Sierra Leone Lit 101

As my inaugural post from Freetown, I review two works of fiction, each written by Sierra Leonian authors, “Road to Freedom,” by Lucilda Hunter, and “The Feud and Other Stories,” by R. Sarif Easmon.

Before I visit a country, particularly to work there, I like to get a sense of its literature. Fiction gives a much richer picture of life in place than can ethnographies or the Human Development Indicators (which, though the data is out of date, ranks Salone the least developed country in the world). Much to my surprise, it was quite hard to find books written by Sierra Leonian authors. I had to go into the depth’s of UCLA’s Southern Regional Library Facility, where books too unpopular to circulate at the Southern UC campuses come to rest. In the case of Easmon’s book, I was the only person to check it out since it was purchased in 1981. That’s a shame, because the two books were terrific.

“Road to Freedom” is a first-person account of one of the first settlers of Freetown, the child of freed slaves from America named Deannie Porter. Dennie accounts much, from the struggles of her freedmen community in Nova Scotia, to her burgeoning sexuality and first love, but the most interesting narrative, in my mind, is the book’s discussion of the British abolitionist movement in the early 19th century. While the text is fictional, the comprehensive references page gives me the impression that it closely parallels the history.

In the text, Deannie’s Nova Scotian community sends a man to England to get them what they were promised after escaping their masters and fighting for the British during the American Revolution – land. The man returns with word from the abolitionist leader of the Sierra Leone Company, “a good man,” Dennie believes throughout, that those who wish to can move to Sierra Leone, where land and verdant fields will be aplenty. After many months at sea, the settlers arrive with their hopes, and find a much bleaker picture. Sierra Leone is a hard place to settle, and shortly after a coup in the Company leadership, it becomes apparent that the British do not want to give them land, and instead treat them much like slaves. This story provides a more nuanced version of the British abolitionists than I had heard previously. Much of the myth of Freetown is that it was, from the start, and idyllic land for freedmen to settle. It seem that the internal politics of the Company, between the abolitionists and those capitalists looking for cheap labor made life much harder than some “remember.” Another interesting point is the discussion of the freedmen’s attempt to form their own government and be represented in the deliberations of the Company, which governed the Freetown in the early years. I wonder what legacy those original democrats left in today’s political system?

“The Feud and Other Stories,” I liked less. Most of the stories, including the Feud, are short parables about pre-colonial life. Not being familiar with the narrative traditions of the area, I found them hard to relate to. One though, I really enjoyed. Appropriately, it involved a white man in Africa – Michael Wood, District Commissioner. The bitter, racist colonial official searches for a fugitive accused of murdering his wife. Rumor has it that the fugitive escaped into the local secret society’s forest, a place where none but the uninitiated may enter. Woode’s arrogance gets the best of him, and to his doom, he enters the forest.

The story seemed to me a warning to household survey workers. A colleague and I were speaking last week about how we’d like to understand better how secret societies (a big institution here – more on them later) interact with “official” local governments. We toyed with the idea of asking questions about them, but ended up stumped because we couldn’t find away to get people to talk about something that’s secret. We got, perhaps, a little arrogant about what we can do with surveys, just as did Michael Woode with his investigation.

Publication information for these texts follows. I’d recommend them to anyone, particularly children. They are easy enough reading, and might provide a good compliment to the literature children read in the U.S. while studying slavery.

Lucilda Hunter, “Road to Freedom,” Ibadan, Nigera: African Universities Press, 1982.
R. Sarif Easmon, “The Fued and other stories,” Essex, UK: Longman House, 1981.