant being the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the College itself, and the birth of tertiary education in sub-Saharan Africa. A special symposium on higher education in Africa brought together scholars from many parts of the world to discuss the development of tertiary education. My pageant, Crowther’s People, directed by Professor Eustace Palmer, traced the development of the college from its inception. A special congregation saw the conferment of honorary degrees, including one on a distinguished old student, Chief Michael Ajasin, the Governor of Ondo State, and an anniversary Thanksgiving Service was addressed by another distinguished old student, Canon E. O. Alayande, Archdeacon of Ibadan. Reunions, sports meetings and exhibitions formed part of a rich programme. Yet the daily problems of the college continued. A recurrent one was that of the administration of corporate student finances, which came under the control of the student representative government; the accounts on transport charges on the students’ buses being a frequent subject of commissions of enquiry set up by the students themselves, with the results forwarded to the college disciplinary committees for review and further action. Other causes of friction occurred between the students and the administration over matters of food and other conditions of residence, and with the government over terms of scholarship. There could even be trouble with sections of the community as when students, having got wind that 69

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5.2 Dr Arthur Porter, Vice-Chancellor (left ), and Professor Eldred Jones, Pro-Vice Chancellor (right) in procession at Fourah College Congregation, 1979

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Home Pastures one of their number had been misused by the proprietor of a foreign firm in the city, went down in a body and wreaked rough justice on the man and his premises. As numbers grew the shortage of accommodation enforced non-residence, and resulting transport problems made life more inconvenient. Tempers often became frayed and strikes, which sometimes involved damage to property, became more common. Students, as would be expected, are always conscious of their rights, but the pursuit of these rights sometimes worked against their own long-term interests. During the 1950s and ’60s Sierra Leonean students who qualified for entry almost automatically got government scholarships on admission which covered residence with full board, a book allowance and other college fees. Some of these fees were paid directly to the college. The book allowance, for example, was paid to the college, which issued book vouchers exchangeable at the college bookshop. This enabled Fourah Bay to maintain one of the finest bookshops in the sub-region under the management of that extraordinary book man Hans Zell, who subsequently went on to run excellent bookshops in Ibadan and Ife and to found the Ife University Press and Book Fair. Students started agitating that this allowance belonged to them and should be issued to them in cash. This demand was met in order to remove what seemed like an unnecessary cause of friction, with the result that the allowance was spent on things other than books. The bookshop’s capital base declined and it eventually collapsed. Thus the college and the surrounding community – book lovers had come from Freetown and even from the provinces, particularly to the Friday evening late openings – lost a valuable intellectual and social amenity. The bookshop had even started its own publishing house, producing small books like Hans Zell’s own Freetown Vademecum, an excellent guidebook, and Geoffrey Field’s Birds of the Freetown Peninsula. A similar assertion of rights turned the dining halls into canteens with boarding grants going direct to students. The breakdown of these old arrangements made it easy for those elements of the scholarship now isolated to be exposed in the fees structure and to be gradually eliminated. One of the problems of student democracy was that every 71

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The Freetown Bond elected government had an effective life of only a little over two terms during which it had to make an impact. This was not long enough, and rash promises incapable of fulfillment sometimes led to a diminution of students’ own comfort and an unnecessary loss of energy and study time in strikes and demonstrations. I experienced these episodes with sadness during my tenure as Lecturer as well as Principal, sometimes unable to prevent students acting against their own best interests. By the time I became Principal, many of the privileges taken for granted in the 1950s and ’60s had withered away and a large number of students were finding it difficult to obtain scholarships and grants, and lived quite precariously, to the detriment of their studies. I therefore made an appeal to corporate institutions and received appreciable support from banks, commercial firms and other bodies to set up a grant-in-aid fund. One remarkable respondent to this appeal was Mr Alfred AkiboBetts, a turbulent young political activist with whom I had earlier had a serious disagreement over some clash he had had with students on the campus. He surprised me by appearing in my office with his personal cheque in support of one student but with a promise that he would raise enough to support a larger number in the following year. He fulfilled his promise and collected enough money to support some twenty students in the name of the Central One Constituency, for which he stood as a parliamentary candidate and lost. Other scholarship grants were given in the names of the Lebanese community and commercial firms. I still encounter former students in high positions who try to remind me – usually unsuccessfully – that I had saved them from dropping out by awarding them one such grant. One permanent secretary, whom I encountered on other business long after I had retired, informed me that he had been a student on study leave and on his salary was also supporting his younger brother as a student. On knowing this, I had awarded his younger brother one of these grants. I still had no recollection of this intervention on my part. But I certainly recall the case of another former student, now a learned judge, who, when I seemed not to recall that I had made him an award, said to me ‘Don’t you remember telling me that my application was the longest letter you had received since you became principal?’ I remembered. It 72

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Home Pastures filled five foolscap sides! All this did not mean that there were no student problems over the quality of food, residence, late payments of allowances by sponsors and internal student disagreements. The most difficult of these problems were those which involved interference from politicians and other influential personalities outside the college. In spite of assertions of academic independence and political maturity, it was far too easy for student energies to be annexed by outside forces for narrow selfish interests. A more exotic influence was Colonel Gaddafi’s Green Book which in the late 1960s and early ’70s produced a rather authoritarian Student Representative Council which decreed public floggings for offences against the students’ code of conduct. This was not tolerated by the college and in due course, the Libyan Colonel’s direct influence on student affairs faded. The financing of universities makes heavy demands on the resources of developing countries which sometimes, for laudable social reasons, embark on their founding without fully counting the cost. Consequently, such institutions find themselves unable to provide the funds for libraries, science laboratories and effective support for academic research, without which teaching could soon become sterile and universities themselves unable to reward the supporting nations with inputs into their productive capacity. After the Fourah Bay College Ordinance of 1950 and the support of the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund, the college enjoyed a new lease of life and a rapid expansion of its facilities. For a short time it was able to embark on long-term planning with quinquennial and later triennial estimates making this possible. Soon however, as it came to rely more and more on locally generated resources, funds shrank, facilities declined and a hand-to-mouth regime made expansion difficult. This inevitably had adverse consequences on teaching and research. A similar decline in educational standards in the schools, with the rapid expansion of pupil numbers, affected the quality of the products of the university. Among the steps taken to make up for this was the institution of the foundation year, incorporating courses in Language, Scientific Thinking, The African Environment and History, as a basis on which to build the specialist studies with which the students would be concerned. This idea was 73

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The Freetown Bond resisted by some members of staff as a threat to the student’s specialist studies but I and others felt that without such a basis we might be producing specialists without a sound view of their world. Constant sniping at this programme militated against its growth and reduced its effectiveness, but it is a matter of great national importance. Our societies in the developing world are still held back by strong residues of traditional thinking which impedes progressive approaches to problems. Logic is still held back by belief in magical and occult manipulations which, in turn, perpetuate a reluctance or even inability to pursue truth in scientific as well as in more general matters. Unless we are able to induce a more enterprising, a more adventurous attitude in our educated citizens, we will be condemned to be mere imitators even in the solution of our own particular problems. With the decline in local financial support, the College had to look for opportunities from outside sources for funding, particularly for the building of student hostels and other facilities. Dr Davidson Nicol, for instance, obtained funds for the new administrative building, the rehabilitation of the old Kortright House and, from the Americans, the spectacular Kennedy Tower. Having exhausted the college’s resources in the building of two new hostels in the expectation of funds from the Ministry of Education for their completion, the College had to leave these structures unfinished and they stood for several years as a mockery of my predecessor’s efforts. Help was to come from an unexpected source. On the night of 21 June 1975, a devastating tornado aggravated the state of the buildings when the storm tore through eyeless holes for windows and doors, lifted the roofs and left the unfinished buildings in an even sorrier condition. This line squall, as the experts called it, ruined a number of other buildings and left parts of the college in a state of devastation. On the following morning, I picked my way among the ruins and entered the shattered house of a young lady engineering lecturer who stood amid the wreckage side by side with a lady who looked just an older version of herself. I looked from one to the other and recognized my infant teacher Miss Paul, whom I had not seen for forty-five years. Our joyful reunion mitigated the gloom of our surroundings, but only temporarily. Where were funds 74

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Home Pastures to come from to rebuild student accommodation, staff houses, lecture rooms and other facilities? I decided to launch an appeal, which was generously supported by various diplomatic missions particularly the German Embassy and the British High Commission. Out of their valuable contributions, the college was able to rebuild the two ruined hostels, several small facilities and a block of six apartments for staff on Kortright Plateau. The last was particularly satisfying because it was planned and executed mostly by the college’s own maintenance section under Mr Frank Fraser. For some years, a discussion had gone on with the German government through its aid organization GTZ on the building of a women’s hostel. On my assumption of the principalship, I resumed these negotiations and with funds from that foundation we put up Beethoven Jubilee Hall. The curious name marked the fact that 1827, the year of Beethoven’s death, was also the year of the foundation of Fourah Bay College, and the year in which the hall was completed marked the college’s one hundred and fiftieth anniversary in its third jubilee year, 1977. The joy of the jubilee was savagely diminished by later events that year when the students staged a protest during the solemnities of congregation, against the government of President Siaka Stevens who was also the Chancellor. Everything had proceeded with the usual decorum until his speech, when a cacophony of whistling and chanting heralded a procession of students with placards demanding the government’s resignation for alleged corruption. This took everybody by surprise but the Chancellor, who with stoic composure went on speaking though nobody could hear him. I left my place on the platform, and went to calm down the excited students with words such as ‘Don’t ruin the congregation any further; you have made your point!’ This to my own surprise had some effect as the students quietened down and the Chancellor finished his speech. In succeeding him, I apologized for the disruptive behaviour of the students, and later as we unrobed along with the Vice-Chancellor, Dr Arthur Porter, I made further apologies to the Chancellor who seemed quite gracious in his acceptance and understanding. That night however, I received a visit from a staff member of State House requesting a copy of my speech, which I duly gave. A 75

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The Freetown Bond second copy was requested on the following day, Sunday. On Monday morning, a large crowd of party supporters invaded the College and wreaked indiscriminate havoc on the students’ halls, tearing down doors, destroying books and equipment. They invaded the Vice-Chancellor’s office and besieged him there though he was later able to escape without personal injury and take refuge outside the College. They went up to my private residence looking for me but only my wife was at home. They shouted threats, some of them suggesting that if they killed her I would then come out of hiding. On hearing this, I rang the Vice-President, S. I. Koroma, and informed him that my wife was being molested at home under the pretext of looking for me. I declared that I was in my office which, being new, was unknown to the mob which had rushed past it several times. I told him I was ready to be taken in if necessary, but protested vigorously at the unnecessary threats to my wife. He apologized profusely and promised to send assistance to my residence immediately to protect her. I remained in my office unmolested until all was calm again, the students and staff having fled down the hill. I even heard in the deathly silence the accounts of the incident on the BBC, including the information that the Principal of the College (me) had been arrested. Meanwhile, with the brave assistance of an ex-student Nemata Mahdi (later Dr Majeks-Walker), who infiltrated the crowd that visited my house and persuaded them to go down to town for further instructions, my wife had escaped and sought refuge elsewhere in the city. She telephoned me and pleaded with me to leave the campus and join her. I saw no need for this and continued to stay alone in my office until I received another phone call from someone, who having ascertained by this call that I was in my office, dropped the phone. I had been located. I immediately rang my wife and tamely agreed to join her if they would send a car for me. I then left my office and took refuge in the undercroft of the hospital until the car arrived and I was taken to safety. Indeed, as I was being driven past my house I noticed two armed soldiers at the gate but did not pause to find out either their allegiance or intentions. I eventually got in touch with the Vice-Chancellor and, after a few days during which it was unsafe for us to stay in our houses, together we called on President Siaka Stevens to ask why we were 76

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Home Pastures being subjected to such harassment. He denied all knowledge of this and gave us every assurance of our personal safety as well as that of the College. He lightly dismissed the popular belief that copies of my speech had been requested because it contained my already written apology for the students’ protest of which I had had previous knowledge. With this we returned to our homes and duties and watched with surprise, and not a little grim amusement, the speed with which government workmen repaired the damage to students’ hostels and other college buildings which party adherents had so wantonly destroyed only a few days before. Marjorie attracts girls and, apart from our own two daughters, Esse and Mimi, she acquired several other ‘daughters’ who became firm members of our family. Jeannette Eno, Marjorie’s niece (Aku to us) looks so much like her aunt that she is often taken for her daughter. She spent her early childhood years with us and showed the quickness which has blossomed into the much travelled social development specialist that she has become. Nemata Majeks-Walker, whom I mentioned above as Marjorie’s rescuer when our house was besieged by political thugs, adopted us as parents during her last year in school and lived with us all during her undergraduate years at Fourah Bay College. Now established as an international consultant on women’s political participation rights, she makes us proud with her many public activities. We have, alas, lost touch with two lively school girls who occupied that historic suite. Atim, the daughter of my college friend, Godfrey Lardner, returned to Nigeria, and Yvonne, the daughter of the famous Dr Kamara of Lungi left and later studied Medicine in Geneva. My cousin Rachel Williams, during her long nursing career which earned her an MBE, adopted Momoh Kamanda whose children, two boys and a girl, joined our family circle. We saw Elisabeth, the daughter, through her five years at Fourah Bay College, where she is now on the staff of the Department of Language Studies and lives sufficiently near to visit us frequently. From the same family, Zainab also came to us after secondary school and, with computer training, is now established as a finance/administration officer with BBC Media Action in Sierra Leone. All of them continue to brighten our lives. * 77

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The Freetown Bond Since I entered Fourah Bay College in 1944 as an undergraduate student, and up until my retirement as Principal in 1985, my active membership of the College was unbroken except for two years school teaching and three years at Oxford. During this time, the old hospital wards of Mount Aureol largely disappeared, giving way to modern buildings in testimony to the generosity of foreign donors and the fundraising abilities of my predecessors. The student numbers had grown from tens to thousands and the college itself had enhanced its status from that of an affiliated college of Durham University to that of the University of Sierra Leone, awarding its own degrees. It was to a much larger and impressive congregation therefore that I was invited in 1987 to receive the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters along with my life-long friend, Arthur Porter, the retired Vice-Chancellor. When I had announced my intention to retire in 1985, some members of the court kindly suggested that I might continue in office since the retiring age had been extended to 65. I had already done eleven years as Principal, longer than any other Principal since Edward Jones who served for nineteen years from 1840 to 1859. By this time, I had become almost totally blind and I felt that I should undertake a thorough review of my academic and social life. Perhaps the most touching parting present on my retirement was a little book compiled by a student, Benedict Sam, containing excerpts from my speeches to students and my beginning of term letters which he had put together with a Foreword by the Rev. Emile Jones, another of my students who was now a member of the staff. Benedict Sam must have been following me around during that year recording and taking notes. I still treasure the case of tropical butterflies given to their ‘father’ by the children of the chapel Sunday School. The Public Orator who presented me for my degree in 1989, another of my old students, also signaled the passing years. Professor Magbailey Fyle, himself a distinguished historian, unrolled the canvas of my life as, it is said, such a picture flashes across one’s consciousness in one’s last moments. One is never fully aware of the significance of one’s individual acts until someone else highlights them. It was thus gratifying to hear him say: ‘Those of us, who worked with him, will no doubt remember him fondly as Principal for his enthusiastic support for struggling scholars. For however small 78

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Home Pastures the research and publication effort of members of his staff, it did not fail to draw from him a letter of encouragement.’ Even after my retirement the new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Kosonike Koso-Thomas, very graciously wrote offering me a personal Chair which would leave me free to pursue whatever programme of research I chose. It was difficult to refuse such a generous offer, but I had decided to bring my long formal association with the College to an end. I gladly however accepted the offer of an unpaid Emeritus Professorship on 16 December 1989. My connection really never ended for I was frequently called upon, particularly by the English Department, to step in as an external examiner, as an adviser to postgraduate students or on matters of syllabus. In thirty-two years, I spent no longer than a year at any one time outside Sierra Leone, visiting academic institutions abroad mainly popularizing Africa, particularly African literature and, my other interest, Africa in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. Almost everywhere I went, I received flattering offers to take on more permanent appointments, particularly in America where in the 1960s Africa was beginning to take on a new interesting and sometimes troubled association with America. My standard response was a polite ‘no’ in view of my commitment to Fourah Bay College. I always returned to my own country with its numerous opportunities for service and its sometimes debilitating frustrations. The resulting balance for me is satisfaction that I stayed, and the occasional unexpected warm expressions of appreciation often from quite unexpected quarters. * Since my appointment to Fourah Bay College in 1953, we had lived in comfortable subsidized housing which somewhat compensated for the modest salary. By 1956, under a Colonial Development and Welfare grant, the College had embarked on the building of students’ hostels, lecture halls and staff quarters which transformed beyond all recognition Mount Aureol and the adjoining Kortright Plateau. My wife and I watched the housing project on Kortright from the building of the first house K1 in a meandering ribbon, until we saw the foundations laid of what was to be our residence 79

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The Freetown Bond for some fifteen years, K25. Meanwhile we had had some discussions and correspondence with the architect and builders on the general design of these houses which at the start had followed the old colonial pattern of a detached kitchen unit. Our intervention saw a gradual integration of the kitchen cum servant’s quarters into the house until, to our great delight, ours became the first house to be totally integrated. The land around gave us plenty of scope for flower and vegetable gardening and even a few trees, including a prolific avocado and a lemon. A grape vine produced beautiful broad leaves suitable for stuffing savoury recipes but alas no grapes. From the forest we inherited a palm tree which actually produced wine and a monkey apple tree with abundant fruit for making delicious jelly. At first, reflecting the composition of the staff, all of our neighbours were white expatriates but soon, as more and more African staff came to be appointed, Kortright became first an integrated international community and gradually a totally African one. It was here that we started our annual Sunday-morning-before-Christmas Punch Party when our friends came up from church in Freetown, joined our Fourah Bay colleagues, drank my special brew and picked at Marjorie’s numerous delicacies while listening to Christmas carols. This custom became such a part of the Freetown Christmas calendar that one of our expatriate friends drove up to our house on the usual morning to find it deserted. He remembered that we were having a house built in neighbouring Leicester Village, tried that and could not find us there either. He then drove back to town to Marjorie’s mother’s house only to be told that we were out of the country. On another of these Sunday mornings, after we had moved to Leicester Village, a spectacular murder had taken place in Freetown and was the talk of the party. The senior government pathologist Dr Oju Mends had been enjoying his punch and rejoicing at his temporary disappearance from official contact. He could not have been more mistaken because the telephone soon rang and he was summoned immediately to the scene of the crime. Where else could he be on the Sunday morning before Christmas? We took the idea of this Sunday morning party with us in all our travels abroad. Our usual walk from our Kortright house took us through the 80

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Home Pastures quiet village of Leicester and on ordinary days terminated at the old village church of St Andrew’s. A small stone cottage on the way, deeply recessed, caught our fancy, particularly the quaint wicket gate that led to the porch. What an attractive weekend cottage this would make, we thought. But weekend from where? We lived only about five hundred yards away. Then the foreman of the college works yard, Mr Sonny Smith, who lived next door to the cottage, mentioned that it was for sale, and after some three years of negotiation, we finally bought it and realized that there was even more land that went with it. We had discovered the site of our dream house. The sketch designs that Marjorie had jotted down from time to time for a house somewhere began to take shape. Were we to pull down the cottage and use its site? We decided to go further and take full advantage of the magnificent view of the surrounding hills, the distant village of Wilberforce and the Atlantic beyond. It was to be our proud boast that there was nothing else between us and America. A friend put it differently: ‘You have such a lot of sky.’ Marjorie and the architect Jalloh Jamboria got on splendidly. Their disagreements were friendly and eventually productive. I was mostly puzzled, but we ended with a stylish open plan with spaces leading to other spaces without intervening doors and enough natural ventilation to make air-conditioning unnecessary. There was ample room around for a few trees, plenty of flowers, vegetables, and grass as one of our friends called our ‘lawns’. Our attempt to introduce some forgotten fruit trees proved rather unsuccessful and one or two had to be brought down after twenty years without any suggestion of fruiting. They seemed to be lonely out of their forest habitat. Marjorie’s mother brought up a slip from her apple tree in Freetown and as she planted it said to Marjorie and Mimi our second daughter who were standing by, ‘In a few years we will be eating the fruit from this tree’. They exchanged sceptical glances. She was then in her mid-eighties. When some five years later we presented her with fruit from the tree she archly remarked, ‘You thought I did not see you exchanging glances when I said that we would soon be eating the fruit’. She lived to be just short of a hundred and two. We have been able to grow our own vegetables in the rainy season and can still eat lettuces and tomatoes within minutes of their being 81

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The Freetown Bond harvested. But the cottage remained a problem. It had been our main attraction to the site but it was almost derelict. Built in the 1930s of solid stone plastered over, it was still structurally sound and had the original feature of a viewing tower. But all the wood inside – partitions, floors, window frames – had now rotted and the whole interior had to be torn out and remodelled. I returned home one day to find Marjorie with a single workman in the middle of a five-foot deep chasm where the floor boards had been. The whole area now had to be filled in. This involved tons of aggregate as well as all the rubble around the compound that our young friends from the village could collect and pour into this gap. With a single workman at any one time, Marjorie had steel window frames made on site, redesigned the whole interior to achieve a large open and airy plan with sitting room leading into a dining room merging into a railroad kitchen. A large bedroom was made even larger by an enormous fitted wardrobe with shelves. There was a small child’s bedroom, a toilet and shower and, the unique feature, a wooden staircase from the kitchen leading to the viewing tower – except that we had blocked most of the view with our house – available as study or extra bedroom. It was a dream and guests usually fell instantly in love with it. The biggest event in the history of our new address, first No. 70 then renumbered No. 5 New London Street, Leicester Village, was the wedding of our daughter Essemary in 1974, when a large number of guests filled both house and garden in a party which, with the concurrence of our neighbours, went on till the next day. Otherwise, we have enjoyed almost complete tranquility for study and contemplation. Whatever peace we enjoyed in our little village, however, was shattered by the invasion of Freetown in 1997. Rumours had reached Freetown in 1991 of unrest and military encounters in what seemed like far off Bomaru on the Liberian border. For some time it seemed a distant frontier with little effect on the capital, until 1997 when the rebels, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), burst into Freetown and in a bewildering succession of moves joined with dissident soldiers of the Sierra Leone Army which had overthrown the government of President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah to form the 82

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Home Pastures Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC). Rebels encamped in the hills just above our house and parked a helicopter in the vicinity, which in turn attracted the attentions of the ECOMOG jet planes which sought to destroy the encampment. (The forces of ECOMOG, the Economic Community of West Africa Monitoring Group), had come in support of the exiled government.) During such raids, the rebel soldiers, mostly young boys who could barely carry their weapons, let loose their hopelessly out-of-range assault rifles into the air, missing their targets and instead, creating more fear among us, than that of the planes; double jeopardy! At other times, friendly ECOMOG ground barrages aimed at targets beyond our village, fell short and dropped on us. Marjorie put all delicate objects on the floor to reduce any damage from the vibrations caused by heavy shelling. When on our Peace Mission to Conakry, she mentioned these perils and asked what could be done, General Malu, commander of the ECOMOG forces, cryptically replied, ‘Madam, I think you should consider moving.’ Having avoided any involvement in active politics, we remained passive victims of the varying fortunes of the contesting parties and resisted the anguished pleadings both from our relatives abroad to leave the country, and from those at home who were now fleeing in despair. We were like frightened animals caught in car headlights. Without notice a group of civilians, most of them complete strangers, arrived at our house. In very eloquent speeches they proposed a plan for peace through intervention between the AFRC and the government in exile. I am usually sceptical in the face of such fervent word spinning, but were we to remain indifferent while the country was destroyed? Phrases about history judging us harshly if we did nothing failed to impress me, but I did feel that I could not stand ‘idly by’ if there was anything I could usefully do. I joined INAMEC, the Independent Mediation Committee – The Sierra Leone Initiative. There were among our members, honest, highminded people but, as usual in these political bodies, there were also self-seeking rascals. It was decided that in order to keep our strict neutrality, no member of this committee was to accept any appointment under the junta, and when some of our members – even the coordinator – violated this rule they were forced to resign. What 83

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The Freetown Bond kept the rest of us together was our determination to bend our efforts to persuade the junta to come to some agreement with the government in exile, and return the country to legality. We had meetings with Johnny Paul Koroma, the military head of state and Saj Musa, his more fiery second-in-command, and were surprised to find them far from hostile, if rather cagey. Other more powerful bodies such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) were making moves to bring the parties together. Our role within the country was to persuade the military rulers to attend such talks and start negotiations. This peace conference did take place, in Conakry, Guinea, under the leadership of the Foreign Minister of Nigeria, and our group INAMEC attended as accredited observers. At the height of the negotiations we had a tense private meeting with the representatives of the AFRC, in which we talked as fellow countrymen with the interest of our country at stake and they promised to sign the agreement to give up power in six months. They duly signed the Conakry Peace Plan, to our great relief. But events were to show that this was a hollow gesture and the AFRC, like the NRC before it, had no intention of leaving power. Instead, they formed an unholy alliance with the rebel RUF, and eventually had to be forced from power mainly with the help of ECOMOG. For a while, hostilities continued and in 1999 ECOMOG ground troops set up a command post near our house and took charge of the village and when an actual ground invasion by the rebels threatened, evacuated our whole village, the neighbouring village of Gloucester and surrounding settlements to a camp on Kortright. During our absence there was an expert and highly selective burglary of our vacant house, leaving clearly indicative clues which, in the circumstances, we could not pursue any further. Later, we, in turn, became a haven of refuge for a number of Kortright families who had had to flee from their homes for fear of a rebel attack. As these had been colleagues at Fourah Bay College – we had now retired – we found ourselves hosts for two weeks to thirty-seven guests of all ages, including the then current Principal, Professor Victor Strasser-King, and his guest, Professor Cyril Foray, then Sierra Leone High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. So, 84

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Home Pastures including myself, there were three successive Principals of Fourah Bay College under the same roof! The wives soon organized cooking and feeding while the husbands indulged in highly philosophical and political discussions well into the night. The children could have been a problem for they enjoyed the freedom of a holiday camp and made so much noise that the protecting soldiers appealed to us to keep them quiet. I had the answer, and turned my study into a schoolroom where we told stories, read poems and made memorable friendships. The Strasser-King girls in this group later went on to university in the UK and visited us regularly on their Christmas holidays to reminisce about their ‘school days’ in my study. One local effort to form a volunteer defence force deserves a mention. In response to the invasion of Freetown, the Organised Body of Hunters sponsored an auxiliary group in the area which for a short while trained in military drilling and bush manoeuvres. From my study, I heard the first shuffling responses of feet to military commands develop, in about six weeks, into a disciplined uniformity. A grand passing-out parade in the presence of military and civic dignitaries brought to an unexplained end this exercise which demonstrated what a combination of purpose and organisation can achieve. It was sad to see the end of the fellowship and camaraderie which had bound together a force including a professional doctor, artisans, schoolboys and unemployed youths.

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6 America & New Found Lands

In pursuance of my research into the use of Africans and black characters on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, I had the rare privilege to do research at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D. C. in 1960. This was America before the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the great Selma civil rights marches in Alabama in 1965. John F. Kennedy was in the thick of the campaign which was to make him the youngest President of the United States of America while also breaking a religious barrier as the first Roman Catholic to be elected to that high office. It was indeed an exciting time to be in the States both as a scholar and as a citizen of the world in a period of transition and change. It was an equally exciting time in Sierra Leone, which achieved its independence on 27 April 1961 while I was still in America. Indeed, I spent Independence Day itself ending a seminar on Language in Sierra Leone, in the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where the only Sierra Leonean student, a young lady, turned up at my final lecture displaying a large placard with the slogan ‘Sierra Leone Independence Day, April 27 1961’. As I knew the Wright family of Fourah Bay Road in Freetown, Miss Wright’s appearance was a wonderful and unexpected reunion! I flew back to Washington immediately after, to join in the Independence celebrations there, with Marjorie. She organized a private celebratory dinner after which, with our guests, we joined the grand independence ball hosted by our Chargé d’Affaires, Dr W. H. Fitzjohn and Mrs Alice Fitzjohn. The Folger is fortunately situated for both academic study and an observation of American political life. Across Second Street SE is the Library of Congress, one of the greatest repositories of learning and culture. Across East Capitol Street is the marble palace of American Justice – the Supreme Court. A short walk away was 86

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America & New Found Lands Capitol Hill, the home of Congress and Senate, the seat of Government. The staff of the Folger and its fellows usually snatched a quick lunch at the canteen of the Supreme Court and, when there was a significant case, took a seat upstairs to hear an important pleading or decision. I was on a small grant and had to supplement my income by giving lectures at various universities on African history, literature and development. For this, the Library of Congress was a handy resource. Not the least of that extraordinary institution’s offerings were its lectures, special exhibitions and concerts – the Budapest String Quartet was in residence that year and we enjoyed their excellent concerts for which they played on the priceless vintage instruments in the library’s collection. Proximity to Capitol Hill yielded a fortunate chance meeting on one of my later visits, which was typical of the location of the Folger. I entered the tram one afternoon and noticed the name on a briefcase of the man seated next to me which also bore his title – Ambassador to Sierra Leone. I had never met him so I introduced myself. A. S. J. Carnahan had been a Congress man before his appointment as ambassador and arranged for me to meet and address the Foreign Relations Committee. On his return to Freetown, he telephoned Marjorie and invited her to dinner and struck up a friendship which lasted during his tenure in Sierra Leone. Such was the kind of opportunity which the site of the Folger offers, apart from the unique resources of collections on Elizabethan and Jacobean civilization. The Director of the Folger, Louis B. Wright, a distinguished scholar and wit, had a most affable and helpful team who were friends as well as staff. Giles Dawson, Librarian, became a personal friend through whom I was introduced to Catholic University where he was a professor and where I gave a few lectures. Father Hartke ran a unique theatre at that university which specialized in the production of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, many of which were not likely to be seen elsewhere. Since those days, Father Hartke’s contribution to early English theatre studies has been commemorated with a modern playhouse named after him. Other members of staff were generous with their hospitality. Marjorie and I spent many happy hours at Dorothy Mason’s apartment near the National Zoological Park on Connecticut Avenue, enjoying her excellent 87

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The Freetown Bond cooking, her good taste in wine and the brilliant company of friends she assembled on such occasions. Through my association with Folger readers, I gave occasional lectures on Shakespeare and his contemporaries, as well as on African literature, to several universities in and around the district of Columbia. Dr James G. McManaway (Mack to his friends) edited Shakespeare Quarterly for which I did an article and a review. Marjorie and I remember him with real affection. He introduced her to ‘bourbon and ginger’. Some Americans retreated from the bustle of city life and the indulgencies of gadgetry, into stark cabins in the country where they hewed their own wood and drew their own water. A senior colleague at the Folger, Professor William Haller, invited us to spend a couple of days with him and his wife at one such retreat in Holland, Massachusetts and took us on a tour which climaxed with a visit to his old school, Amherst College; this had a special interest for me as it was also the alma mater of the second Principal of Fourah Bay College, Edward Jones, who was one of the first black men to study at that famous institution. We were on our way to visit our friend Frank Oakley and his family at Yale where he was then a fellow. His estimation of me went up several notches when he realized that we were on such easy terms with a scholar whom he revered. It was at the Folger also that we met John Crow of London University, a scholar famed for his acquaintance with the most recondite details of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature. The librarian of Durham University in Britain, Dr B. S. Benedikz, told me of how John Crow, while casually browsing in the open stacks of that library, startled the staff by pointing out that the endpapers of a modern book’s binding were pages from the first edition of Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1623). The book immediately became a rare object and was removed from the open shelves and placed in the vaults. John Crow’s stories at lunch and tea on the terrace of the Folger were as wickedly acerbic as his reviews. An invitation from the trustees of the United Negro College Fund gave me the opportunity to give lectures on African literature and history to negro colleges and universities throughout the Southern States at a time when interest in Africa coincided with the struggle of the blacks for emancipation from racial discrimination. 88

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America & New Found Lands For these lectures, I had to spend evenings at the Library of Congress after work at the Folger, transforming myself into an African historian. The South was still largely segregated. Since most of my visits were to segregated institutions, such as Hampton, Fisk, Morehouse, Spellman and many others, I was protected from unpleasant personal embarrassment. On some occasions however, my statements caught the attention of unfriendly ears outside a college, and I had to catch earlier flights or trains than I had planned. My only personal experience of racial hostility was a mild one in Richmond, Virginia, where I went into a café to get some sandwiches. I walked up and gave my order to the nice black lady behind the counter but I also asked for a cup of chocolate while I was waiting. She became very confused and embarrassed and said in hushed tones, ‘I can only serve you to take away’. I was perched on a bar stool and only then did I look round to see a whole lot of white faces at the surrounding tables, glaring at me. Nobody offered me any physical violence but I felt the prickly cold sweat of fear as I hastily left without further incident. This was a mild encounter compared with the humiliation of our diplomatic representative, Dr William Fitzjohn, Sierra Leone’s Chargé d’Affaires to the United States, who was rudely refused service at about the same time at the Howard Johnson restaurant at Hagerstown on the New Jersey Turnpike. An embarrassed President Kennedy offered Dr Fitzjohn a personal apology. My tour of the South left a deep impression of the plight of my fellow blacks who were already seething with the anger which was to break out later in the ’60s and under the leadership of men like Martin Luther King, and was to lead to a greater recognition of minority rights and the liberation of America from itself. I was one with my countrymen and wrote: We still live on, on the other side of the ocean Which we once crossed in chains, The chains then shackling soul as well as body. The chains of body now shaken off The bonds of soul remain, still leaving bruises, wounds and scars

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The Freetown Bond Such are soul-tissues, that they harden if they do not break; Those surviving are hardier for the scars.

The bitter anger of black people which manifested itself in sit-ins and protest marches was natural. Even more striking to me however, was the participation in these protests of white students, the freedom riders, who abandoned their privileged comfort stations to expose themselves to the wrath of their kinsmen by joining the black protest. This also drove me to poetry: A line of students white as well as black, Silently picket a segregated movie house. The white ones dare to leave the snugness of their whiteness The black shake off the years of acquiescence. Silently they strive to elevate mankind.

* I shared with the rest of the world the shock of President Kennedy’s assassination on 22 November 1963. It is popularly believed that everybody remembers exactly where they were when they received the news. I certainly do. I had returned to Sierra Leone and was to give a public lecture at the Bo School hall to which a number of American Peace Corps volunteers had been invited. We were foregathering for this event when suddenly a dense atmosphere gripped the assembly as the rumour spread of the assassination. Such was the consternation that I still do not recall how the lecture went or even whether I gave it at all. * In 1965, I received a Commonwealth Fellowship tenable at the University of Leeds where A. Norman Jeffares was Professor and Chairman of the School of English. Derry Jeffares was a most affable, helpful and influential scholar whose reach was worldwide. An Irishman, he had worked in Australia and brought his affection for the vintages of that country into the cellars of the senior

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America & New Found Lands common room wine society. His advice on life and living in Leeds, backed by that of his wife Jeanne, helped to make the year warm in spite of the weather. Derry was the leading spirit behind the Commonwealth Literature movement which brought together scholars and writers from across the world to establish a literary genre out of the diversity of writing produced in the British Commonwealth. I taught a postgraduate seminar which was itself a symbol of commonwealth diversity and included Ngugi wa Thiong’o (then still James Ngugi). He was however busy writing A Grain of Wheat so that I saw less of him at the seminar than at my wife’s Saturday afternoons at The Avenue – a far more valuable allocation of his time and talent. A much more difficult assignment was an extra-mural class of middle-aged ladies who, having spent their childhood and youth supporting missionary work in Africa, found the suggestion totally unacceptable, while discussing Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, that the introduction of Christianity and British rule into Igboland had incidentally disrupted a coherent and valid social and religious order. Marjorie had preceded me to Leeds, with our daughter Esse, to look for a suitable apartment. John Wood, a cultivated gentleman and a distinguished member of the Yorkshire Education Authority who had translated Molière in the Penguin series, was thinking of converting the ground floor of his house on The Avenue, which was now too large for him alone. ‘Why don’t we do it together?’ he asked Marjorie on discovering she was a designer. The result of their collaboration was a most desirable residence whose inventory read like an art auction house catalogue entry. On the wall was a winter scene which had been offered to the Tate Gallery and was still under negotiation; a Hepplewhite divan and a Japanese silk screen were among other items. A large kitchen and dining room made it ideal for entertaining. A congenial neighbour was Arthur Ravenscroft, a colleague in the English department, who in fact had introduced Marjorie to Mr John Wood. A public tennis court only yards away completed the setting for a satisfying academic and social year. A resident approached our landlord and suggested that he might be risking bringing down the value of property in The Avenue by renting to people of colour. ‘I am not prejudiced myself ’ he argued 91

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The Freetown Bond ‘but others might take this view.’ ‘Since you have such a liberal attitude,’ countered Mr Wood, ‘don’t you think that a slight drop in the value of your property would be a small price to pay in the interest of racial harmony?’ When my wife turned up a few days later at the wheel of a white Mercedes, the neighbour crept back and conceded, ‘I think they are rather nice people.’ Thereafter, when on the occasional sunny day Marjorie preferred to walk up the road to the shopping centre, gentlemen stopped their cars, doffed their hats and offered her a ride! The postman had curiously asked whether ‘Professor’ was her husband’s first name; time was to assure him that the truth was what he had feared. Such delicate dilemmas recall that of the elegant landlady in Soyinka’s ‘Telephone Conversation’. On our last evening we were burning a few papers in the garden when Douglas Grant, another professor with whose family we had become very friendly, walked in to say goodbye and presented us with a copy of his book Margaret the First. A Biography of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. It was the last we were to see of him because he died very suddenly during an external examining trip to Singapore. On the following morning as we stood in the hall about to shut the front door for the last time, Mr John Wood bounded out of the shower, wrapped in his bath towel, and rushed downstairs to give us a final hug, and thus ended a pleasant year in Leeds. * We spent the 1970/71 academic year in Canada, stopping in France on our way to take one of our rare holidays with our daughter Essemary. We hired a tiny Renault car and toured Paris and its environs, visiting churches, and took a wine trip down the Loire. The pleasure we got from a particular bottle of wine encouraged us to buy one extra bottle to take to Vancouver where I was to teach a summer course. Whether it was the shaking during the long travel till we finally settled in our apartment in Vancouver, or just the nature of a vintage meant only for instant gratification, or something else, the wine which had given us such pleasure on the grounds of the Chateau tasted like old vinegar and had to be poured down the sink. As our main source of entertainment in Vancouver, we became the 92

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America & New Found Lands most faithful adherents of an enterprising drama group which performed impossibly experimental plays to the thinnest of audiences. They seemed to be waiting for us to arrive on the first nights of their frequently new offerings as if our support was a much needed lifeline. We met Bill New, a colleague in the English department, and his wife Peggy, who became our gracious friends. By the end of the summer we needed them even more when I had my first indication that I was going to have serious problems with my vision. I played tennis progressively badly; my eyes were playing tricks against the light. I suppose I should have known one day in 1968 in Freetown that something was going wrong, the day an old friend beat me six games to love. Nothing went right in that set; I threw the ball up for service and missed it as it came down; I went for killing smashes and contacted nothing but air; I excused my poor performance with the excuse that I was facing the setting sun from my side of the court, but I had played in similar conditions before. I took my defeat with good grace and paid my forfeit – a carton of beer – the price of my humiliation, which at that time did not cost the equivalent of a month’s salary! I still drove a car. And I went on with my life without too much difficulty with the aid of glasses, which I had worn since the age of about seven. But the glare of undipped headlights, always a nuisance, now became a peril. I tried slightly tinted lenses, and they seemed to work for a while. One night, however, I went too near the toes of an erring pedestrian and gave up night driving. Then I had a daylight scare. I approached a narrow bridge over which I had driven a dozen times before, but this time I just could not focus on it and I felt I was in danger of tipping over into the shallow river which it spanned. I took it at about two miles an hour, to the annoyance and horn-blasting of the taxi-driver behind me, and once across, I pulled up to wipe my sweating brow. The return journey was an even greater fright. I never drove a car again. Our family is not distinguished for twenty-twenty vision and my father had to give up playing the organ in his seventies because he could no longer see the music even with the help of a succession of more powerful glasses, so I was philosophical. Anyway my wife was a good driver and could even see round corners. 93

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The Freetown Bond At the end of the term in Vancouver, I picked up a copy of Christopher Okigbo’s Heavensgate which was beginning to yield its secrets to me, and realized that I couldn’t read a single line. I consulted the campus doctor who after a long examination sent me to a consultant who ordered me into hospital immediately. Stunned by this bewildering change of fortune, I weakly protested that I had a series of lectures booked for the following week at Kalamazoo. ‘Professor’ he replied, ‘if we do not do this now, you may never read another lecture anywhere!’ That sobered me for a while. I was in hospital that night, still dazed, and was on the operating table the next day. Our health insurance cover for the year was only to start a few days later at the beginning of the academic year – we were sneaking in the summer without cover! After the operation, Marjorie had to leave me in the kindly hands of our friends, Bill and Peggy New, while she travelled with our daughter Esse to Toronto to start a long and, as it turned out, friendly battle with our sponsors to backdate our insurance. She had spent our fortune paying cash for my hospital stay. As she produced bundle after bundle of notes, the hospital cashier had observed in awe that she had never seen so much cash come out of one thin lady. I arrived in Toronto still heavily bandaged, still sore. It turned out that my problem was far from over. The surgeon in Vancouver had repaired a detached retina by effecting a scleral buckle which, as he explained, was like patching a bicycle tyre; but a more permanent condition was glaucoma, a family legacy. In any case, that first operation to remove fluid from behind the eye was not quite successful even with the help of lazers. I had to continue the treatment in Toronto thus missing our wonderful planned train ride across Canada, and the magnificent scenery of which I had read and heard so much. More important matters were at stake. In Toronto there was more surgery, and another of those limbo periods when the eyes are kept bandaged and you have to hope that when the blindfold is removed this time, after many days of darkness, you would be able to see. Not clearly and not immediately, but gradually the swelling subsided, the bloodshot eye regained its former shape and colour, and after eye tests and new lenses, I could see again. A slow game of catch-as-catch-can went on for a while, the vision pulling 94

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America & New Found Lands a little further away from me while I reached with a lunge in an effort to catch up. Toronto turned out to be a satisfying even happy year. I wrote the first draft of my book on Wole Soyinka and completed The Elizabethan Image of Africa, working long distance with my editor Megan Lloyd, at the Folger in Washington, D. C. It was a busy and productive year and with the extensive library and other resources, it was far less laborious than teaching and researching at Fourah Bay which, on the other hand, had its own compensations. Marjorie, who always used these extended stays abroad to indulge in her own interests, enrolled in a college of art and produced works in acrylic, silk screen printing and batik, some of which hang in friends’ houses and two of which were exhibited in Lagos at FESTAC 1977. In the middle of the Toronto winter she often had to dig out her car from the snow in the parking lot before setting off to pick up Esse from her college and me from mine. She entertained widely, using our household gadgetry and the almost unlimited resources of the Toronto shops. Between the piano, the kitchen, the art school, typing, her dressmaking and the farmers’ market, she had an exhilarating year. We adopted an Anglican Church, Grace Church on the Hill, where the Professor of Music at the university was organist, and we attended evensong there regularly on Sundays. I gave lectures at the neighbouring York University where I was elected a Fellow of Bethune College, still then called by its temporary name, Fourth College. I gave occasional lectures in several other universities in Ontario and at the University of New Brunswick at Fredericton. At Windsor, I taught an inter-session course during the Easter vacation, for which I commuted weekly from Toronto and had to subsist on a hamper prepared by Marjorie when it became quickly clear that my attempt to cook my own meals would have had serious health consequences. Michael and Jane Millgate had met Marjorie and Esse on their arrival from Vancouver. The hosts were expecting Marjorie to arrive with an eighteen-month-old daughter and were waiting with disappointment on the arrival concourse at her non-appearance when, instead, a healthy eighteen-year-old walked up and introduced herself and her mother. From then until the last night in Toronto, when after dinner and theatre we walked about the empty streets 95

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The Freetown Bond reluctant to say goodbye, the Millgates and the Joneses remained a close family. Esse eventually got married, settled in the United States and kept in close contact with them until her untimely death in 2002. Our large house on four levels may have been oversold to us in the landlord’s letter but it was quite convenient and even gracious in some of its features. The rose garden turned out to be a couple of shrubs in the backyard and the ‘fountain’, the sight of which almost choked our friend Shirley Hulme when it was revealed to her, was a rough cement lad who weakly peed into a stone basin when turned on. But there was a piano in the kitchen, which Marjorie enjoyed playing, and there were several bedrooms and our host’s precious library with old Victorian volumes – we were both in Literature – which I was flattered to have had left in my care. The house was ideal for entertaining our colleagues from the university and a number of Nigerian and Sierra Leonean students. Among the latter were Sylvia Young who after postgraduate studies returned to teach in her own country and later to work in the UN system. And there was Hannah Khoury who later wrote a torrid novel on African life in the United States, So Pretty an African. Our Christmas party that year, 1970, was snowed in, and everything in the house was eaten that sleepless night including a bucketful of nuts and jars of cranberry jelly when everything else had run out. It was an unforgettable day and night. We looked back at the end of a satisfactory and fulfilling year and settled once again at Fourah Bay, but Canada beckoned again. I received an invitation to re-visit to teach a postgraduate course in the summer of 1972 but, since I had wished to spend that long vacation in Freetown, I wrote declining. Back came a reply upgrading the appointment to that of Distinguished Visiting Professor and an urgent plea to re-consider. I still have a picture, with three students under a tree in the campus of Fredericton University of New Brunswick, of an informal session with part of a talented and highly motivated postgraduate class. I lost touch with Bob, a quiet and thoughtful Canadian with interesting insights into African literature, which he was encountering for the first time. I was to encounter again Micere (Dr Micere Mugo), at the University of Nairobi, where along with Ngugi wa Thiong’o, David Rubadiri, Okot p’Bitek and 96

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America & New Found Lands others she was to play an important part in the exciting English Department, which had resolved to link the imported English literature with the vital oral tradition of Kenya. The third person, John, I was never to meet again in the flesh but was linked to him by a curious coincidence several years later, which he reported to me by letter. He had been teaching in Nova Scotia and was driving back to his base and as he crossed into Fredericton, he turned on his car radio and heard me being interviewed on the BBC during the visit of a group of Nova Scotians to Freetown. While he was a member of my postgraduate class, he had made another niche for himself by staging an extraordinary series of plays on the river bank every summer night, none of which was longer than ten or fifteen minutes. Some were even shorter! * In 1973 I received an attractive offer of another Commonwealth professorship tenable at the Universities of Sheffield and of Kent at Canterbury. I at first thought that it was too soon after our return from Canada for me to take another year off even without salary and wrote politely declining to Professor Molly Mahood of the University of Kent, who had proposed the appointment along with Christopher Heywood of the University of Sheffield. The plan was that I was to spend a term at Sheffield helping to set up and teach an MA programme there, and the next two terms in Kent teaching Shakespeare in the place of Professor Molly Mahood who planned to be in America. If only I could go. Everything fitted like a jig-saw and the idea of helping to set up a postgraduate programme on African Literature was most attractive. Molly Mahood was insistent and Chris Heywood almost plaintive. I was persuaded. The African Literature programme at Sheffield attracted students from Nigeria, Cameroon, the United Kingdom and Sierra Leone. Among the bright sparks in a scintillating class were: Bode Sowande, a budding playwright who was to become one of the leading figures in Nigerian theatre, Ime Ikiddeh with a bright university career before him, my own student Kadi Sesay who was destined to head the Department of English at Fourah Bay College, along with Anne97

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The Freetown Bond Marie Heywood, a mature and inspiring scholar. The day Professor Wole Soyinka joined us for a seminar, and then came home as my house guest followed by the rest of the class for a party, was the highlight of the year for both them and myself. Marjorie had had to return to Freetown briefly on an emergency and I had to play host on my own. She had left a freezer full of food to sustain me until her return but she had not taken into account a rousing house party. A good time was had by all but I camped on half-rations until her merciful return. The term soon passed and we proceeded to Kent which we innocently thought, being in the south, would be warmer. The truth was that, if it snowed anywhere in England, Kent was sure to catch some of it. We had a delightful house, the very mill cottage that the architect had designed for himself while he supervised the construction of the university. We even had our own canoe on the bank of the river Wear which flowed past our lawn. My Shakespeare students were undergraduates who acquainted me with the ways of a completely new university generation – strange hair-cuts, young men with earrings and torn jeans and anoraks. One bright young man, touching his single earring, explained its significance: ‘We don’t go in for formal marriage; my girl friend and I split a pair of earrings between us and that’s it!’ But we got on extremely well with Shakespeare and my final term, which I had been promised I could use as I wished, was spent continuing the Shakespeare programme and introducing African Literature. We had our two daughters with us; Esse, engaged to be married, and Mimi, about two years old. Blackfriars, the pedestrian precinct where we lived, was practically under the shadow of Canterbury Cathedral so that at the tolling of the bell we could stroll along for evensong. Mimi conveniently made friends with two old ladies in the precinct and often had tea with them, sometimes asking whether she could take home a piece of cake for her dad. Esse who was between college and marriage was left largely to her own devices but managed an evening cookery class. She even contemplated designing and making her own wedding cake but only got as far as buying the ingredients. London was conveniently close and our friends, the Hulmes and the Lands, frequently visited, while we 98

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America & New Found Lands sometimes drove down to the South Bank in London after work for a concert or a play. My old teacher, Elizabeth Hirst, and her sister Phyllis lived in Deal along the coast and Marjorie and Mimi frequently drove to have tea with them or sometimes brought them home to Canterbury for lunch. Elizabeth Hirst was thrilled when she came as my guest to Adam House in London where I gave a lecture on African writing to the Royal Society of Arts, after which I received the Society’s Silver Medal and an invitation to become a Fellow. Christopher Heywood, my colleague at Sheffield, was my Chairman. From Kent also I renewed my Oxford connection by giving an occasional lecture on African Literature and we discovered how the geography of Oxford had changed in the twenty-five or so years since we were last there. Our friend Gary Clarke, who had returned to the city to complete work on his doctoral thesis, had offered to meet us at Magdalen Bridge and lead us in. Marjorie, who had of course once lived in Oxford, at first waved away his offer, but was eventually humbled as Gary led us through a maze of one-way streets, by-passes and other detours to what had, on our mental map, seemed a straightforward destination. * An American institution with which I have pleasant associations is Williams College, one of the oldest colleges in Massachusetts. I was invited in 1980 to fill the position of Margaret Bundy Scott Visiting Professor in Literature to teach English Renaissance Drama and Contemporary African Literature to mixed classes of white and black Americans, as well as students from other countries. Williams had originally been a traditional white conservative institution but had opened its doors more widely by this time. One of my students came from Bermuda, an island in which I knew only two people. When she came to say goodbye, I mentioned the name of a fellow Sierra Leonean who lived in that country, to which she exclaimed, ‘Do you mean Uncle K?’ She was, indeed, returning home to attend a joint family wedding. As if this were not coincidence enough, I casually remarked that an Oxford friend, Bill Cox, was the only other person I knew on the island, ‘Do you mean Uncle Bill?’ He was now 99

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The Freetown Bond a senator and a distinguished citizen. She had just linked me with Chukwudinka Kawaley, the son of my childhood vicar, and a white college friend, both in one island. What a small place the world has become. I was to return to Williamstown five years later to make a celebratory speech at the installation of my college friend, Frank Oakley, as President of Williams College and to receive the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters. It was a joyous culmination of a friendship begun some thirty-five years earlier at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Indeed this memoir is partly due to his suggestion, when it looked as if I might never get around to starting, that I look over my papers to pick up material I had written on other occasions and see how much inspiration I could get from them. * Many of my Corpus friendships became equally long lasting, even family affairs. When in 1955 I returned to England to continue my research at the London Library, still then housed at the British Museum, we borrowed the house of Geoffrey Goodall and his wife Marion, where we got acquainted with their effective but temperamental Aga boiler. Our friendship has endured and he became treasurer of the UK support group of Knowledge Aid Sierra Leone, which I founded many years later in 2002. Martin Kenyon, with whom I had taken my first walk round Christ Church meadows in Oxford, many years later drove me on a scenic trip to Lidbury North in Shropshire to stay with his parents, and attend Matins at the little church in the parish of Fugglestone over the Welsh border where George Herbert, the seventeenth-century metaphysical poet, had been rector; Martin visited us several times in Freetown on his many trips to southern Africa. He had access to family seats in the Albert Hall and treated me to that prestigious accommodation at the promenade concerts; these were rather in contrast to the plebeian standing area from which I enjoyed many more concerts. Keith Bridge was the first of my Corpus friends to invite me home for a weekend. He and his mother appear in our wedding group photograph with his sister Jacqueline, one of Marjorie’s bridesmaids. With the Hulme family – Geoff had lived in the staircase above me in 100

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America & New Found Lands College – it was the wives who later cemented our relationship, which came to involve the rest of our families. Marjorie is the proud godmother of their beautiful and talented daughter, Alison, and her parents once spent a happy Christmas with us in Sierra Leone. Their homes in England were always open to us on our frequent visits as when, for instance, I stayed with them in Birmingham and commuted to see all the plays in the Stratford season in 1964. They, in turn, visited us in our various temporary homes in Oxford and Canterbury and, memorably, in Toronto in the winter of 1970. Alan Davies, with whom I shared tutors, was my wife’s guest when he came at my invitation to be external examiner at Fourah Bay College while I was performing a similar duty elsewhere. The congregation at Holy Trinity Church in Freetown grew quite used to such visitors turning up with us in church at the early service on Sunday mornings. Martin Kenyon surprised me with his enthusiasm when, thinking that such a service would be too early for one who had just arrived after a long plane trip, I tried to slip away leaving him in bed. He was up, already dressed and with an apple in his mouth, before I had got the car out of the garage. * For several years, I was the only African Professor of English in the universities of Sub-Saharan Africa and, as a result, I found myself in great demand as an external examiner in nearly all of the new universities in the region: Ibadan, Ife, Lagos, Legon, Cape Coast, Nairobi and Makerere. This gave me an excellent opportunity of observing the development of these newer institutions against the background of Fourah Bay, which had been involved in university work for over a hundred years and had been set in the traditional ways of the older British universities. Some of these new universities grew up in communities with strong historical oral cultures and made conscious efforts to incorporate these rich traditions into their programmes. The University of Ife for example, with its patronage of the Ife Festival of the Arts, derived inspiration from the ancient oral, musical and visual arts of the Yoruba and strengthened its own academic offerings in the encounter. Musicians like Akin Euba 101

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The Freetown Bond explored the potential of traditional patterns and instruments, while painters, metal and cloth designers like Folarin, exhibited inspired designs and incorporated traditional materials and motifs into modern structures. A similar cross-fertilization was evident in the work of the English Department at Nairobi where, under the inspiration of Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Micere Mugo, Taban lo Liyong, Okot p’Bitek and others, students were required to undertake research into aspects of the indigenous culture. My visit to the University of Lagos in 1965 coincided with the tenure of Wole Soyinka as acting Head of the Department of English. His identification with, and his consummate knowledge of, Yoruba culture permeates all his work and shoots forth in festivals and manifestations, large and small. Pulling out his drawer, he casually handed me one of the windfalls of one such cultural happening, a mimeographed copy of Rites of the Harmattan Solstice which he had just produced and which I had just missed. Offerings like this fell along Soyinka’s path like plates dropped from Mark Antony’s pocket. When we finished our examination chores we were to have gone out to dinner but the shades of the Biafran War were beginning to gather and he was most concerned for his Igbo friends in Lagos who were in some danger. We drove round the city making sure of their safety before going to a very late meal. Not long after this Soyinka was himself arrested and imprisoned without trial for his attempts to avert the total catastrophe of civil war. * It is an indication of the international nature of the staff of Fourah Bay College in the 1960s and 1970s that we met the ‘Fourah Bay diaspora’ almost everywhere we went afterwards. In 1970 David Carroll, a colleague in the English department at Fourah Bay, was now at the University of Toronto and lived a few blocks away with his wife Dorothy during our year at that university. Douglas Killam, now at the neighbouring York University, had also been at Fourah Bay. Another colleague, Paul Edwards, turned up unexpectedly from a visiting appointment in the US to see us in Vancouver. Fourah Bay College produced another of its echoes, which regularly surprised 102

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America & New Found Lands me throughout my travels, on one of our visits to the neighbouring Simon Fraser University. We had scarcely entered the vast campus when we saw a turbulent crowd of students and staff on some sort of demonstration, to which Simon Fraser University in the ’70s was particularly prone. As they approached, the leading figure began to assume a haunting familiarity. Was it? Yes, it was Lionel Kenner, a former colleague at Fourah Bay, where he had taught Philosophy and regularly propounded his revolutionary ideas outside the classroom. Lionel was at it again! He threw down his papers and embraced us – they were on their way to occupy some office or other as an act of protest. Even in Tokyo, when we visited in 1988, Clive Collins turned up at our hotel looking for us. He had seen a mention of my presence in the city in one of the papers. Since I had last seen him, on the seventh floor of the Kennedy building on Mount Aureol, he had written two novels. That evening, after a perilous ride through the maze of Tokyo streets, when neither Clive nor the taxi driver seemed to be quite sure how to get to our destination, we had an excellent Japanese dinner at a restaurant with his Japanese wife Kago and reminisced over life at Fourah Bay College. In Cape Town in August 2002, we had yet another of these unexpected encounters with an ex-Fourah Bay colleague. We had been at a final session of meetings to determine the One Hundred Best Books by African authors in the twentieth century. Our arrival at the meeting in which I was to speak was itself dramatic as, having been left behind at Heathrow Airport by an overbooked South African Airlines, we had arrived on a later flight and were driven to the conference hall just in time for me to ascend the podium to read my paper. This dramatic entry had been followed by a banquet at which both Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu were fellow guests. While we were relaxing on the Sunday morning, two people entered the hotel lounge and the lady, Nadine Gordimer, the Nobel Laureate, asked whether I had met her colleague, Vernon February. ‘Vernie’ I exclaimed, and we flew into an embrace. After Fourah Bay, where he had played cricket as well as taught English Literature, I had last seen Vernie in Holland where he had lived in exile, having found apartheid South Africa intolerable. He was now thinking of 103

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The Freetown Bond returning home to a changed country. (We had actually been waiting for Ogunade Davidson, who held a distinguished position at the University of Cape Town from which he later returned to Fourah Bay.) Richard Taylor and his versatile Italian wife Aina – her African name was charmingly apt – reappeared at various times, at Toronto, at Ife, at Dartmouth in New Hampshire. At Bayreuth in Germany we spent a month with them in 1986 when I held a visiting appointment at the university. Bob Wilcher was a member of a West African Consortium at the University of Birmingham and a host for my programme when I gave a couple of seminars there in 1974. At Fourah Bay, apart from teaching, he had been involved in drama; he had played in the interracial production of The Alchemist in Freetown, returned to the UK, and married Miriam, a fellow member of the cast. One morning at Fourah Bay, as I drove down to my office after a heavy storm I noticed that the roof of one of my colleague’s houses had been ripped off. I turned into his drive and found him seated in one dry corner calmly having his breakfast. ‘Dick’ I exclaimed ‘so your roof ’s blown off.’ ‘Yes indeed’ he replied in his usual phlegmatic way as though this was an everyday occurrence. I met our imperturbable librarian once again in Accra, this time with his roof firmly on. The list of these happy meetings goes on. * The invitation in 1983 from the Embassy of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea offered a rare opportunity to visit a country completely outside my normal experience, though initially this was such a daunting prospect that I found it difficult to accept. Korea was a long way off, my vision was declining, and I could hardly contemplate such a journey on my own. The Embassy responded with astonishing generosity by extending the invitation to my wife and any professor that I cared to name. The time of the visit also coincided with an invitation from the chairman of the Freetown City Council to join a civic delegation to the city of Kingston upon Hull, which was marking the one hundred and 104

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America & New Found Lands fiftieth anniversary of the death of William Wilberforce. I thought I could combine the two visits. I chose Cyril Foray, a former student of mine, now Head of the History department, and we three set off for Korea. One of our stops was at Irkutsk, in Siberia, one of the bleakest places I have ever seen, the airport consisting almost entirely of cold steel, with a refreshment counter which seemed to serve nothing but vodka. Our host greeted us on arrival at Pyongyang and almost immediately embarked on a long introduction to Korea and the Juche idea, its governing philosophy. All during the visit we were subjected to similar lectures, sometimes disregarding our state of tiredness, our longing for sleep or even our capacity to absorb anything. We were housed in a state guest house separated from the city by a long underground tunnel. There followed a round of visits to the country’s show places: the gigantic statue of the ‘Great Leader’ Kim Il Sung which towered over the city; various people’s palaces with wide marble corridors and ornate chandeliers; a museum built into a mountain with huge metal doors weighing many tons and closing to the touch of a finger; hospitals, vast, sterile and seemingly short of patients except, for instance, for an extraordinary train of newborn babies tightly wrapped in blankets looking like beautiful dolls, and similar wonders of Korean ingenuity. We visited kindergartens with pink-cheeked, impeccably dressed infants performing feats on the piano, older children keeping table tennis balls interminably in play, and other marvels of childhood precocity. We were driven along highways with hardly any traffic except our small cavalcade of Mercedes-Benz cars and hardly any pedestrians at all. We were taken down to an underground railway station of polished marble and statues where the doors of an incoming train opened to reveal lines of passengers who silently filed out of the station with not the slightest suggestion of disorder. The whole visit was organized on the basis of surprise. We were informed only at the time of departure that we were going on a trip on which we would need to take our toothbrush and pyjamas because we were going to spend the night. We visited the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) from which we could view the distant towers of South Korea, but which we were assured were only made of paste105

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The Freetown Bond board for propaganda purposes. Most remarkably, we were taken to farms whose fruit trees were almost manicured, and which produced the largest apples, pears and tomatoes that we had ever seen. My wife sneaked a few seeds of these giant tomatoes which she planted on our return and which produced luxuriant leaves but yielded us no fruit. We were escorted everywhere and were given no opportunity to see the ordinary people and how they lived. Every factory, farm, school, university, had at its entrance a shrine introducing the ‘Great Leader’ whose brainchild everything was. The ‘Dear Leader’ Kim Jung Il was being introduced as the obvious successor to his father and he too had his exhibitions of personalia in strategic places, for instance, at the university where he had left a shining example. Marjorie and I are early risers and one morning before breakfast, went into the garden to admire the flowers. We were immediately joined by two gentlemen who gently but firmly invited us back in, waving aside our suggestion that we were only out for a little stroll before breakfast with the assurance that the meal was ready. We were never left on our own. Once, however, we briefly shared a car with a young student guide who was fascinated by Shakespeare, particularly the passage in Hamlet including the line, ‘What a piece of work is a man’, which he haltingly recited as he flicked through my passport and, pausing at the page which contained my American visa on which he rested his finger, raised his eyes to heaven and said not a word. The chauffeur could not have noticed the longing in his eyes. That was the last time that we saw him. North Korea seemed to us to be a rigidly controlled state based on one idea embodied in one person, the ‘Great Leader’. Our hosts resented the suggestion that theirs was a communist state. It was not. It was a unique realization of self-reliance without parallel anywhere else. It produced peace and prosperity for its people who were the happiest in the world! We did not see this for ourselves. Our long journey back involved a stop-over in Moscow and we took the opportunity of some sight-seeing and a visit to our embassy which was then headed by another former student of mine, Eya Mbayo, who entertained us in the old palatial building in which the embassy was housed. While they complained about the difficulty of heating the high-ceilinged rooms in the winter, his staff served us 106

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America & New Found Lands large goblets of Georgian champagne. Things were not so bad after all! From Moscow we flew to London where I joined the chairman of the Freetown City Council, Dr Oju Mends, and the Town Clerk, Mr Henry Fergusson, for the civic visit to Kingston upon Hull and the Wilberforce anniversary events. William Wilberforce (1759–1833) had been born in Hull and for twenty-three years headed the parliamentary opposition which eventually led to the Slave Trade Act of 1807. He worked with Thomas Clarkson on the establishment of Sierra Leone. He was also involved in the foundation of the Church Mission Society which started Fourah Bay College and the CMS schools which my sisters and I were to attend. One of the highlights was a grand service at the civic Holy Trinity Church at which Dr Mends read the lesson and for which we were joined by the Sierra Leone High Commissioner, Mr Victor Sumner and his wife. Among the several civic receptions was one given by the Lord Lieutenant of the county who lived in the house of whose garden the English poet Marvell wrote his poem ‘The Garden’. Realizing my special interest, the Lord Lieutenant graciously took me on a special tour. Much later, in 1989, the Mayor of Hull paid a return visit to Freetown and among other engagements, had lunch with us at our house at Leicester Village, after which we took him and his party on a visit to the newly founded Mountain Rural Secondary School at Regent Village, of which I was chairman. In his letter of thanks, the Lord Mayor, Councillor Smett wrote: ‘It was a real pleasure to visit this newlyestablished school and the displays given by the children certainly made the occasion a special highlight of our visit to Freetown.’

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7 West African Travels

Kwame Nkrumah had swept from prison in the Gold Coast to become President of independent Ghana in 1957 and inspired all British Africa to follow suit. The opportunity to visit two of our closest friends at such a time was too tempting to be resisted. In 1958 we arrived in Accra on the day Lord Listowel, the last Governor-General of the Gold Coast, was leaving in a burst of pageantry severing the final bond between Britain and its colony. The atmosphere in Ghana was electric. Nkrumah had gathered from various countries ideological allies who seemed as committed to Ghana’s development as his many compatriots, who were determined to take the country into the front line of nations. His Attorney-General Geoffrey Bing, for instance, a successful British QC and member of the Westminster parliament, was as integrated into this ideal as any native-born Ghanaian. In parliament, democracy flourished as we watched the two protagonists confronting each other in debate; the passionate Nkrumah, resplendent in Kente, and the intellectual Busia in his Western-style suit. All seemed set for a flourishing future. The mood pervaded every aspect of life. Churches, mosques, markets, schools, the university, theatre, poetry and the arts all vibrated with the promise of a new Africa. We could not have had more fitting companions for this great experience than our friends Willie and Bertha Conton. William Conton was later to be the chief education officer in Sierra Leone and was author of the novel The African. Together we attended the numerous parties which still carried on the excitement of independence, danced to the throbbing music of the Ghana nightclubs, and enjoyed Bertha’s excellent cuisine. We were a natural foursome. Willie had spent part of his childhood in Mamma Pratt’s family making Birdie, as he called her, and himself like siblings. Bertha and 108

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West African Travels I were brought up in families very closely linked, making us similarly like brother and sister. We were never out of touch even when separated by distance. Throughout our lives, we planned similar experiences together. We visited each other in different parts of the world – Freetown, Bo, London, Oxford, Washington, D. C., Maryland, Williamstown and Paris – where either couple was temporarily located. Our week long visit to the Edinburgh Festival in 1956 was made even more memorable by my giving them the wrong address of the accommodation I had arranged for all of us. Willie’s death in 2003 broke up half a century of this foursome. We watched with pride and pleasure the growth of Bertha’s verandah class for her two children grow to become Leone Preparatory School, one of the leading independent primary schools frequently topping the list of pupils in the National Primary School Certificate Examination in the country. * I undertook an exciting tour of Nigeria in 1963 which showed me how Modern and traditional art had come into productive engagement. My travels brought me into personal contact with a number of Nigerian authors whose work had burst into world prominence during the 1950s and 1960s, and also with the lesser known flowering of cheap literature – the Onitsha market pamphlets – in which tradition some of these better known writers such as Cyprian Ekwenzi and Chinua Achebe had had some of their earliest work published. Christopher Okigbo was the representative of Cambridge University Press, who provided him with Cambridge House in Ibadan as his office. I spent there one of those unforgettable nights in the company of Chinua Achebe, J. P. Clark, Ben Obumselu, Wole Soyinka and of Christopher Okigbo himself. Such a brilliant collection of talent in festive informality is a priceless experience. (I had similar moments in Nairobi with Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Okot p’Bitek, Micere Mugo and David Rubadiri.) My trip however had an even wider purpose, to dig a little deeper into the backgrounds from which the new Nigerian writers emerged. In my letter to Ulli Beier, who greatly assisted in planning my itinerary, I 109

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The Freetown Bond wrote: ‘My object is to study various forms of Nigerian art, and I would like to organize a series of visits to art centres, and to talk to as many sculptors, painters, weavers, dyers and writers as possible.’ This aim was fulfilled beyond any expectation I might have had when I conceived it. As I wrote in my report of the tour to the Humanities Research Committee of Fourah Bay College which partly funded it: ‘This listing of places and persons gives no idea of the richness of the experience I gained.’ From my arrival at Lagos Airport on Saturday 27 July 1963, where I was met by my friend Sola Ejinwunmi, the tour assumed its whirlwind character. I barely had time to drop my luggage at Yinka Olumide’s before rushing off to see him perform in David and Bathsheba. From this comparatively sober beginning, we went off to The Cool Cats, a night club with a special interest because it was run by an old Fourah Bay College man. Sunday saw a round of visits including one to Sir Kofo Abayomi, a distinguished ophthalmologist and public figure. At the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) I listened to a remarkable comedy series Save Journey originated and produced by Yemi Lijadu with Wole Soyinka as one of the scriptwriters. One typical episode was that in which a lorry driver of Save Journey organized a beauty contest. The language was pidgin spoken racily, without the self-consciousness which often comes with the use of vernacular in such programmes – indeed a pioneer in the artistic use of pidgin in the dramatic art of Nigeria. At Gallery Labac, a centre where contemporary artists exhibited and sold their works, the curving, swaying figures of T. Airen caught my eye as well as Eligiator’s smooth, graceful abstract figures which strikingly represented the new Nigerian sculpture. At the fabulous Lagos Museum which displayed effectively the rich background of Nigerian art and culture, I was able to place the contemporary artists of the Gallery Labac against their predecessors. Like their traditional forerunners, the new artists were more skilled with the adze than with the brush and shared with them the technique of exaggeration and distortion. The highlight of the day was my visit to Cyprian Ekwensi, which started rather coldly but blossomed into a most enlightening selfportrait of Nigeria’s most popular novelist of the time. He felt that 110

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West African Travels literary critics had either neglected him or disparaged his work and he obviously put me among that number. However, my acquaintance with his earlier works, such as Beautiful Feathers and Yaba Roundabout Murder, and my stated intention of exploring the Onitsha Market publications, warmed him up considerably, and his attitude to his work came pouring out: ‘Look! I am of the people. I am a popular writer. If anyone told me I was an intellectual writer I would not take it as a compliment. I don’t write academic stuff. I write of life as I have seen it, and I write for the people. People read my books. I have not lived in Ikoyi all my life. I have lived right here in the heart of the city. I am 42 this year. I have changed jobs ten times. I am a chemist. I have worked in different hospitals. I have bought my food off the side-walk cooks. When I am out of Lagos I happily take my shoes off and live with the people’. I mentioned Burning Grass. ‘You know I went and lived with those people. I slept on the ground with them. I have been round Nigeria five times, living with the people. I write about life as I see it. Burning Grass is quite different from the city novels. There are those who think I can only write city stuff, but look at Burning Grass. You can hardly believe it is from the same pen. Who can judge what will survive? Dostoevsky did not set out to write classics; he wrote to pay his debts. I am a popular novelist. Posterity will determine what will survive. I am not bothered by criticism. Do you know that the film rights of Jagua Nana have been sold to an Italian company? They are not allowed to come and film it. It is supposed to be a misrepresentation of Lagos. There are not supposed to be any prostitutes in Lagos. I am supposed to be putting whitewash all over the place. Well I am not a whitewasher. I write about life as I see it. Literature is not propaganda. I am not interested in whitewashing. Dickens was a popular writer. Dickens is my ideal. He wrote about life. That is what I do too.’ Ekwensi had suddenly become an eloquent flowing prophet. He knows what he wants to do and is willing to be read now. ‘What will survive? Who is to judge?’ He mentioned When Love Whispers, an early work of his which I had never heard of but which I later got in Onitsha. He was a remarkable personality. He almost frightened me at first, but the handshake at the end was warm and marked the beginning of a long friendship. 111

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The Freetown Bond Ibadan in 1963, where one felt the beating heart of modern Nigeria, where the university met the town, where the traditional met the contemporary, and one could blunder into poets, playwrights, drummers, dancers and singers, musicians, carvers and painters in various traditions, was my next stop. It was close to smaller Yoruba towns and under the guidance of my friend Adegoke Olubumo and the expert tutelage of Ulli Beier, I visited Obas in their palaces, witnessed Shango and other festivals, and experienced almost at first hand, the traditions from which the modern practitioners derive their inspiration. At Mbari in Ibadan, for example, I went to the launching of some paintings by Colette Omogbai whose vivid abstract representations of Grief, Poverty, Courage, as well as the more realistic At the Hairdresser’s were an example of the absolute contemporary in painting. At the adjoining club, in a cosmopolitan mix of Nigerians, visiting Europeans and Americans, John Pepper Clark regaled the company on his recent visit to America, which later was expanded in his book America Their America: ‘I was shown all the great things and I was not impressed. They said I had disdain for Princeton and they threw me out.’ In competition with this was a jazz ensemble consisting of African and European drums, trumpet and saxophone, led at the piano by Bucknor with a female vocalist from my own country, Yema! Mbari (one of several such centres in Nigeria) effectively drew all kinds of artists together and their patrons, fusing the traditional and the contemporary in an intriguing modernity. As will be seen in this chapter the Mbari movement had since 1961 swept across Nigeria. Chinua Achebe has explained that among the Igbo ‘Mbari was a celebration through art, of the world and of the life lived in it.’ Ulli Beier, a great organizer and facilitator, made use of the outreach facilities of the University of Ibadan’s Extra-Mural Department in all sorts of imaginative ways. During 1960 he had shuttled between Ibadan and Lagos in the west, and Nsukka and Enugu in the east to give coherence to a range of exciting ideas being discussed between writers and playwrights, painters and sculptors. In March 1961 Wole Soyinka and Ulli Beier convened the Mbari Club in Ibadan. Other clubs were soon also established at Oshogbo, Lagos, Enugu and Nsukka. 112

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West African Travels Ulli Beier’s house at Oshogbo was a museum in which all the exhibits moved and had a life of their own. We no sooner opened the wicket gate than we were surrounded and accompanied upstairs by a collection of goats, children and dogs all looking perfectly in place. Two carved heads guarded the staircase, and ornamental verandah posts, abstract paintings, metal-beaten panels, cement sculptures attacked from all sides. Ulli of course, fitted in as though he himself was just another walking artefact. There was certainly a lot to take in, including Georgina who lived and painted with Ulli upstairs while Suzanne Wenger (his first wife), in her buba and her priestess bangles, sculpted in cement below. We picked our way first in the car, then on foot, to a little hut in the back streets of Ilobu where a withered old woman enthusiastically greeted Ulli, and ushered us into Bashiri’s dark little room. At Ulli’s behest, he brought out his latest works, all complicated brasses with a dominating mother figure in the centre. He worked in the ‘lost wax’ tradition. I bought one figure for £3 10s. Will my heirs and successors get £300 for it? Our next call was even more weird. A recess in a dark room rather like an outsize fireplace housed a Shango shrine. In the background hung old ornamented leather aprons and other regalia, and on shelves were various carved images including a dog. (All Shango shrines seem to include a dog.) Ulli actually paid obeisance as we entered. One of the priestesses giggled when he insisted on putting his offering on the shrine rather than on the priestess’s palm. The women seem to take the shrine as a matter of course, while a priest at mass could not have been more reverent than Ulli. Doubling back to Oshogbo, we visited the elaborate shrine which Suzannne Wenger had constructed on the banks of the river bearing the name of the goddess Osun. The grove itself was a natural amphitheatre falling sharply down to the river; its boundary wall covered over with cement sculptures in bas relief, enclosing a number of images, was now flooded. After a visit to an exhibition of Senufo masks at Mbari Oshogbo, a delightful dinner of dodo, chicken, egg stew, brandy and talk, I was happy to slump into a surprisingly comfortable bed. At 3.00 a.m., however, I was awakened by the eeriest howling of dogs, echoed in the house by what 113

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The Freetown Bond seemed like a heaving about of furniture – very mysterious. Mrs Beier was a Shango priestess! Ulli made our return journey to Ibadan sufficiently round about to take in small towns, Oba’s palaces, more shrines and artists’ workshops. At Oyo and the shops of the calabash carvers and leather workers, we were taken to a back room which looked like a junk shop – leather aprons, carvings, beadwork, and cowrie garments for images, iron stirrups, drums – all impressively soiled and dusty to suggest age and authenticity to the tourist. In Ibadan once again, ’Goke introduced me to Amos Tutuola with whom I had a short chat. Were the ghosts in My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, for instance, his own or from Yoruba tradition? He said the Yorubas believed in ghosts and usually pointed to parts of the forest where they were supposed to live. But he had gone on from these to give them a community life. There were no grotesque turns of expression in his ordinary speech and a striking absence of ungrammatical language. The style in his books was therefore deliberately invented and not, as it was usually taken, a natural product of a lack of proper education. What I found disappointing during our interview was his embarrassingly deferential and almost apologetic manner. I spent the evening with Wole Soyinka at his house, which was furnished almost entirely with African pieces – stools, masks, pots and other local artefacts. He confirmed my earlier impression of being a much deeper person than was implied in descriptions of him as being impulsive. He was deeply involved in political freedom. This was quite obvious. He wrote letters to the papers protesting against measures like the Preventive Detention Act. We talked about television and the sheepish way in which we have adopted it in West Africa, about radio writing, Save Journey. The 1960 Masks were about to present a satirical revue to which he had contributed a few pieces. He was off to East Africa – we hoped – the following evening. Since his passport was neither in his possession nor even ready, it seemed a little unlikely that he would catch his plane from Lagos. We had supper and then went to see a cowboy film over which he was very excited but through most of which I slept. He was a natural and charming host. ’Goke and I drove about 120 miles through Ilesha (the town of 114

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West African Travels bookshops) to his home town, Orin, where his father was Oba. Although a distinguished Professor of Mathematics at Ibadan, he was still a family and tribe man, deeply involved in all the affairs of the town. His sisters-in-law were weaving, each on her own loom, the same pattern on the cloth they were going to wear for the festival of all the princesses of Orin. Apparently all Orin girls could weave on the ‘women’s loom’. After lunch of inyan (pounded yam) and 3 f c with palm wine, we drove off to Ifaki to see the festival of Ikosun. This was a grand affair centring on the high priest, at a shrine of piled stones at one corner of the large open space in the centre of town. Primarily a priestly affair, the Oba – the political head – took a back seat. The ceremony consisted of dancing processions of each of the priests and their companies – there were four that year although there should have been seven – followed by the grand procession of the high priest. Each procession would leave the point of assembly on the hill, dance down, taking in various holy places on the way, then up hill on the other side towards the shrine, round it, and then back to the point of assembly. The older women were particularly graceful in their dancing. Some people took part in each procession and changed clothes each time. One of the dancers would break away, and harangue the crowd with bits of history of the festival, larded with anecdotes and jokes. One of them was greeted with a nickname that translates ‘the man who lies down with one woman and makes all the women in the household pregnant’. Before the high priest’s procession, there was a sad misadventure. An erring goat wandered on to the shrine. Great consternation! Bad omen! Some evil person trying to wreck the festival! The poor thing was caught by one leg, had his head summarily slammed against the stones and was flung aside to die. But he did not give up so easily. Bloody but decidedly unbowed, he continued to kick and wriggle where he lay, to the disgust of some of the men who stepped on him as they passed. At last, one of them in a rage slammed a heavy stone on him, at which the animal actually jumped up and ran, to the cheers of the crowd. But this was his last act of defiance; for now, he was caught and properly executed with a knife at the shrine, at which there was more dancing. An equally misguided chicken also 115

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The Freetown Bond violated the shrine and was smartly chased by the children, caught and brought for summary treatment. After this, four women appeared to guard the shrine dancing round it. Then came the high priest’s procession. He wore a beautiful headdress topped with a thin plume of feathers and carried two horse tails with which he gestured as he danced. He was the only one who did not seem to enjoy the show. He danced round the shrine, then ascended it to a great shout of the people, danced on it, turning to the various parts of the crowd and then to another shout, came down. This was done three times and the ceremony came to an end. I was told that every year the high priest was given a new white necklace just before this ceremony. No one could say exactly what the point of the festival was. Those who took part in it were nevertheless most enthusiastic, and were rewarded with gifts of awusa, kolanut and money. One boy standing near me was outraged at the cruel treatment of the goat, and bravely protested to one of the killers. A friend of ’Goke’s said he had only come to the festival because of their friendship; as a Christian he did not take part in such ceremonies and forbade ’Goke from dancing. The traditional was still stoutly asserting itself against alien influences. I flew to Enugu where my attentive guide, Egbuna Obidike, drove me around the city, ending up for dinner at the old European club, still the European club judging from the diners. A tortuous road up Milliken Hill leads one to a city surrounded by picturesque hills and as yet unspoilt by the concrete monstrosities of modern architecture. Mbari Enugu, which was just starting, had an exhibition of the work of Odita, a product of the Zaria school. I made the following note on his work: ‘His inspiration is cow-Fulani and his style varies between the realistic and the imaginative. Fulani Girl is a straight portrait while Eyo is a more imaginative treatment – a man in the foreground giving way to an abstract background.’ I had seen the fantastic town of Onitsha and its famous market from the air on the banks of the magnificent River Niger, equally impressive on the ground even now, at one of its narrowest points, seven-eighths of a mile across to the Asaba side. The supports for an enormous bridge had already gone up. This would eliminate the ferry and, some people feared, much of the livelihood of Asaba. My protec116

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West African Travels tive hosts from the NBC were joined by an enthusiastic newspaper man as my escorts; between them they nearly, quite unintentionally, ruined my plan, which was to purchase as many copies of the Onitsha market pamphlets as possible. They later confessed that they did not believe I could get fifty titles in the market, and so for a long time we dallied among respectable bookshops in New Market Road where in four shops we got twenty-one titles at fancy prices. Later when with all my tact and persuasiveness I had dragged them to look in the market itself, we got seventy-four other titles at bargain rates, mostly standing on the same spot while little boys rushed around the stalls returning with my stock. Among my treasures were Ekwensi’s When Love Whispers and Achebe’s The Sacrificial Egg and other Stories, now rare collector’s items. My guides were openmouthed. Once more, Onitsha’s Main Market had vindicated its reputation to offer for sale anything under the sun. Compared with Onitsha, Enugu market did not offer much in the line of literature, but I bought one more Nigerian novel and, more surprisingly, a copy of Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. Wishing to enliven what had so far been a very dull day, I got the driver to take me to the hotel, El Palacia, which had been recommended to me as the only place a ‘gentleman’ could visit. It was dimly lit to give an air of deep goings-on, but was disappointingly dull. All the customers, in all about half a dozen, looked like children home from boarding school. I ordered a beer and one of two girls – if she was fifteen she was not sixteen – came and sat next to me and asked if she could have a beer. I thought this was intriguing and got ready to be picked up. Even this was a disappointment. The girl was dumb, scared and seemed rather out of place. I asked her what her job was and she said she was a hostess in the hotel. A less un-hostess hostess is difficult to imagine. I probed a little deeper into this job of hostess and it seemed to consist of doing exactly what she was doing then, begging customers for drinks and food and not even trying to engage them in conversation in return. Life looked a little more promising when the two ‘hostesses’ were summoned backstage, and one of the men asked if I would like to see ‘places of interest in the hotel – important places of interest’. I thought now, this is it! The places of interest were a dance floor, a bathroom complete with 117

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The Freetown Bond bath ‘for ladies’, and steps leading to residents’ rooms. After this tour, which took two minutes flat, I returned to my place, my hostess was restored to me, but I could stick it no longer and left for the Rest House where I read Brecht, far more satisfying. Sunday promised to be deader than Saturday but I had run into an old college friend Alex Ubaezonu earlier at the bar of the Rest House and he, his wife Chrissie, another old college friend, their children, Wikina who had been at Loughborough with my elder brother, and the writer, John Ekwere, made up a lively luncheon table. Meeting the Ubaezonus so unexpectedly some fifteen years after Fourah Bay College was one of the highlights of my trip. Nsukka has the most marvellous setting with beautiful rolling hills all round. The University of Nigeria in 1963 was still very much a work in progress after a promising and enterprising start. Its colleges (faculties) were named after notable Africans – Art after Enwonwu, Music after Sowande and so on, an indication no doubt of the intention to make the institution relevant. Two of my excolleagues at Fourah Bay, N. A. Cox-George and Andrew Walls, had taken up professorships there. At the College of Art, I met Odita whose work I had seen in Enugu and Ocheche who had returned from Germany where he had been studying mosaic and stained glass techniques. I played tennis in shoes made in Nigeria which even then manufactured a growing list of products – wireless sets, suitcases, shoes, dairy products and tyres. A cursory drive through Jos on the Friday evening of my arrival revealed some surviving old medieval Arab buildings but they were fast being remodelled or entirely replaced. It was the museum however that had brought me to Jos and it lived up to my highest expectations. Expertly displayed and informatively labelled was the art of the regions but the centrepiece was the Nok culture. Radiocarbon analysis of some of the specimens excavated from the tinmining village of Nok, showed an age of 1,750 years. From this it is concluded that the final phase of this culture lasted until about AD 200. The Nok culture may have flourished as early as 900 BC, though the weight of probability is that the art flourished at the time of the introduction of iron into this part of Nigeria, which probably took place between 500 and 400 BC. The Nok exhibits – 118

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West African Travels mostly terracotta figurines – have a distinctive style. The human heads have an elongated appearance, chin jutting forward, and are generally realistic as are the animal figurines like monkeys and elephants. The Jemaa Head, the most striking yet found in the Nok style, had been excavated at a depth of 25 feet in 1943 at Tsauni camp, Jemaa. Another Nok head made of well-fired terracotta was found in the tin-bearing gravels of the Nok mines. A monkey’s head was so realistically done, it was clear from its ruff that it was a colobus. Another naturalistic fragment shows the torso of a woman with very prominent pointed breasts. I was just thinking how most African sculpts of women show full vigorous breasts in spite of the high incidence of flabby ones in everyday village life, when I saw another figurine in the same tradition showing a woman’s torso with pendulous flabby breasts. Fragments with groups of heads suggest that terracotta was used for commemorative or votive panels and for decorating large areas. Others show that certain pieces must have been so large and elaborate that they could be described as monumental. From a particularly impressive assembly of fragments found with the Katsina Ala head, it is clear that the complete life-size figure must have had great dignity and authority. A delightful figurine of a Nok woman is the most complete specimen yet discovered. The hair style, pendant ornament and voluminous strings of beads give a picture of elegant sophistication at this remote period. An accidental find by school boys at Katsina Ala of a fine Tara head together with twenty-eight fragments of figurines extends the area covered by the culture by about 150 miles to the south-east. The Nok culture is truly impressive and distinctive. Its tradition is highly realistic and its artists extremely skilled. Although this Nok culture is undoubtedly the jewel of the museum, it has interesting exhibits from other Nigerian regions. The Afo religious carvings exhibited had been previously unknown to students of African art and represent a level of art which has now declined among the practitioners of the tradition. Carvings from Ekiti, brass from Ado, and the fine hand-made pottery for which Nigeria is famous were well represented. In contrast to this artistic experience, I saw a play at Plateau Club which seemed like the last stronghold of the British Raj. There were 119

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The Freetown Bond matrons, who seemed to have come out with Lugard, in faded print evening dresses inefficiently supervising seating, and young rugger players with their young starry-eyed wives. It was as though Independence had never happened. In the whole audience there was one other African and one near African; an almost surreal experience in the middle of Africa. I could not take my eyes off the view from Jos via Kaduna to Kano. The Jos plateau continued the feature of bare outcrops of rock and gradually gave way to the watersheds which fed the Kaduna River. This river, which was muddy at the time of year, wound about under us, all the way to Kaduna. From Kaduna to Kano, the view was even more pastoral with wide cultivated areas and several large towns dotted with herds of white cattle. But Kano! What a city! The old town was still embedded literally in the mud of medievalism, both in its architecture and its municipal hygiene. This was the land of the animals. They lounged uncaring in the middle of streets and had to be threatened or coaxed away. Donkeys with impossibly laden panniers and crushing burdens of firewood and fertilizer were a common feature of the landscape. Why did I expect the houses to be white? They were mostly the honest colour of their principal material, mud, with sloping walls ending in spikes, and mostly unrelieved by windows. Inside their gateways, they were veritable warrens, all of mud. For an unwelcome guest those compounds could be rather intimidating. I was always conscious of the dirt even when my eye was caught by an attractively decorated doorway. To get near enough to see it meant squelching through mud and flies and donkeys and sheep and people. The flies were everywhere. The donkeys had perfected a reflex muscular vibration to ward them off. The men either kept their mouths shut or spoke through a kind of gag – everything adapted to the environment. Yinka had done his stuff again, and I was met and given royal treatment. My guide Abdulaye was accompanied by his guest Adana, a student of Ahmadu Bello University, and the driver. They were most untiring and obliging. The only tired one was me. But what kindness! The Central Mosque is quite an impressive building. It overlooks the Emir’s palace and so climbing to the very top of the tower is prohibited. But from near the top, there is a splendid view 120

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West African Travels of the inside of the native compounds. The museum was housed in an old palace of the Emir. It was small, containing a few bits of pottery, some equestrian items – saddles, spurs – some chain mail, silver and leather ware. The stock though small was well displayed. I was shown a little weapon made of large seeds strung on a rope and attached at both ends to a forked stick. ‘This,’ it was said, ‘was used by lepers to keep off children. However,’ continued the curator, ‘this is changing. The lepers are getting modern, they now use bicycle chains.’ There was no suggestion of criticism in his voice when he said this. In the grounds was a small open air theatre. It was a mistake to attempt to go for an early morning walk in Kano. The flies just settled on you and stayed. Of course I was inappropriately dressed. Others on foot, bicycles or donkeys, suitably draped over the head, face and neck, often armed with a fly whisk, glided easily on their way. I hastily retreated back to my room and dressed more appropriately for pedestrian travel. The famous Kano market proved rather disappointing. There were one or two remarkable items – coral necklaces costing £130, Maria Theresa dollars, mandillas and some silverware, a lot of potash, cloves, plenty of cloth and of course leather goods. I had obviously come with too high expectations. A Cook’s tour of Kaduna revealed a clean administrative city, fast becoming industrialized with large textile and gas factories. More fascinating was the Controller of the northern region of the NBC Mallam Abubakarr Elnafaty. He had just completed a 500-page manuscript of the first volume of a history of Islam in Hausa, and had covered subjects like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Moors in Spain. Its length scared his publishers who wanted to break it up into smaller volumes but Elnafaty would not have it. Our academic interests coincided over subjects like the Battle of Alcazar and Leo Africanus whose History and Description of Africa, he knew in the original Arabic. Both of these had influenced the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. He also showed me the manuscript of a Hausa volume of short stories for children. But his other interest was astronomy. In next to no time he was in deep waters trying to reconcile the Islamic conception of seven heavens with modern astronomy. He drew circles on his blotting pad, ending up with a 121

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The Freetown Bond diagram of which John Milton might have approved, but certainly not the Jodrell Bank people. He then introduced me to Hausa poetry which derived from Arabic poetry with its metre and system of rhyme. As far as I could make out from the recordings he played, each of four lines would end with the same syllable and then the fifth would bring the whole thing to a close with a new end syllable. One of the best exponents of this poetic genre was a blind poet. This form of poetry was, he said, used for religious instruction and is now used for praise songs, and occasional pieces – even for advertisements. I had myself heard one such poem in Kano in praise of a company which arranged pilgrimages to Mecca. The pilot of my plane invited me to be with him in the cockpit while he brought the plane down at Ibadan. This was not only a most frightening experience as I was standing up with the plane hurtling seemingly headlong into the earth, but I wondered how his company would have reacted to this dangerous act of courtesy. That night ’Goke and I saw Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard in Yoruba done by Ogunmola and his company, a truly marvellous performance. Ogunmola played the Drinkard with extraordinary comic knack. The dancing was superb, the costumes imaginative and the acting spontaneous. Even without a word of Yoruba, the miming bore me through without the benefit of an interpreter. A meeting the following day with Mabel Segun brought me into contact with one of the pioneers of Nigerian literature in English who had compiled one of the earliest anthologies in this genre. Mild and even withdrawn to begin with, she was tough and forthright in conversation. Her firm opinions were elvishly barbed – ‘I am not a patriot!’ (I noticed she was not wearing Nigerian traditional dress). ‘We in West Africa are not so much physically as culturally oppressed.’ She talked a bit about the phrase ‘infants overblown’ in her poem. Quite unexpectedly, she revealed that she was a table tennis champion preparing hard for an international against Ghana, and lamented that she had not practised for three days. She had finished a short story the previous day, and had had one novel rejected. ‘I am not good at hawking things, so I have put that aside and I am going to write something that will make them sit up’; this with a little twinkle. Did I write any poetry? Very little, I replied, usually when I travel. That was her 122

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West African Travels trouble she thought. Someone had told her that she did not write a lot because she did not travel. She had not left ‘this town’ since 1958. All her published poems were not recent ones. I said they all had a pre-Independence look about them. This was what elicited the remark that she was not a patriot really. There is a lot to be angry about still but it was a new kind of anger. By this time we were laughing, and she was beginning to wonder whether we could not get together again. Our schedules did not permit this however. She was acting as Principal Information Officer and she was tickled after a man who had come in to see her left. She remarked that he was substantively her boss, but for some reason she was acting in a post above him. Why? ‘I don’t know; they do some queer things in the service and I have stopped bothering.’ We talked about ‘abiku’ children (of whom I am one). One of her children had a birth mark identical with one on her husband. She acknowledged, however, that since the wounds were inflicted on abiku this was a different case. All this arose from my middle name, Durosimi, which means ‘Wait to bury me’. Mabel Segun became one of Nigeria’s most influential literary figures, earning national and international awards for her original and editorial work. Another lady of equally firm opinions, Dr Irene Ighodaro, was a daughter of the well-known Wellesley-Cole family of Freetown. She had taken a degree in medicine at Durham, married a former fellow student at Fourah Bay College and had lived an active life in Nigeria. A passionate social worker, her letter telling the army to build a bridge over the flooded road to Lagos rather than spend all their time searching for subversive activity had appeared in the Daily Times on the morning I visited her. She was tickled at this. Good thing I am going away in a fortnight, she said. She gave me a copy of a survey of women’s education which her Association of University Women had just finished. With her sister Mabel Cole, a nursing sister at the Ibadan Teaching Hospital, I went to the market and bought three adire cloths and one clay pot. A final dinner with my old Fourah Bay College room-mate, Tejumade Odebiyi, now a Senator, his wife Bisi, and Neneh Johnson-Cole, another ex-Fourah Bay colleague who was also visiting from Freetown, brought a very pleasant Nigerian tour to an end. It had placed for me the modern Nigerian 123

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The Freetown Bond artist against his traditional background and shown the old and the new flourishing in many instances side by side. My five-week tour was financed from a Humanities Research grant of Fourah Bay College, another mark of the College’s interest and ability at the time to sponsor such enriching off-campus studies. A similar grant in the summer of 1955, this time with assistance from the British Council, had enabled me to immerse myself in the works of Shakespeare in his birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, a visit which had a profound influence on my further Shakespearean studies by bringing me into close personal contact with Professor Clifford Leech, himself a great Shakespearean scholar.

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8 All Freetown’s a Stage

Acting I always valued my connections with the town and kept up my associations all the time during my tenure at Fourah Bay College above the town on Mount Aureol. I served on the parochial committee of Holy Trinity Church under three successive vicars, during which time the old school building of my childhood with its workshop and the ancient palm tree were taken down and replaced with the new boys primary school. I played cricket and, on my retirement from the field, spent several seasons as commentator for international matches. My involvement with drama, mainly with the British Council Dramatic Society and the National Theatre League, also kept me in touch. Music and drama have always been part of my life. I joined the Holy Trinity Church choir as a probationer at the age of six and sang there throughout childhood and early manhood. Thereafter, I sang with the choirs of Fourah Bay College and of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. With Logie Wright’s Cecilians in Freetown we performed, among other works, Beethoven’s Mass in C, Mozart’s Requiem and Fauré’s Requiem. I was to hear the last again many years later at La Madeleine in Paris, the church where the composer had once been organist. It was sung by a UNESCO choir with Willie Conton singing bass; he had served as ‘repetiteur’ during rehearsals. Throughout my life I took part in plays, in venues ranging from the church schoolroom, to grander theatres, the Wilberforce Memorial Hall and, later, the British Council theatres on two sides of Tower Hill. Mrs Nada Cheetham-Smart produced a number of British plays in some of which I acted before leaving to study abroad. On my return, it was my intention to direct rather than act, 125

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The Freetown Bond but the unexpected dropping out in mid-rehearsal of John NelsonWilliams from Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer found me taking the part of Marlow. This was soon followed by Absolute in Sheridan’s The Rivals. I called a halt and devoted myself to directing Shakespeare as well as modern plays at Fourah Bay College. From 1953 onwards, sometimes with other members of staff, I directed an annual student production. Bob Roberts and myself directed Henry IV Part I with Cyril Foray as Prince Hal and Chris Kolade as Falstaff. Both of those actors later had distinguished careers, Cyril becoming Principal of Fourah Bay College and Chris, Director-General of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation; each one later serving as the High Commissioner of his country in London. Sheila Brenan and I directed The Merry Wives of Windsor which drew the following review from West Africa, Issue no.3 1959: The Fourah Bay College Dramatic Society brought their lively production The Merry Wives of Windsor down from Mount Aureol to the Technical Institute after two nights at the College. The performance bubbled with high spirits, quick action and a great sense of fun. It was obvious that the students had thoroughly absorbed the spirit of the play. Mistress Ford and Mistress Page (Gloria Ashwood and Shirley Macauley) seemed to enjoy their discomfiture of Falstaff so much that the audience could not help but catch the contagion of their laughter. Falstaff himself (Ebun Martins, a nephew of actor Orlando Martins) was robustly funny and easily gullible. Samuel During threw himself into the part of Ford with a vigour which generated the utmost comedy when his dramatic entries to discover his wife’s lover ended in sheepish anti-climax. Dr Caius, (Eustace Pearce) the incomprehensibility of whose French was made up for by the eloquence of his gestures, paired off very well with his house-keeper, the scheming Mistress Quickly (Daisy Tucker). Great fun.

In 1960, I directed a hilarious Taming of the Shrew with male chauvinists standing on their chairs in Freetown applauding the tamed admissions of Kate on wifely obedience. Ada Hamilton, transformed from wild feminist to housewifely companion, was matched by an equally robust Chris Kolade as shrew tamer. Other successful productions were Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel with Clara Asgill as the village maiden, Sidi, opposite Malcolm Cole, Bale of Ilujinle, 126

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All Freetown’s a Stage with Lakunle, Gustav Deveneau, as the dreaming schoolmaster There was also an open air production of excerpts from Soyinka’s Dance of the Forests with Claudius Thomas and Florence Kuti-George to celebrate the opening of the Fourah Bay College Library building on 10 January 1964. This production also formed part of an evening of African theatre at Milton Margai Teachers’ College organized by Janet Young. I had seen a production of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun during my stay in the US in 1960/61 and could not wait to put it on in Freetown. Eya Mbayo’s portrayal of the lead character bore an uncanny resemblance to Sydney Poitier’s, which he had not even seen. Our early Fourah Bay College performances were in the Wilson Theatre, which was a surviving relic of Mount Aureol’s army days. But in 1965, when Michael Crowder was Director, funds became available to build an African Studies Centre with a lecture theatre. I jumped at the opportunity of helping to design the Mary Kingsley Theatre which combined the prosaic desks of a lecture room and the more poetic opportunities of a thrust stage and a minstrel gallery; it was to become the venue for even more adventurous productions. I had met Martin Banham, Director of the Leeds University Theatre, during my visiting appointment there. For several years in the late 1960s he came out to run some influential workshops in the new Mary Kingsley Theatre. A number of budding playwrights, stage and lighting technicians took off from these workshops to animate the theatre scene in the country, outstanding among whom were Raymond de Souza George, and Dele Charley whose career was cut short when in full productive flight. Trevor Faulkner, also from Leeds, designed Sierra Leone’s first revolving stage for Martin Banham’s production of Ola Rotimi’s The Gods Are Not To Blame. The success of this innovation and the spectacular performance of Marcel Thomasi as King Odewale made this a landmark in local theatre history. Mosquito, a documentary piece, was researched, composed and performed by the whole theatre company and was based on the building of Hill Station and its supporting railway. It was in the words of an opponent, ‘to locate a few European officials to a presumably healthier spot than Freetown and even that against their wish’. Hilarious scenes in which scientists occupied the whole 127

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The Freetown Bond theatre space trying to decide how high a mosquito could fly in an attempt to defend the segregation, exposed the thinness of the argument for the enterprise. The play was based on various accounts which appeared in that great pioneer of Sierra Leone journalism The Weekly News. My comment on excerpts from that journal in the programme notes not only closes the sad episode but gives a passing obituary to a great newspaper: ‘Well the railway came, the railway went, the mosquito remained, but thank goodness we have our once-a-week prophylactics! Hill Station is now racially unsegregated and a few Europeans have even come back down the hill. But alas! The Weekly News is no more!’ The Mary Kingsley Theatre, an integral part of the Institute of African Studies, continues to produce adventurous plays probing into the history as well as the contemporary passing scene of Sierra Leone. Raymond Sarif Easmon’s The New Patriots was so politically sensitive that its production was not possible in Freetown in 1965 and the play was first produced in Accra in 1967. When Freetown regained its nerve in the honeymoon of Siaka Stevens’ premiership, I returned to the boards to play the part of the Chief Justice in this satirical play. My last appearance was as Subtle in Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist. That play and James Bridie’s Tobias and the Angel, in which I played the Angel and Peter Mould played Tobias, were memorable in Freetown of the late 1950s and the early ’60s for having mixed European and African casts. This mingling of the races towards the end of the colonial era and the opening years of independence, apparent also in the mixed dining clubs, was a feature which demonstrated what could have been, had the meeting of cultures in earlier years, been based on equality and mutual respect. Hitherto, the Aureol Players (the staff of Fourah Bay) and the Hill Station Club had been all white. In The Alchemist, Valerie Land, David Butler, Bob Wilcher among the cast were whites, while a longer list of Sierra Leoneans included Willie Conton, Tommy Morgan, Gladius Lewis and Flavius Thompson, who later became my son-in-law. Out of such activities came friendships at a time when, almost at the end of colonial rule, relations between the races had become easier. One such remarkable friendship was between us and Harry and Valerie Land. They were two of the best unofficial ambassa128

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All Freetown’s a Stage dors to West Africa that Britain ever had. Harry came to Freetown in the early ’60s as general manager of the Daily Mail and in five years they collected a wide circle of friends through Harry’s work on the newspaper, and Valerie’s as a volunteer teacher at the Annie Walsh Memorial School and as an amateur actress. Their apartment in Rawdon Street in the centre of the city was as open as they were welcome in many Freetown homes. They moved to Lagos and the Daily Times where their genuine warmth and helpfulness made them equally loved and unobtrusively influential. They returned to England when it became clear that because of a kidney complaint, Harry needed intensive medical attention. Their London house became a bustling friendly place where visiting West Africans bumped into each other as fellow house-guests or casual visitors. Indeed, for nearly two decades their house was open to us in the summer. Valerie taught at a college of further education in London which brought her into contact with students from all over the

8.1 Members of the cast of The Alchemist, Freetown, 1965

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The Freetown Bond world, and she took a particular interest in their welfare, which often involved her in complicated negotiations with the police and welfare bodies when her black students found themselves in conflict with the law. She became an unofficial counsellor and friend to many of them. Her untimely death moved me into one of my rare forays into poetry, from which I quote: She shed a radiating light which linked one heart to others all to hers To cast an ever-widening glow Transcending barriers of country, kin and class.

Walking Freetown is a thin strip of land between the sea and the mountain, a feature which is particularly noticeable in the east end where the distance between sea and mountain is measurable more in yards than in miles. The main streets meander along the foothills while braver streets struggle almost directly up the mountainside. Our street, Leah Street, ran in imitation of the main street, Kissy Road, and was cut by several of these strugglers. Within ten minutes of leaving home and up one of those climbing streets a child was in woodland. One of the joys of life was scrambling up the hillside to a viewing point from which one could spend a few minutes identifying buildings below and experiencing the thrill of seeing the window panes of one’s own house glistening in the evening sunlight. East end children had this easy access into the country and lived closer to nature than those in other areas. The more daring ones climbed to the top to the gun emplacement, locally called the underground, a First World War relic from which guns could protect the seaway into Freetown harbour. From this point there was a grand view of the eight square miles of this magnificent deep anchorage, one of the best in the world. It became an invaluable war asset during the Second World War when it sheltered, at any one mustering time, some two hundred and fifty allied ships awaiting convoy. It is doubtful whether this iconic fortification was ever used against enemy ships. It had a heavy metal lid leading to the magazine and other storage facilities 130

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All Freetown’s a Stage below ground. An iron stairway led down into the service area and the combination of the word magazine, indicating the ammunition store, and the fact that Magazine Wharf was almost in direct line with the fortification, led to the fiction that there was an underground passage connecting the hillside fort to the sea shore. Even now, one hears this authoritatively pronounced as an engineering feat. I grew up taking these rambling walks as part of an ordinary routine. One remarkable ramble however, which I took with Edward Davies, is a permanent memory. We set off up Bombay Street and were soon in the woods of the Mount Aureol slopes. Directly in our way was a stretch of granite rock in the middle of which I experienced a sudden panic attack which frightened me with the thought that I would never get to the end of it. The rock, objectively viewed, is so laughably flat that I have never been able to understand what momentarily so terrified me. Once we had got over that obstacle, however, we had an exciting time fighting our way along the mountainside through trees, grassland and mountain streams until we got to the Davies’ family farm near Kissy Brook in a quite different part of Freetown. It was no doubt approached by a less adventurous route on other occasions. Walks like these made me an avid walker for the rest of my life. Walking, in any case, was the normal means of travelling in my childhood and youth. We walked everywhere – to school, to church, to market and to picnics in outlying villages. School fellows in the Grammar School walked from villages as far as Regent, Kissy and even beyond. Workmates at the Government Printing Office, some of them very senior men, did the daily seven-mile journey from Kissy village to arrive punctually for the 7.30 a.m. opening of the office at George Street. I enjoyed long leisurely walks from Leah Street to Lumley Village along what was still a track surrounded by secondary forests. Wherever my wife and I travelled as a family in later years, one of our first purchases was a map of the area showing interesting rambles. This was not always without incident. While we were living in Canterbury, England in 1974, we set off one afternoon, armed with a harmless looking pamphlet ‘Walks in the Forest of Blean’. It promised prospects of picturesque villages and other 131

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The Freetown Bond features of the romantic English countryside – if we followed the path of course. We obviously must have strayed and we soon found ourselves clinging to a wire fence, to keep us from sliding down a slippery hillside and crashing into one of those wonderful scenes far below, which we scarcely had had time even to look at. We returned home exhausted and unfulfilled. After this we confined ourselves to the many historical sights of Canterbury which offered firmer footing. Another map-led walk produced a disappointment of a different kind. We were spending the summer of 1970 in Vancouver where I was teaching a vacation course on Shakespeare and African Literature. What had been promised on paper was an ‘Indian Reservation’, encouraging visions of wig-wams and Hiawatha-like characters. What we encountered was a series of ill-maintained semi-detached buildings with unhealthy looking faces beckoning us to come in. We were too frightened to say no and accepted one such invitation. It was dreary and dirty and even more frightening inside. Everyone seemed to be drinking a potent brew and invited us to partake. This was far from the romantic notions that we had built up. We were relieved when, after a show of forced goodwill, we effected a retreat. From our house on Kortright in Freetown, we took leisurely walks up to Leicester Peak and into the surrounding hill villages of Gloucester, Regent, Bathurst and Charlotte. Indeed it was on one of our walks through the lovely and serene quiet of Leicester Village that we fell in love with the recessed cottage that was to provide us with our present home. One New Year’s Day, we arrived up at the top of the peak to catch the sunrise and there, in the silence of the mountain, met two nuns in full habit to complete an almost biblical scene. That scramble up to Leicester Peak, which we took for granted and which we often got friends to take with us, proved too much for a visiting Englishman who accepted our invitation with his wife and two young children. Halfway up the hill he suddenly announced that he was not taking a step further but would sit on a rock and watch birds until we returned from, what for him, was too strenuous an afternoon stroll. Charlotte Falls was always a popular destination from Freetown, 132

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All Freetown’s a Stage and from our house on Kortright we visited it often. We discovered an additional attraction when we came upon a clever diversion of water through the grounds of a cottage into a fish pond. The gentleman owner was as fascinating in his conversation as he was ingenious in his unique landscaped garden. On one particular day we made for the Falls and had invited Martin Banham, who was visiting the country from Leeds University on one of his splendid drama workshops. As we threaded through the village and greeted households, voices warned us against going to the Falls. ‘Don’t go there today’ they urged. This only heightened our anticipation of the sight and sound of the white water tumbling down into the river. What could the discouraging voices mean? So we went on encouraged by the cheerful voices of people obviously enjoying themselves nearer the Falls. Suddenly we stopped on the side of the road. Under a rough cloth peeped the feet of an obviously dead person. But the rest of the company was still in joyous mood. The story was that descendants of the village had planned a mass return on that day to their ancestral home for a grand picnic by the Falls. One of them had arrived later than the others and, to every one’s surprise, had proceeded to climb the slippery rocks up to the top almost as if possessed. Suddenly, losing his foothold, he had slipped and tumbled head first with the rush of water into a hole just large enough to take him. He died immediately. With some difficulty he was fished out and laid aside. Had he been a sacrifice demanded by ancestral spirits, as some whispered, or was he just a headstrong adventurer who would not listen to advice? The picnic went on and we returned a little soberer for the experience. In Leeds, our landlord, Mr Wood, introduced us to the Yorkshire Dales: ‘If you will do a little driving I will show you around.’ So we did not need maps. In spring we enjoyed the daffodils along the streams and climbed the hills wondering how the sheep could afford to leave so much wool on the shrubs, and we often dozed away in the quiet of the surrounding peace.

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Broadcasting Listening to the gramophone made me ready for broadcast sound when it came to Freetown in the early 1930s through the medium of the Radio Rediffusion Service, which relayed programmes from the BBC Empire Service, but also included some local programmes like the News, Variety Time and Children’s Hour. I was fascinated by, and very much enjoyed, Children’s Hour with its first ‘uncle’, Mr Gordon Taylor (Uncle Gordon). My attempt to meet this voice in person at about the age of eight ended in total disappointment. He had appealed for children to take gifts for orphans at the Princess Christian Mission Hospital for a Christmas treat and mentioned, particularly, ingredients for making them a cake. I decided on the latter and easily persuaded my mother to give me packets of flour, sugar and currants to take to Uncle Gordon as my contribution. Did I know where to find Uncle Gordon? It was from Tower Hill that the programme was broadcast, and I set off. Tower Hill was one of the most deserted areas in the town and after mid-day on a Saturday afternoon was almost frightening in its loneliness. I wandered in the area directionless with no one to guide me and returned home, my benevolence unfulfilled. My later associations with broadcasting were more productive and I myself became one of the uncles of Children’s Hour in my early years as a lecturer at Fourah Bay. As a student, a group of us, the Areopagus, presented a discussion programme, for which we dressed up in dark suits and black bow-ties even though this was only a sound broadcast. We took ourselves very seriously though I do not think we made any lasting impression on Freetown public opinion. Interestingly, almost all of my fellow debaters became lawyers. Much later, at the end of the 1950s, I was a member of a much more influential Radio Forum, with colleagues who went on to hold distinguished positions: Banja Tejan-Sie (Sir Banja Tejan-Sie, Governor-General), Ned John (Cabinet Minister), Solomon Caulker (Vice-Principal, Fourah Bay College), Willie Fitzjohn (High Commissioner in London and Nigeria) and Gershon Collier (Ambassador to the UN). Indeed at 134

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All Freetown’s a Stage one time I did so many different programmes for the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service (SLBS) that once, when the police wanted to serve a summons on me for a parking offence, the document was addressed to me at the SLBS, where I was indeed to be found. The policy of the SLBS at the time seems to have been to have a core of highly professional staff who commissioned, produced and directed programmes contributed by outsiders. I was involved in book reviews in collaboration with the Sierra Leone Library Board and in news programmes with titles such as What’s in the News? and Letter to Nigeria. A news talk Christmas Cracker on Christmas Eve ran for forty-two years from 1961 to 2003. My friends joked ‘Eldred Jones on Christmas Eve, and the Queen on Christmas Day’. The Queen outlasted me! In 1958, when the Governor of Sierra Leone was to pay an official visit to Liberia, I was commissioned to write and direct an hour-long feature This is Sierra Leone presenting a radio picture to Liberia. It included the peoples, languages, customs and institutions and was illustrated with music, drumming and various voices representing aspects of Sierra Leone life. Less predictably, I did a feature for the Ghana Broadcasting Service, Rice Growing in Sierra Leone for which I was not only paid a fee but received a royalty payment every time it was repeated, something unusual in my experience of West African broadcasting. The SLBS had a rich programme in the 1950s and ’60s, which included the serialization of English classics. I ventured innocently into a commitment to serialize Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, for which I recruited equally innocent friends and colleagues, wives including mine, and anybody who had a few moments to spare and did not require a fee. I confess that my planning was rather haphazard and the series seemed likely to go on forever. A good deal of ingenious juggling mercifully brought an end to our weekly meetings round the large old-fashioned tape recorder and a final opening of our sitting room windows behind which we had sweated week after week, to exclude ambient noise. I never ventured into serialization after this. Instead I offered complete short stories of my own. One of the most rewarding broadcasting assignments in which I was involved was Schools Broadcasting. The Ministry of Education in the early ’60s set up a unit to provide helpful supplementary 135

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The Freetown Bond material to assist the hard-worked teachers of secondary schools. I was invited to produce teachers’ notes to the literature texts, and pupils’ pamphlets and broadcast scripts for the School Certificate Examination. Under the direction of Mrs Olive Benjamin, ably assisted by Ms Olutunu Jarrett (later Mrs Tregson–Roberts), this excellent service provided much needed support to the school system for a few years but then unfortunately ceased. One of the more agreeable features of the Fourah Bay College Principal’s office was a large adjoining conference room which made it easy to host informal seminars and conferences on subjects which interested me. In line with my concern with the role of broadcasting as a means of public education and the enhancement of democracy, I organized one such seminar, ‘Planning a National Broadcasting Service for Sierra Leone’. I set out my views to a small group of interested parties in a lead paper from which I quote: Broadcasting is one of the means by which we can build a nation which is conscious of its past, which respects its parts, but which is conscious of its entity. This is one of our principal tasks – to make one nation out of many tribes. There must be a conscious effort to do this through a thoughtful and sensitive use of radio and television… There are those who believe that radio should give the public what it wants. I maintain that public taste should be raised. That people should be encouraged to look with new interest at the world around them – the immediate world; in their music, art, folklore, traditions, institutions, as well as the larger world, other people’s music, their art and their folklore.

We went on to discuss some sensitive areas like the independence or otherwise of the medium from direct government control, the proper use of the medium for the dissemination of information, its misuse, the place of advertising, and the balance between advertising and other material. Questions of this kind came up for discussion in more public sessions from time to time. Such topics came up, for instance, when the First West Africa Regional Group Meeting of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association met in Freetown in 1975, at which I gave the keynote address. Much more relevant to Sierra Leone was the workshop held at the Miatta Conference Centre from Monday 11th to Wednesday 13th 136

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All Freetown’s a Stage December 1995 on the topic ‘The Formulation of a National Broadcasting Policy for Sierra Leone.’ This matter was discussed in all its aspects using the experience of Britain and the United States of America, as well as the needs of the country from philosophy to hardware. I contributed a paper, ‘Serving the Public interest: Ethical and Morality issues in Broadcasting’ in which I said among other things: The best device by which a government can insulate itself from the necessity of intervening in the day to day affairs of its broadcasting stations is the creation of an independent broadcasting authority which would have the general overseeing of the broadcasting activities of the nation. Such a body would be representative of the society. Where the government itself has a radio station as we have, it would finance its operation under the supervision of such a broadcasting authority in the same way as an independent owner would do. The policy of such an authority should be as liberal as is compatible with real national security and should maintain standards of decency, morality and truth. A broadcasting authority should give overall guidance which would indicate what is acceptable in broadcasting content whether it is in the area of news or advertising. It should not however be first and foremost a censorship board but should act as a referee and intervene where there is a flagrant breach of its code of conduct. It should facilitate the free flow of information and encourage free development of ideas. Programming should be the responsibility of the professionals. I don’t think there is any real alternative to openness and liberalism as general underlying principles. The more restrictive, the more slanted, and consequently, the more unreliable our internal output is, the greater will be the lure of external programmes which may mesmerize our audiences with freedom and openness. The answer is to produce programmes based on truth and integrity using the best human and technical facilities open to us. It would seem therefore that the creation of a free and open system within a country is its best protection against any dangers of open access.

After this most thorough examination of policy in the whole history of Sierra Leone broadcasting, the trail went strangely cold until fifteen years later in 2010 when the decision was taken to transform the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service into an independent 137

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The Freetown Bond corporation. During these same years, I did a number of programmes for the BBC, mainly on the works of African writers. Among my producers and interviewers were Florence Akst, Alex Tetteh-Lartey and Hannah Neale, the latter having been one of my regular producers at the SLBS in Freetown. Alex Tetteh-Lartey, apart from being an experienced and knowledgeable professional, was also a kindly person who showed great concern about my declining vision and offered sincere but rather unconventional help which I was unable to accept. Florence Akst, whose humanity flowed through her most ordinary acts and gestures, became a personal friend over the years after many conversations on and off the air on a wide range of topics. Our last interview was in the programme African Perspectives when in half-an-hour we ranged through all these topics again as though knowing it was our last. There was a hitch in the transmission of this programme which upset Florence and a letter from her shows how concerned she always was over details and her continual search for perfection. She wrote: ‘Believe it or not it was only the other day that I learnt that the transmission of your interview at 0830 GMT was ruined by human error at our Ascension Island relay station.…I am apologetic, cross and disappointed (in the reverse order). Please forgive our feet of clay.… Perhaps SLBS would like to relay our programme so that people in Sierra Leone know what you really said.’ I was able to reassure her that the programme had been heard twice in Freetown and all was well. Marjorie and I have a constant reminder of our friendship in one of those ‘bush’ wind-up radios which require no batteries. Her gift to us. I found the following brief tribute to her in my notes, though I am not sure whether I actually sent it: ‘An informal interviewer, gracious hostess and generous thoughtful friend. My favourite memory, among many pleasant ones, is of an unexpected meeting in adjacent taxis in a Lagos traffic jam during FESTAC 1977. Welcome to the busy world of retirement!’ My interest in the work of Wole Soyinka was well known to the BBC and had been the topic of more than one programme but I was astonished at their ability to seek out their target for interviews when, on the morning of the announcement of that author’s Nobel Prize, the phone rang at 6.30 in the house of my niece Joya Tipson138

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All Freetown’s a Stage Cole in London, where I thought I had spent the night anonymously. I was greeted with news of the award and a request for my immediate reaction. I expressed my great delight as coherently as I could at that time of day and was later invited for a more considered statement on television that night. How did they find out that I had arrived in London only the night before?

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9 Books, Words, Causes

African Literature Today The history of the critical journal African Literature Today which I edited for some thirty-three years should give encouragement to scholars in universities of the developing world where access to publication is often difficult and producing a journal for international circulation almost impossible. Its story therefore, as I recounted it when I retired from the editorship, is worth repeating. The first number of the journal, which came out in 1968, was the result of a confluence of enthusiasms, mine for the new literature of Africa, that of Heinemann Educational Books which had the largest list of African writers, and James Currey, Keith Sambrook and Alan Hill, who looked after that pioneering list. The journal had been preceded by a much humbler cyclostyled Bulletin of African Literature, which was a direct result of an African Literature conference in 1964, held at Fourah Bay. It was this lowly mimeographed Bulletin that caught the eye of Keith Sambrook. The purpose of the journal was to provide a forum for the examination of African literature, to open the literature to both academic and general readers particularly within Africa itself. In the words of the first editorial: ‘It is the critic’s business to read discerningly and demonstrate the qualities of a work and thus (a) to make it accessible to larger readership than the absence of criticism might have opened to it and (b) by an accumulation of such examinations, to help establish literary standards.’ That editorial also cited the hope of John Povey, a pioneer critic of African literature, ‘that African critics can … play a special role in the interpretation of their own literature’. Many African scholars had their earliest critical work published in it, and went on to higher things, while the journal has gone some way to providing 140

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Books, Words, Causes a body of critical opinion against which the literature can be studied. Non-African contributors have also enriched the critical literature by bringing new perspectives into the examination of the works of African writers. It was originally started as a journal appearing every six months with a random selection of academic articles aimed at popularizing the literature. There were heroic attempts to set up agents in the newly independent countries of Africa so that people could pay in their national currencies. This demanded close timing which in the days of airmail was too difficult to manage. From number five, each issue was organized around a theme by which attitudes to general issues by the creators of the literature, who so often were conscious of their role as teachers, were aired. Issues on Women, Language, Orature and Childhood revealed both traditional attitudes to various aspects of life and the writers’ own particular reactions to such attitudes, quite purposefully intending to influence or even change them. The use of themes rather than open numbers proved to be an inspired decision as it has meant that the collections retained their interest much longer than ordinary academic journals. The volumes stayed in print, and some were even reprinted years later. As a result a valuable resource was created which charts the changing concerns and interests among academics over the years. The thirty-three years in which I edited the journal were for me an adventure which brought me into contact with a wide variety of scholars, associates, advisers, many of whom became personal friends. I edited the first eleven numbers by myself, always with the anonymous help of my wife who had also painfully typed the stencils of the preceding Bulletin. I was joined for numbers twelve to nineteen by my colleague at Fourah Bay College, Eustace Palmer, and since number twelve, now acknowledged on the cover, by my wife, Marjorie. I also received valuable advice from my Associate Editors – Emmanuel Ngara, Nnadozie Inyama, Simon Gikandi, Ato Quayson, Francis Imbuga and my Reviews Editor, James Gibbs. The warm associations with contributors were probably due to my preference for personal letters over reply cards in reacting to submissions. Even rejection letters often contained suggestions for 141

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The Freetown Bond improvement and re-submission either to me or to other journals. This, in turn, generated a volume of friendly correspondence which sometimes included details of family life, marriages, births and successes from correspondents whom I never met, or ran into only long years after our meeting on paper. Editing a journal in Africa over periods of instability with breakdowns in postal services, with colleagues in colleges and universities suffering declining facilities, produced some almost paralysing situations. My publishers too, in seeking favourable conditions sent manuscripts over vast distances in various stages of production. I had to get the manuscript to them for copy editing and queries, and they had to send them for typesetting to one corner of the world, for printing to another, back to me for proofreading and indexing, then back to the publisher for final production. Many are the slips that could occur in this process and more than once, a whole edited manuscript just vanished. Oddly enough one such disappearance took place within a distance of no more than a couple of miles as the crow flies. The effort of re-eliciting manuscripts from authors dispersed over vast areas was hair-raising. Marjorie had taken a packet containing one particular issue to airmail to the publishers in Oxford. Inflation meant that the packet had to be smothered in stamps and Marjorie stood over the clerk to make sure that every stamp was cancelled so that none could be stolen. The only copy of the edited manuscript was lodged in the Post Office in Freetown on a Saturday, only for a military coup to intervene on the Sunday, thus freezing the copy for several weeks until, through the diplomatic skills of my wife including a personal plea to the Postmaster General, it was retrieved from the sealed Post Office. But then how could we get the manuscript to the publishers when all flights out of the country had been cancelled? A journalist friend promised to take the manuscript overland to a neighbouring country before he went onwards to London, where he promised to post the manuscript or arrange for its collection. He then got stuck en route waiting for a British visa, but after some weeks he made it and the manuscript arrived by English post in Oxford under yet another cover. Editors in technologically advanced countries enjoy the luxury 142

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Books, Words, Causes of stipulating strict standards for the formatting of articles for publication, failure to meet which result in almost automatic rejection. I too hopefully made such demands, but would have been doing a great disservice to have rejected potentially good articles whose authors had difficulty in meeting such standards, access to typewriters and even the right size of paper being sometimes problematic. I even received manuscripts in handwriting! On the other hand, I received not only perfectly computer-typed manuscripts but some even accompanied by diskettes. My aim was to encourage criticism so that when a potentially good article had weaknesses either in the construction, or in the treatment of bibliographical references and notes, wholesale re-writing has been necessary and almost always with grateful acknowledgement by the original authors. In a touching farewell from E. P. Abanime, on my giving up the editorship, in which he raised several questions on whether the almost total preoccupation with African literature by African literary scholars to the exclusion of European and other literatures had not gone too far (too long to go into here), he wrote: ‘I seize this opportunity to thank you, if I have not already done so in my previous letter, for the excellent editorial work you did on the manuscript of mine which you published in no. 21 of ALT. I am one hundred per cent of the opinion that the changes made in the manuscript . . . were all for the better.’ In this process, I myself learnt a great deal about African literature, about criticism and about writing. When James Currey left Heinemann in 1984 to set up his own publishing company in Thornhill Square in London, African Literature Today moved with him, and the warm personal association between editor and publisher continued to flourish. Friendly business lunches rustled up by James’s wife, Clare, often in the garden behind their Islington basement office, lubricated the meetings between us all. Keith Sambrook later left Heinemann and added his experience to James Currey Publishers. These meetings moved in 1996 to Botley Road in Oxford where, with Lynn Taylor and Douglas Johnson, the family atmosphere continued. They told us that they looked forward in particular to Marjorie’s accounts of our adventures since we had last met them. The relationship between editor and publisher enabled us to triumph over the problems of 143

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9.1 Eldred Jones receiving the Honorary degree D. Phil, University of Umëa, Umëa, Sweden, 1996 9.2 Eldred and Marjorie Jones with Certificate from the University of Birmingham Alumni Association, Sierra Leone Chapter, in recognition of the conferment of the honorary degree of D.Litt by the University on the author, Freetown, 2005

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Books, Words, Causes long distance editing, and the severance of this relationship was the saddest feature of my giving up the editorship. James Currey added a note to my final afterword about editing the journal from 1968 to 2001: Eldred and Marjorie Jones managed to keep African Literature Today running for a third of a century. So many of the journals which were founded in the brave new sixties have not survived. African Literature Today has always had a majority of contributions from within Africa itself. Their meticulous editing ensured an international reputation in Africa, in Europe, in North America and throughout the rest of the world. Eldred Jones makes light of the personal danger and difficulties which have resulted from life in Sierra Leone in the nineties. On one occasion Eldred and Marjorie Jones joined a delegation to Guinea to try and negotiate peace travelling by road. I said that it sounded like Graham Greene’s ‘Journey without Maps’. Eldred Jones replied that for much of the way it was a ‘Journey without Roads’.

Freetown: A Symposium The Institute of African Studies at Fourah Bay, reacting to its urban metropolitan environment under the leadership of Michael Crowder, brought together a number of academic scholars and professionals for a comprehensive study of the history and sociology of Freetown. It was most satisfying that of the sixteen papers, nine were given by Sierra Leoneans at the peak of their professional careers. That factor, and the presence of Christopher Fyfe, from the University of Edinburgh, as my co-editor was most satisfying. His organization of the archives and his 800-page History of Sierra Leone made him an encyclopedic repository of details of the foundation and early growth of the Sierra Leone Colony. He popped up unexpectedly in Freetown from time to time as when, on the occasion of my mother-in-law’s hundredth birthday service in St George’s Cathedral, he casually walked past us to take communion. Until his death, he frequently astonished me with his letters and notes containing snippets of information on my own family history and on Sierra Leonean personalities. The resulting 145

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The Freetown Bond proceedings, Freetown: A Symposium, published in 1968, remains the most authoritative study of Freetown to date.

Noma Award for Publishing in Africa In 1979 I received an invitation to chair the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. It was endowed by Mr Shoichi Noma, president of the major Japanese publishing firm Kodansha Limited, a well-known philanthropist who had earlier established through UNESCO prizes for the encouragement of literacy and the production of children’s literature. Turning his attention to Africa, he realized that the decision to publish African authors was largely taken outside the continent. While this had given wide publicity to the work of a few writers who were lucky enough to attract this attention, it meant that a large number of works, arising from and relevant to the local environment and worthy of publication, languished unpublished. There was a need for the encouragement of publishing within Africa and it was in recognition of this that he endowed the Noma Award to encourage the publication of the works of African authors by African publishers. I was happy to accept this invitation and chaired the Managing Committee for its first eleven years. The prize was offered for a book by an African author published by an African publisher, and unlike literary prizes which cover just one genre, it could be awarded over three broad categories – academic or scholarly, children’s literature, and imaginative literature. To complicate matters further, books could be submitted in any of the languages of Africa, both indigenous and European. For this task it was necessary to recruit a wide panel of expert readers from whose reports the Managing Committee which acted as jury made the final selections. The presentation usually took place at some international book event, such as book fairs in Ife, Harare, Dakar, and most notably at Frankfurt in 1980 when the focus of that year was on Africa. It was presented on the tenth anniversary in Tokyo. In the eleven years of my chairmanship, the award was won twice for books on sociology and once each for books on law and health education; there were also a Mau Mau detainee’s prison 146

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Books, Words, Causes memoirs (written in Gikuyu) and a children’s adventure story. The experience of going through expert reports on such a wide range of subjects and of reading so many of the books myself, greatly enriched my knowledge of the African publishing scene. In August 1990 we presented a collection of over one thousand books, which publishers throughout Africa had thought worthy of submission for the prize, to the Research Library on African Affairs of the Ghana Library Board. The enormous labour involved in organizing all this fell to the Secretary, Hans Zell, his small staff, and his equally ingenious successor Mary Jay. As I wrote in a tribute to him, ‘his thoroughness and capacity for attending to the smallest detail as well as his ability to look the most awkward last minute snag in the face and find an almost instant solution is nothing short of amazing. Hotels which had changed management and suffered a tumble in standards between booking and occupancy, university guest houses which had suddenly had both running water and electricity cut off without notice, prize winners who seemed to have escaped from their countries to collect their prize with nothing but the clothes on their backs or are suddenly found to be missing at the crucial moment of receiving their award, the disappearance of bus drivers at carefully pre-arranged departure times, were all merely challenges to Hans to produce alternative arrangements on the spot.’ The Noma Award was not without its adventures!

Sierra Leone Union on Disability Issues (SLUDI) I had the privilege as a lecturer to be the personal tutor of the first blind student to read for a degree at Fourah Bay College. My association with this student, Frederick Kamara, and my observation of the way he coped with his special needs even in times of stress, made me not only very conscious of the disadvantages under which people with disabilities had to operate in our country, but also made me humbly aware of the triumph of will and courage over such difficulties. I had more time in my retirement to do something about this, by which time I was myself blind. In 1992 I received a visit 147

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The Freetown Bond from Babatunde Hume-Dawson, a student at Fourah Bay College, who was coping bravely with the effects of polio while studying the needs of persons with disabilities in general. There were a number of societies of and for people with particular disabilities which tended to fragment and render themselves even less effective. Babatunde Hume-Dawson felt that a national body to bring together all the various societies would be more successful in raising public awareness of the plight of the disabled, and would bring about national action to improve their status. Could I do anything to help? I had discussions with various persons, particularly with Mr Frederick Kamara, who by then was the Government’s Chief Social Welfare Officer. I then called a meeting of representatives of organizations of and for persons with disabilities, where it was resolved to form a union. Sierra Leone Union on Disability Issues (SLUDI) was born. For seven years I continued as chairman to lead the Union in its effort to raise public awareness on disability issues and to help bring about a state in which all people, whether adults or children who are either mentally or physically impaired, to realize their full potential and enable them to make their own contribution as citizens. This enormous task still goes on. Apart from lectures and seminars, the Union made an outstanding practical contribution by effecting the rehabilitation of the Murray Town Limb Fitting Unit which had once been a valuable national resource but which over the years had been reduced to near inactivity because of the deterioration of its equipment and the absence of materials. SLUDI was able to obtain, through the kind assistance of the British High Commission, equipment and materials to the value of over thirty million Leones to make one section of that unit viable enough to start work once again on providing limbs, crutches and other aids for the physically disabled. This equipment was handed over by the British High Commissioner on 8 August 1996 to SLUDI, which in turn presented it to the Ministry of Social Welfare. From time to time, the Union visited the amputees’ camp at Murray Town and made gifts of food and other items. In 2003, along with Dr A. D. O. Wright, I was invited by the Minister of Social Welfare to serve as National Consultant for the formulation of a National Policy for the Disabled. Dr Wright and I did widespread research on the delib148

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Books, Words, Causes erations of the UN, the experience of various countries in Africa and, in particular, of the US and Great Britain. We duly delivered both a policy and suggested legislation in 2005 to bring it to effect. In 2009 our work was finally validated by the Ministry of Social Welfare and a bill was presented to parliament.

Politics In so far as politics means public affairs and an interest in government, I have always been interested even though I have never been a card-carrying member of any political party. I participated in the late ’40s, long before independence, in discussions under the leadership of Raymond Sarif Easmon, about the formation of a political party along Fabian socialist lines. In a small study group we read books on political subjects – I remember Martin Wight’s The Development of the Legislative Council among others. Our attempts to take our ideas to the general public however were lukewarmly received, probably because our approach seemed too intellectual and distant from day to day issues. This was a time when the civil servants, for example, were engaged in a fight for better conditions of service, and on our first appearance at a public meeting in the Cathedral school room, we were confronted with a question from the audience after a rather theoretical presentation of our ideas, ‘What are you going to do to help the civil servants get a pay rise?’ At that point we had no political influence and, I must confess, no position on this practical matter. We were more concerned with preparing for independence and the establishment of good government thereafter. The party failed to take root and soon withered away. This was only one of the areas in which Dr Raymond Sarif Easmon (Cousin Raymond) influenced me. His novel A Burnt Out Marriage and the collection The Feud & other Stories, represent only a fraction of his enormous corpus of unpublished fiction. As I have mentioned, I played the role of Chief Justice in his political play The New Patriots. For a short while, he sought to make me into a fiction writer. My desultory attempts in this direction are no reflection on his benevolent efforts. He 149

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The Freetown Bond treated me, even when I was a boy, without condescension and until his death remained a great friend. From 1950 to ’53, I was away from Sierra Leone and kept up my interest in political affairs by my membership of the Oxford West African Students Club and the Oxford Union. On my return I took part in radio discussions on public affairs, and wrote the occasional article in The Sierra Leone Daily Mail. That paper gave an enterprising invitation to citizens to submit ideas on how to build Sierra Leone after independence. I contributed an article suggesting ideas for a new constitution. I was even more interested in our economic development and proposed that in order to build up our industrial strength we should add value to our iron ore by investing in a steel mill, so as to export processed products rather than crude ore. I discussed this with a friendly minister who told me it was quite impossible. My argument that Japan had built up a great industrial complex based on steel, without their own local iron ore or coal – we at least had the ore – made little impression on him. I still think the idea should have been pursued and that it would have put Sierra Leone on a much firmer foundation. One of the major challenges of the post-independence period after the honeymoon of the Milton Margai regime was the issue of the one-party state. This idea had gained some authority and respectability under the influence of Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Touré. The argument roughly was that the new states were in a hurry and had a lot to do to catch up with the modern world. We needed schools, universities, roads, electricity, hospitals, even nuclear reactors. How could anyone disagree? What was there to oppose? What was needed was one clear vision and this meant one-party led by one strong man. The idea was attractive and Albert Margai caught the vision and pushed for a one-party state, but was vigorously opposed. A group of colleagues at Fourah Bay College, ‘The Nineteen Sixty-Three Committee’, organized meetings in Freetown in which we argued strenuously against the idea. In addition to my speeches at meetings along with my colleagues, I contributed an article to the Daily Mail giving my personal position on the subject. Indeed this was one of the main planks on which the 1967 election was fought and the one-party idea seemed to be defeated. But to 150

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Books, Words, Causes our disillusionment, Siaka Stevens, having won the election, used the efforts of Albert Margai as a platform on which to launch a oneparty regime, which made Sierra Leone into a highly centralized and increasingly oppressive state for several years. The staff of Fourah Bay College found it necessary also to confront military regimes which were even more authoritarian and unpredictable. We made strong representations, for instance, to the Juxon-Smith junta, pointing out that a military regime was no more lasting a solution to Sierra Leone’s political problems than the regime they sought to replace. This experience of the unreliability of party platforms put me off the idea of joining any of the political parties thereafter. Such neutrality has its problems when holding office under a one-party state, particularly in an institution which was dependent on government for its major financial support, and many public officials felt it necessary to safeguard their interests by taking out party cards even against their own convictions. When I became Principal of Fourah Bay College, I maintained this neutrality even when I was advised to take passive membership of the ruling party. It was not just that one had to avoid actually giving offence by one’s actions but one might get into trouble by refusing favours which might compromise one’s position. When, for instance, I politely declined an invitation to accompany the President on a visit to Cuba, many of my friends were very worried on my behalf, and gave me instances of people who had suffered for what had been taken as slights against authority. The notice was in my circumstances impossibly short – only two days – with both academic and administrative commitments requiring my attention. I suffered no more than a cold snub afterwards. This I could bear. On another occasion, S. I. Koroma while acting as President thanked me profusely for coming to his assistance (unknowingly), when I hosted the Editor of West Africa, David Williams, as my personal guest. He explained that David Williams should have been his guest but that some members of his staff had carelessly failed to book him into the Paramount Hotel. He then offered me one of the largest wads of currency notes I had ever seen, with expressions of his gratitude. Mr Koroma was somebody who on other occasions had expressed his admira151

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The Freetown Bond tion for me in most flattering terms and our relationship was cordial. I put an arm around his shoulder and said that I knew where to come if I was in real trouble but that I could not accept money for putting up a personal friend. He was disappointed but accepted my position and we remained on good terms. Thus one had to manage one’s self-respect in an authoritarian state and, with luck, hope to survive. Indeed I received in 1980, while I was Principal at Fourah Bay College, the award of Membership of the Order of the Republic of Sierra Leone (MRSL). I was away in Canada in 1970 during the period when several prominent politicians, Mohammed Bash Taqui, John Karefa-Smart, Raymond Sarif Easmon, Mohammed Fauna and others were arrested and the country seemed to be in a critical constitutional tangle. Without fully realizing that an essential part of the problem was the position of the Governor-General himself, whose office, though largely ceremonial, seemed to upstage the Prime Minister, I wrote to the former expressing my concern in the hope that being ‘above politics’ his intervention might prevent a real catastrophe. Even though we had been friends and colleagues on Radio Forum, my tone was formal. I reproduce the letter because it illustrates my deeply held feelings for the country, and for its ominous foreboding of worse to come: His Excellency, Mr Justice Banja Tejan-Sie Governor-General of Sierra Leone Fort Thornton Freetown, Sierra Leone Your Excellency, First let me congratulate you on the confirmation of your appointment as Governor-General – the highest office in our country. No one should know the responsibilities of this high office better than yourself who have come to it from the bar and the bench. As such one can be confident that you will discharge the office well. One’s personal associations with you add the confidence that you will also discharge the office honourably, fairly, and with dignity. As you know, I am spending this academic year at the University of Toronto where I hope to do some concentrated research and writing away

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Books, Words, Causes from the many other duties which make demands on my time at home. However, the news of political unrest at home – its seriousness compounded by distance – turns my mind back to my country, and away from my work. In the absence of any means of influencing the situation, and as a means of clearing my own mind, I have decided to write to you in the knowledge that from your position – removed from the maelstrom of day to day political activity – you are in a unique position to shed some overriding sense into the scene, and bring forces which now threaten to tear the country apart, together again. My excuse for taking your time is that as Governor-General you are accessible to us all. It seems to me that a polarization of the country has quickly set in, with the government on one side, and its critics on the other. Differences of opinion within a state are healthy and in order. They should be legitimately expressed and as such should be taken into account by the government. I am in no position (as you must be) to judge how far the expression of dissenting opinion has threatened the security of the state, and therefore how justified the response has been. The news however that people whom we have with good reason always regarded as responsible and public spirited men have been detained, fills me with alarm. Not simply because of themselves but because of what they have come to represent in the community. Whole sections of our community are likely to feel aggrieved and dissatisfied. The results of this on the unity of the country can only be eventually disastrous. One reflects on similar situations in territories near our own, when mass detentions of dissenting but highly respected men, have been the prelude to national upheavals. One prays that perhaps by your wise intervention, this could be prevented. What needs to be done, in my opinion, is that forces now likely to move on a collision course should somehow be brought together. We have a constitution over which you preside, and under this there is room for dissent. If by some means you could bring the two sides together and get a measure of agreement to work within the terms of the constitution to effect their differing aims, you would have done Sierra Leone a worthy service. What is needed is an imaginative exercise in national reconciliation. Nigeria is engaged in this now, but, unhappily after a war. What I think should not be allowed to happen is that people should languish in prison without trial or justification (as many did in Ghana and other places) and a feeling should thus be encouraged that justice is not available by constitutional means. Once this feeling becomes general the state is heading towards a savage upheaval. I am not asking merely that 153

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The Freetown Bond people should be released from detention if there is no specific criminal act on their part, but that even after they are released, you might try to bring some working understanding between them and the government. I write without mention of personalities because this is a fundamental matter which transcends personalities. Also I am aware that being so far from home I may not be in full possession of the facts. This is why I write to you to intervene and set the forces of reasonableness in motion in our country once again. My best wishes to you, your family and to Sierra Leone. I remain, Sir, Yours sincerely, Eldred D. Jones

I did not receive a reply to this letter for reasons which soon became obvious. When I next saw Sir Banja, he was in London, dignified, still good humoured but an exile. Others met an even more cruel fate. My personal interest and concern for public education as a means to a sound democracy manifested itself in papers, seminars, personal letters to authorities on a wide variety of subjects. In 2002, the country was faced with the prospect of elections in quite unusual circumstances, some of which I outlined in my paper to a conference held to prepare the way for a peaceful election in March of that year: ‘We are embarking on the forthcoming elections, for example, without some very necessary tools but we have to get on with those that we have. We have not had a general population census since 1985 and this, in turn, means not only that we do not know what our total population is, but also we do not know how this total population is distributed all over the country.’ I suggested that as we had done in the previous election in 1996, we adopt once again the Proportional Representation system but went on to add that indeed this method of election specially adapted to our needs might be a fairer system than the First-Past-the-Post: ‘We have been forced to adopt it here but we may have blundered into a much fairer type of representation.’ Even at the time of writing, the merits of the two systems are still being debated. 154

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National Policy Advisory Committee I had continued to assist in various committees, had accepted invitations to read papers at seminars and workshops and performed various other ad hoc services to the community in my retirement. I was however called out of my study in August 1999 by a request from President Tejan Kabbah to serve as Chairman of the National Policy Advisory Committee. This was a full-time appointment which required me to preside over a small group whose principal assignment was to consider and advise His Excellency on all matters before Cabinet. I was aware of the heavy responsibility that such a position would lay on a fully sighted person and was impressed by the President’s confidence in my ability to undertake it, being totally blind. I made one stipulation, that my wife should act as my personal secretary without which I would have felt unable to accept. I also offered to work without salary. This offer many of my friends, and even colleagues in the committee, found difficult to understand, but at the end of the assignment I felt convinced that I had made a significant contribution to the country and demonstrated that money was not perhaps the most important consideration in national service. The satisfaction I got from successfully carrying out this assignment could not be measured in monetary terms. In his letter of appreciation on behalf of the Government, Vice-President Solomon Berewa wrote: I wish to assure you that Government notes with delight and overwhelming satisfaction the selfless and professional manner in which you and the entire membership of the National Policy Advisory Committee (NPAC) have worked over the years in helping to create institutional memory for all policy issues the Cabinet considered. The depth of research conducted into those issues and the quality and unbiased advice proffered have been very commendable. In this way, you have helped to give strategic direction to the Government as a whole. In the process, you have ensured effective decision making arrangements as well as maintained the effectiveness and integrity of Government systems. The Advi155

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The Freetown Bond sory notes also immensely assisted Cabinet in shaping and overseeing the whole of Government Policy and provided a framework for collective consideration of, and decision on major issues of significant public interest. We as a Government are eternally grateful to you for the excellent service rendered to the State.

This is high praise indeed but our success was due to the quality of the members of the Advisory Committee who were among the best educated and experienced Sierra Leoneans available. I had as Secretary, Teddy Stanley, a man with a brilliant mind and a capacity for penetrating research in spite of serious health problems, while the other members brought to our discussions both intellect and a knowledge of the political and social environment which in my restricted university experience, I lacked. Not the least of their attributes was a sense of humour and a lighthearted approach to our often dull and dry subjects. On 3 January 2003, the President and Cabinet took formal leave of me at a garden party in the grounds of State House, when the Vice-President completely overwhelmed me with praise on behalf of the Government. It was fitting that I was surrounded by my colleagues, Dunstan Spencer, Abdul Karim Koroma, Sidi Alghali, Alice Lansana and Chris Jasabe. I felt fully rewarded for my service to the nation. I was particularly grateful that the Vice-President recognized my wife’s invaluable assistance without which I would have been unable to wade through the volumes of Cabinet and other papers which went with the job: ‘Perhaps the one individual who deserves to be singled out here is the loving wife of our guest of honour, Mrs Marjorie Jones. Her invaluable and back stage role as it is with all dedicated women must have greatly facilitated the achievements we are celebrating today and more.’ The Vice-President’s acknowledgement of Marjorie’s work with me on the NPAC is really a characterization in this particular case of the tremendous support that she has given me in every aspect of my work in our marriage of nearly sixty years. To our great surprise and pleasure, her work in the NPAC was rewarded with the award to her of the honour of the Commander of the Order of the Rokel (CR).

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Knowledge Aid For Sierra Leone (KASL) The most absorbing of my retirement projects, Knowledge Aid for Sierra Leone (KASL), came about almost by accident. On 17 March 1997 I was invited by the West African Examinations Council to give the Annual Endowment Fund lecture, for which I chose the title ‘The Dual Mandate – Teaching and Examining’. In the course of this examination of what and how we teach in our schools, I emphasized the need for the introduction of Information and Communications Technology into the educational system and suggested how we could make a start. I said: ‘In order to equip school leavers to cope with the world of work and with further education much more notice must be taken of the need for familiarity with the new technologies, certainly with the electronic keyboard. Familiarity with the computer, irrespective of the pupil’s particular interest is essential. Without it we would be unable to make any contribution to or participate in world development in the twenty-first century. We will be doomed to remain mere receivers of the products of technology rather than being part of the process of production. This is after all the path to the acquisition of new knowledge through the vast network of computers which make up the world information highway. To prepare for the cyber age, as early as possible we must create cyber centres where trained personnel, preferably teachers, would be in a position to access the vast stores of knowledge and information for the benefit of their pupils and equally important to make our own input into the fund of world knowledge. I suggest cyber centres because, at the beginning of the process, most individual institutions would not be able to equip themselves with the necessary hardware for this purpose, just as subjects like Home Economics in many of our countries were first taught in well equipped centres before individual schools gradually made their own provision. The cyber centres would be the forerunners of individual school centres.’ Having thrown out this idea to an audience which included the great and the good in education in the country, in a speech which the 157

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The Freetown Bond

9.3 Group of UKSG/KASL members at Corpus Christi College, Oxford 2005 (Left back row: John Fawn, Geoff Helliwell, Geoff Hulme, Geoff Goodall, Eldred Jones, Richard Mawditt, Bryce Cottrell, Dr Bala Chandramohan; front row: Bob Bishop, Marjorie Jones, Martin Kenyon) 9.4 KASL Fund-raising Planning Group Knowledge Aid, Freetown, 2008 (Left to right: Mr Mohamed Sheriff, Prof. Kosonike Koso-Thomas, Mme Joy Samake, Prof. Eldred Jones, Mrs Marjorie Jones, Mr Oumar Farouk Sesay, Mr Victor Janjue-Browne; on the floor: Mr Tom Cauuray)

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Books, Words, Causes West African Examinations Council was kind enough to publish and circulate, I thought my mission was over. When I was appointed Chairman of the National Policy Advisory Committee in 1999, some of my Oxford college friends of half a century earlier asked how they could assist my work and even suggested that one of them could come out and work as my ADC. I thought however that they could best assist me in the realization of the idea which I put forward in my lecture to the West African Examinations Council two years earlier. They responded with a vigour and ingenuity which surprised even me, and raised funds by a variety of means to provide computers and advice for the setting up of the teaching centres which I had proposed in my lecture. Their fundraising revival of a production of T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, which the college dramatic society, the Owlets, had performed fifty years earlier with the same producer and cast, deserves a mention in the Guinness Book of Records. With the cooperation of the Ministry of Education, the British Council, Sierratel, Fourah Bay College and selected schools and colleges, and generous funding from local businesses and individuals (I insisted on local counterpart funds), Knowledge Aid for Sierra Leone was launched by the Vice-President, Solomon Berewa at Fourah Bay College in 2002. Its first teaching centre was opened at Government Secondary Technical School, Congo Cross in 2008. Other centres have followed. The Minister of Education at the time, Alpha Wurie, was especially helpful and awarded the project a sustaining annual grant. The succeeding Minister, Minkailu Bah, who had been head of the technical committee of KASL, generously continued the subvention. Knowledge Aid has imaginative plans for the expansion of its services but awaits a much larger injection of cash to realize them. Meanwhile its efforts have created an appetite for Information Technology in schools which should have an enduring effect on education. The project has had an unexpected cultural influence as the local committee sought to raise funds by poetic readings by local authors and narrations of Krio folktales, some of which I have edited and published in a small collection Stori Go Stori Kam. This very book The Freetown Bond will also be sold in Sierra Leone to raise funds for KASL.

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10 Twilight & Evening Bell

Now in our eighties, we keep telling each other that it is time we moved out of our large house into Marjorie’s dream cottage. The size and the stairs are becoming too much for us. But where, we ask, would all the books go – we still refer to them from time to time. Marjorie no longer makes clothes professionally but she still keeps in touch with her sewing machine and all the paraphernalia that go with bringing designs to life. Then there is the computer and its surrounding station, the television and music centre, all of which are spread out in the all-purpose studio. The Yamaha Grand would fill the whole of the living space and we would have to give up our favourite part of the garden. We are still thinking. But occasionally the house asserts itself when the sitting room, at the persuasion of friends like Joy Samake and Kitty Fadlu-Deen, is transformed into a small concert hall – the best in the city, Joy declares – and a young recitalist thrills a small audience with an evening at the piano. Marjorie herself still recalls on the instrument some of the pieces she once played so well. Gone are the days when her artist friends spasmodically would gather together for their informal chats, and some would turn up unannounced with their easels, palettes and brushes to capture the garden and the magnificent scenery. Undergraduate ladies from the college social clubs would rehearse ‘catwalk’ poses for their fashion shows and college receptions and coffee parties would fill the house with laughter and applause. Occasional visitors still drop in from quite unexpected places and from the long distances of our past travels or with letters of introduction, to ask for assistance in their research. Tim Butcher, for instance, the author of Chasing the Devil, dropped in at the start of his journey to follow the tracks of Graham Greene and his cousin Barbara through Sierra Leone and Liberia in 1935, for 160

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Twilight & Evening Bell that famous author’s Journey without Maps. Tim Butcher and I were fellow Oxonians though separated by decades, and we discovered that we had climbed the same railway bridge on the way to the playing fields of our two colleges down the Abingdon Road. He intrigued me however by informing me that in an earlier version of Graham Greene’s Journey without Maps which I had never seen, Greene had referred to his meeting with a Customs officer named Jones who had treated him with kindness and courtesy in contrast to the kind of hostile and demanding reception that he had been warned to expect from local officials: ‘The reference had been excised in later editions by Graham Greene, presumably to save space, and Prof. Jones who had spent his career teaching English literature had never seen an original edition so did not know of his father’s encounter with one of the most illustrious English authors of the twentieth century.’ My father was indeed a senior Customs officer in 1935, almost on the brink of retirement and, though he never mentioned such a meeting, Tim Butcher’s conclusion that he and Greene had met, as he reports in Chasing the Devil, sounds plausible: ‘In the original text Graham Greene writes glowingly about Mr Jones, the customs inspector, describing him as one of the few “perfectly natural Africans whom I met in Sierra Leone”’ Butcher continues, ‘It was a feeling I echoed one generation later.’ One detail in Tim Butcher’s account of our agreeable meeting I have had to correct. He may be pardoned for assuming that I went to Oxford on a scholarship. I did not, and give the account of how my education there was financed in Chapter 3 of this memoir. I had equipped myself for blindness by learning Braille and accumulating some basic reading material – the plays of Shakespeare, various anthologies of poetry and the King James Bible – to stave off boredom from time to time in my declining years. As James Currey reminded me, the 1611 translation of the Bible was suggested to James I by the President of my college, Corpus Christi, and the Oxford Company of Translators used to read aloud their work in Pelican Quad where I had rooms over three hundred years later! My fondness for this classic translation is however coincidental. My friend, Julius Spencer, who read the first draft of this memoir 161

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The Freetown Bond remarked that I had not expressed the agony of blindness. I had given the facts without dwelling on the ‘suffering’. Loss of vision is a great inconvenience, bringing as it does a loss of autonomy and a dependence on others, but it is by no means the near-death experience that it is sometimes made out to be. When I suggested to my consultant in London that, with my growing loss of vision, I should learn Braille, he advised me against it, pointing out that at my age that would be difficult and the disappointment of failure might leave me in a worse psychological plight than before. My local School for the Blind took the opposite view. ‘You can learn Braille’, Mrs Henrietta Smith declared and, in one afternoon, she introduced me to the system and handed me over to Marjorie with learning materials to continue my tuition. I could soon read and type my notes on a Braille typewriter for chairing meetings. For extensive lectures, Marjorie and I devised a system by which I dictate my material to her on the computer which we revise and she records on a tape recorder which I listen to while I speak. Earlier in my life, I had unknowingly been psychologically prepared for blindness, by being associated with people who had overcome their impediment with fortitude and a positive response. In my childhood, for instance, I had seen a neighbour, ‘Uncle Simon Lisk’, accommodate his sudden blindness by careful organization of his domestic environment so that he kept his apartment immaculate, cooked his meals himself and continued to maintain a rose garden, shrubs and trees in his large terraced compound. Through my contact with him, I was unconsciously learning how to cope with a deficiency. As a student at Fourah Bay in the mid-1940s, we had been visited by John Wilson (later Sir John), founder of the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind, who inspired a change in our attitude to blindness not only by his eloquent lecture on the subject, but also by demonstrating his own practical skills by telling the time on his Braille watch and taking dictation on his Braille typewriter. Later, the experience of working with a blind student who had himself acquired all these coping skills prepared me mentally to face blindness so that, at the risk of sounding a little self-satisfied, I can say that I did not suffer quite as much as my friend imagined. I have been fortunate to receive the personal support of my wife, the kind 162

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Twilight & Evening Bell of support which should be made available institutionally for all persons with disability in society. From time to time, friends and relations from abroad send me printed books which Marjorie patiently reads for our mutual enjoyment and some even thoughtfully send audio books which we can share without her having the pain of reading them out. (She had, for instance, heroically read out the whole of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time before we acquired the audio version.) * I am surprised at the number of locally printed books by colleagues and old students for which they ask me to write a foreword or to take part in their launching. There is no established publishing house in Sierra Leone, though with trouble and expense a book can be put together by the author and a local printer. A few authors, however, still manage to be published abroad and enjoy the luxury of royalties. My retirement has thus been enriched by a surprising number of such books. It was sheer delight, for instance, to read S. V. Wright’s Foundations of Parliamentary Democracy and At Ninety. Other books which I have been happy to have been associated with include Koso Thomas, Poetic Reflections, his biography of his friend Justice Livesey Luke, Swimming Against the Tide and the collection of his speeches edited by his wife Olayinka; Ade Renner-Thomas, Land Tenure; Abdul Karim Koroma, Crisis and Intervention; Chris Squire, Agony; Solomon Pratt, Jollyboy, an autobiography; Leslie Shyllon, Medical Ethics; Oumar Farouk Sesay, Salute to the Remains of a Peasant; Abu Noah, Measuring the Heartbeats of my Country, and W. S. Marcus Jones, Legal Development and Constitutional Change. Lynette, the daughter of my dear friend and collaborator Logie Wright, paid a touching tribute to her father in Echo of Voice for which I wrote a foreword and whose launching brought back life-long happy memories. In earlier days, with more strength to my legs, I had the pleasure of launching Syl Cheney-Coker’s third volume of poems, The Blood in the Desert’s Eyes, but would have been even happier to have launched his prizewinning novel, The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar, the signed copy of which went missing after the departure of three European 163

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The Freetown Bond

10.1 Ethline Jarrett (author’s sister), author, Marjorie Jones, in the garden of Orchard Quinn, Leicester Village, Freetown, 1995

professors for whom I had brought it out when they unexpectedly called on me. Sierra Leoneans have not been noted for fiction writing in the past, but recently their works in this genre have achieved international distinction. Paul Conton, Road to Freedom, Syl Cheney-Coker, The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar and Aminatta Forna, The Devil that Danced on the Water, all received Commonwealth Prizes. Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love was nominated for the Orange Prize. Delia Jarrett-Macauley received the George Orwell Prize for her war novel about child soldiers Moses, Citizen and Me. The future of Sierra Leonean fiction seems suddenly bright. * The garden still brings us great joy. After the first couple of heavy showers the crocuses spring up and brighten the front lawn with their all too brief annual show. The bougainvilleas, by contrast, are the stars of the parched dry season. My father’s mistake was to water this shrub in his front garden meticulously during the dry season so 164

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Twilight & Evening Bell that it produced luxuriant green leaves but no blooms. Only after he died did we realize that this flower thrives best when left alone. We watch with despair when grasshoppers appear in their thousands to attack only the most delicate blooms and the tender leaves of the young orange trees with which we try to replace the old ones. The only thing that grasshoppers do not care for is grass! We harvest the fruit of our lone palm tree and drink the refreshing liquor of our single coconut tree, still clinging to our large house leaving the cottage for our short-stay guests. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.

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Appendix

Eldred Durosimi Jones Eldred Durosimi Jones, born 6 January 1925 in Freetown Sierra Leone, educated in Sierra Leone at the CMS Grammar School and Fourah Bay College and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He holds an M.A. Oxford and Ph.D Durham. Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Professor and Head of the Department of English Language & Literature, Principal and Pro-Vice-Chancellor at Fourah Bay College (1953–85). He held a Commonwealth Fellowship at the University of Leeds. For various years he was Commonwealth Fellow at the University of Leeds, visiting Commonwealth Professor at the University of Toronto, the Universities of Sheffield and Kent at Canterbury, Margaret Bundy Scott Professor in Literature at Williams College, Massachusetts, and Senior Visiting Fellow, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D. C. (between 1960 and 1969). He became Emeritus Professor, University of Sierra Leone; Chairman, Noma Award for Publishing in Africa; founding Chairman, Sierra Leone Union on Disabilities Issues; Chairman, National Policy Advisory Committee, Sierra Leone; and founding Chairman, Knowledge Aid Sierra Leone (KASL). Main Publications Othello’s Countrymen, Oxford University Press, London 1965 The Elizabethan Image of Africa, University of Virginia Press, USA, 1971 The Writing of Wole Soyinka, Heinemann, London, & Twayne Publishers, USA, First edition 1973; James Currey, London and Heinemann, USA, Second Edition, 1988 (with Clifford Fyle) The Krio-English Dictionary, Sierra Leone University Press and Oxford University Press, 1980 166

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Appendix Editor: African Literature Today 1–11, (with Eustace Palmer) 12–15, (and with Marjorie Jones) 16–23, Heinemann, London and APC New York 1–14; James Currey, London and Oxford and Africa World Press, USA 15–23 Honorary Doctorates D. Litt, Williams College, Mass., 1985: D. Litt., University of Sierra Leone, 1989; D. Phil, University of Umeä, Sweden, 1996; D. Litt, University of Birmingham, UK, 2005 Awards Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)1972; also awarded the Silver Medal by the RSA 1974. Decorated Premier Order of the Republic of Sierra Leone 1980 (MRSL). Senior Citizen Award AWOL 2001. Jointly with Mrs Marjorie Jones, the Distinguished Africanist Award of the African Studies Association UK 2001. Honorary Fellow, Corpus Christi College, Oxford 2002. First International PEN Sierra Leone Chapter Award 2005. First Integrity Award by the Sierra Leone Anti-Corruption Commission 2009.

Marjorie Jones Birdie Marjorie Jones née Pratt, born 18 June 1926 in Bathurst, Gambia, was educated at the Annie Walsh Memorial School and Fourah Bay College, Freetown, St Mary’s, Durham University, and the Inner Temple, London. Over fifty years ago, she took a deliberate decision when she abandoned Law, trained as a Dress Designer at Oxford Polytechnic, and devoted herself to supporting the work of her husband as an international scholar. This was recognised when, jointly with him, the African Studies Association of the UK gave her the Distinguished Africanist Award for 2002 at a ceremony at the University of Birmingham. Her work in African Studies 167

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The Freetown Bond culminated in the position of Assistant Editor of African Literature Today, in which she also took responsibility for the compilation of the index. Her skills in copy-writing and editing under pressure were also appreciated and rewarded by the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, in the service of which she travelled widely in Africa, Europe and Japan. She served as Personal Assistant to the Chairman of the National Policy Advisory Committee, and was awarded the insignia of Commander of the Order of the Rokel (CR). She received a ‘Women of Excellence Award for a Life Time of Achievement’ in 2004. In celebration of the 150th anniversary of the foundation of her Alma Mater, Fourah Bay College, her gift was to reproduce the whole of the College Register from 1827 to 1977. For a year in 1959, she taught dress design voluntarily at the YWCA Vocational School in Freetown. She made comfortable homes in university towns in Britain, the USA and in Canada where she studied painting, batik and silk printing in the Experimental Art School in Toronto in 1971. Some of her hangings formed part of the Sierra Leone Art Exhibition at Festac 1977 in Lagos, Nigeria. She has done theatre design for the Sierra Leone National Theatre League and Fourah Bay College Dramatic Society for various productions, including The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Alchemist, Tobias & the Angel, the Pageant of Sierra Leone in the 1957 Festival of the Arts and Crowther’s People in 1977. She has served as member of the Board of Governors of the Annie Walsh Memorial School, member of the Board of Governors of the National School of Nursing, member of the Sierra Leone Arts Society, Executive Officer, Sierra Leone Union on Disability Issues, Director, Board of Trustees, Spencer Trust Fund and is currently Treasurer, Knowledge Aid Sierra Leone. Her most significant achievement has been to accommodate herself to her husband’s disability for over twentyfive years, enabling him to continue his extensive work of writing, editing and lecturing all over the world, and making his transition from sight to blindness almost seamless.

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Index

Achebe, Chinua, 62, 91, 109, 112 African Literature Today, 61, 140– 5 Annie Walsh Memorial School, 7, 8, 9, 128 Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, (AFRC), 83, 84 Azikwe, Nnamdi, 20

Bah, Minkailu, 159 Ballanta, 6, 28 Banham, Martin, 127, 133 Bateson, F. W., 52, 65 Beethoven Jubilee Hall, 75 Beier, Ulli, 109, 112–14 Biafran War, 102 Big Mama (Mrs Susan Jarrett), 5 Birmingham University, 104; Centre for West African Studies, 64; Shakespeare Research Institute, 64 Blackwells, 54 Bonthe, Sherbro, 19, 23, 25 Boyle, Sidney, 20, 23 British Council Dramatic Society, 125

British High Commission, 75 Broadcasting Service, 135 Buller, Mabel, 5 Bulletin of African Literature, 140 Butcher, Tim, 160–1

Cambridge West African Students Club, 53 Carnahan, A. S. J., 87 Carr, Emile, 29–30 Casely-Hayford, Gladys, 63 children’s games, 8–9, 11 Christmas Cracker, 135 Church Missionary Society, (CMS) 23, 60, 107 Civil War, 82 Clark, J. P., 112, Clarke, Garry, 55, 99 CMS Grammar School, 7, 9, 14, 20, 21, 26, 27, 31–4, 48, 53 Colonial Development & Welfare Fund, 73 Commonwealth Literature, 91 Conakry Peace Conference, 84 Conton, Willie & Bertha, 108– 9, 125 169

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The Freetown Bond Corpuscles, A History of Corpus… by its Members, 58 Coup, Bangura, 56; NRC, 67 Cox-George, N. A., 38 Crowder, Michael, 127, 145 Crowther, Samuel Ajayi, 23, 37 Crowther’s People, 23, 29 Currey, James, xi, 140, 143, 145, 161 Curry, D. B., 29

Daily Mail, 64, 128, 150 Davies, Edward, 131 Decker, Thomas, 63 Durham University, 23, 27, 37, 40–1, 43, 44, 65, 69, 88; affiliation, 69, 78

Easmon, Raymond Sarif, 128, 149, 152 Economic Community of West African Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), 83–4 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), 84 Ekwensi, Cyprian, 109–10, 117 Elizabethan Image of Africa, The, 52, 61, 65, 95 Elliott Commission Report, 37 Elnafaty, Mallam Abubakarr, 121 170

Empire Day, 20–1 Enahoro, Tony, 20 Enugu Market, 117 extra-mural, 66

Fitzjohn, W. H., 86, 89, 134 Folger Shakespeare Library, 61, 65, 86–8, 95 Foray, Cyril, 40, 84, 105, 126 Fourah Bay College old students, 38, 40, 43, 45 Fourah Bay College, 6, 9, 10, 14, 16, 18, 22, 23, 26, 27, 36, 37, 40, 57, 58, 60–1, 65, 66, 67; alumni, 69; bookshop, 71; buildings, 74; collegiate life, 68–9; Foundation, 69; Foundation Year Course, 73; grants-in-aid, 72; Humanities Research, 124; Literature Conference 62, 150, 151, 159, 162; Senior Staff Association, 67; staff, 102–4; student problems, 69–72, scholarships, 71, 72; student clubs, 41; student entertainers, 41–2; week, 69; women students, 41, 79, 95, 96, 97, 101, 102–3, 107, 118, 125–6, 127, 134, 136–40, 145, 147, 148 Freetown: A Symposium, 146 Fyfe, Christopher, 63, 145 Fyle, Clifford, 63 Fyle, Magbailey, 78

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Index Gaddafi, Muammar; Green Book, 73 Gallery Labac, 110 Gardner, Robert, 38 George IV, 31 George V, 7 German Embassy, 75 Government Printing Department, 9, 34 GTZ, 75

Holy Trinity Parish, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 14, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 26, 65, 101, 125 Hulme, Geoff & Shirley, 96, 98, 101

Ibadan, 109, 112; Mbari, 112; University 58 Ifaki, 115 Ife, Book Fair, 70; Festival of the Arts, 101; University, 70, 101, Ikosun Festival, 115 Ilesha, 114–15 Ilobu, 113 Independent Mediation Committee, (INAMEC), 83 Institute of African Studies, 127, 128, 145

Jalloh, Minkailu, xii Jarrett, Buller, 5, 6, 9, 18 John, Emily, 4, 5

John, Ned, 34 Johnson, Bp. T. S., 42 Johnson-Wallace, I. T. A., 20, 23 Jones, E. P. W. (father), 5–6, 7, 11, 18, 19, 23, 26, 93, 161 Jones, Edward, 78, 88 Jones, Essemary (Mrs Thompson), daughter, 98 Jones, Ethline (Mrs Jarrett) sister, 4, 5, 7, 9 Jones, Ethline Marie (mother), 2, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 19, 23 Jones, Kezia (Mrs Davies) sister, 6, 8, 9, 10 Jones, Marjorie, 55, 56, 57, 58– 9, 61, 74, 76, 77, 80–2, 83, 86, 87, 91–4, 95–6, 98–101, 104–6, 108, 138, 141–2, 143, 145, 155, 156, 160, 162, 163 Jones, Michael, (Doc) brother, 6, 9 Jones, Mimi (Ethline), daughter, 77, 81, 98, 99 Jones, Rev. E. N. see Sankoh, Lamina Jos, Museum, 118–19; Plateau Club, 119 Juxon-Smith, Andrew, 66, 67, 151

Kaduna, 120, 121 Kano, 120; Emir’s Palace, 120; Museum, 121, 122 Kawaley, Canon S. R., 14 Kennedy, John F., 86, 89, 90 171

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The Freetown Bond Knowledge Aid Sierra Leone (KASL), 66, 100, 157–9 Kortright; life at, 80; Plateau, 44, 66, 67, 75, 79, 84 Koso-Thomas, Kosonike, 79 Krio, 45, A Krio-English Dictionary 63, 66; Reading & Writing Krio, 63–4, 66

Lagos Museum, 110 Land, Harry & Valerie, 126–9 Leah Street fire, 1–2, 5, 10, 25 Leech, Clifford, 65, 124 Leicester Village, 44 Library of Congress, 86, 87, 89 Lijadu, Yemi, 110

Mabang, 36–9, 41 Macauley, Jomo, 67 Maroon Church, St John, 2, 5 Maroon Town, 2, 4 Mary Kingsley Theatre, 23, 127–8 Mbari clubs, 112 Mbari Enugu, 116 Mbayo, Eya, 106 Mosquito, 127 Mount Aureol, 39, 43, 66, 76, 79 Mountain Rural Secondary School, Regent, 65, 107

National Policy Advisory Committee, 155 172

National Reformation Council, (NRC), 66, 84 National Theatre League, 125 Nicol, Canon S. O., 14, 18 Nicol, Davidson, 67, 74 Nigeria, 7, 46; University of, 118; NBC, 110 Nkrumah, Kwame, 108 Nok culture, 118–19 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, 53, 146 North Korea, 104–6 Nsukka, 118

Ogunmola, 122 Okigbo, Christopher, 94, 109 Olubunmo, Adegoke, 112, 114–15, 122 Onitsha, 116; market pamphlets, 109, 111, 117 oral tradition, 96, 101 Orin, 115 Oshogbo, 113 Othello’s Countrymen, 52, 61, 65 Oxford, 39, 42, 48, 58, 60, 76, 99; English Syllabus, 52; Union, 52, 53–4, 150; University Dramatic Society, 54; West African Students Club, 53, 150

Pageant, Mosquito 1938, 21, 127 Pageant National Festival of the Arts 1957, 22

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Index Palmer, Eustace, 23, 69, 61, 62, 141

racial discrimination, 89; mixing 128 Radcliffe Camera, 54 Radio Forum, 134 Revolutionary United Front, (RUF), 82, 84 Roberts, Rev. E.A.H., 39 Rotimi, Ola, Gods Are Not To Blame, The, 127

Sankoh, Lamina, (Rev. Jones, E. N.), 20, 29–30 Sawyerr, Rev. H. A, E., 38, 44 Schools Broadcasting, 135 Segun, Mabel, 122–3 Shakespeare, Merry Wives, 126 Shrimpton, Neville, 63–4 Shrines, Osun, 113; Shango, 113 Sierra Leone authors, 163–4 Sierra Leone Independence, 86 Sierra Leone Language Journal, 63 Sierra Leone Socialist Party, 149 Sierra Leone Studies, 63 Sierra Leone Union on Disabilities (SLUDI), 65, 148–9 149 Snelgrove, Rev. F.M., 42 Soyinka, Wole, 62, 92, 102, 109, 110, 112, 114, 126, 127, 138

Spencer, Julius, 161 Stevens, President Siaka, 56, 75, 76, 150, 151 Strasser-King, Victor, 68, 84

Taylor, Lynn, xi, 143 Tejan-Sie, Banja, 152–4 Thomas, Caroline, 16 Thomas, Hugh, 39 Thomas, S. B. Abuke, 37 tornado, 1975, 74 Toronto, 56, 94–6 Tregson-Roberts, George, 16 tutorial system, 51–2, 53 Tutuola, Amos, 114, 122

Umeä University, 64 United Negro College Fund, 88 University Finance, 73 University of Lagos, 102 University of Sierra Leone, 78 University of Toronto, 152–3

Vancouver, 92, 94, 102 Volunteer Defence Force, 85

walking, 131–3 West African Examinations Council (WAEC), 65, 157, 159 Wilberforce Memorial Hall, 9 Wilberforce, William, 105 173

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The Freetown Bond Williams, V. E. E., 16, 17 Willson, Rev. P. Hycy, 26–7 Wilson, Rev. Norman, 18 Wilson, Sir John, 162 World Festival of Negro Arts, 61, 65

174

Wright, Logie, 55, 125 Wright, Louis B., 87 Wurie, Alpha, 159

Zell, Hans, 61, 62, 70, 71, 147

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JAMES CURREY an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com www.jamescurrey.com

THE FREETOWN BOND

Cover photograph: A view across Freetown towards the harbour (© Samuel Akie Ajibade 2012)

ELDRED DUROSIMI JONES

Whose Empire Day were the school children of Sierra Leone in the 1930s celebrating as they tipped their straw boaters to the Union Jack and singing ‘Flag of our Empire waving there above’? These were the same children educated in British church schools who were to lead the liberation from Empire. Eldred Durosimi Jones was born in 1925 and this memoir gives a vivid picture of growing up in Freetown in the latter days of British colonial rule. He was an exceptional young man who was able to take advantage of the unusual style of this city-state. Known internationally as being central to the establishment of the study of African writing, African Literature Today of which he was founding editor in 1968, is a key marker of this growth. In addition, his book Othello’s Countrymen introduced Africa into Shakespeare studies.

ELDRED DUROSIMI JONES

The Freetown A Life under Bond Two Flags

Eldred Durosimi Jones is Emeritus Professor of English Language and Literature, and Retired Principal of Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, Freetown. He attended the historic CMS Grammar School and Fourah Bay College, and then did further studies at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He lost his sight in his middle years and this book, like all his later written work, has been brought to the page by his wife Marjorie Jones. Her gift for story-telling about their lives as Sierra Leone was gripped by civil war has added to this highly individual book

Eldred Jones has led a remarkable and distinguished life ... the memoir not only covers Eldred Jones’ personal and professional life, but also social and educational developments in Sierra Leone over the best part of a century. – Martin Banham, Emeritus Professor of Drama & Theatre Studies, University of Leeds