The sad passing away of Eric Eccles James, driving force of `James International' Business Empire at the age of 64 certainly calls for eulogy. Yet another warrior of the soil has gone down with the sunset but the dreams and passions that moved them still flow on, continuing to motivate those who pick up the mantle. Hence the need to chronicle their lives, what they stood for, the vicissitudes of their earthly pathways.

Eric James was for many years a name that Sierra Leoneans equated with economic business. James International was and still is a household trademark, a business empire that spans at least three generations beginning in the early forties with Eric's parents the late Horace Eccles James and Mama Princess James.

In those formative years the family was involved principally in trade which took the matriarch Mama James, into the depths of Sierra Leone's hinterland. The family business was fanning out and Mama Princess James established business outlets in Freetown, Koindu, Kissi Teng Chiefdom, Kailahun district, Yamandu, Sandoh chiefdom, Kono district and in Macenta in the Republic of Guinea among other places.

The family business saw the young Eric leaving the Sierra Leone Grammar School for Macenta to assist his mother. This compelled him to continue his schooling in that French speaking town. He became fluent in French.

What many younger Sierra Leoneans do not know was that Eric, the ace businessman that he was, had for almost two decades cut a fine niche as an international broadcaster.

His rich, trained voice was booming out from the portals of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) from 1967, a time when it was still a novelty to see an African face at Bush House (the BBC's broadcasting house) or to find an African cradling the microphone in far reaching programmes like Eric's, Post Mark Africa. Those were the days of Pete Myers who was presenting the BBC Morning Show which was the fore-runner of the current `Network Africa.'

Eric's `Post Mark Africa' programme was already touching the hearts of millions in the emerging African countries that had won independence in often grueling ways from their colonial masters. The new African was proud in postulating his/her Africaness. The new identity that yelled out `I'm black, I'm proud' resonated from President Kwame Nkrumah's Pan Africanist Ghana to Sekou Toure's revolutionary Guinea to Abdel Nassers Egypt on to Emperor Haile Selassie's Ethiopia.

It was the African Risorgimento (reawakening) that manifested itself in a complexity of ways throughout the continent. It blended with the black emancipation movements in the United States with the evocative philosophies of Marcus Garvey, the spiritual emotive dream-force of Rev. Martin Luther King, the radicalist stridency of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Toure). Those fused with the struggle to free Southern Africa, including Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), and then Portuguese speaking Mozambique and Angola.

In such a powerful movement of Africans and people of African origin, Eric James' `Post Mark Africa' was a chronicler of the age with the objectivity that the BBC is famed for.
Eric's rich tenor voice sounded across the airwaves as his fluid quick wit and pulsating diction easily won millions of new listeners to the BBC throughout Africa. Post Mark Africa's presentation of issues was middle-of-the-road in style - part serious part light hearted. It grew in dimension and in listenership and in less than three years it was one of the BBC's most popular African programmes, attracting listeners from all corners of the continent.

But Eric had other and bigger ideas. He had got feelers from West Germany's international radio; Radio Deutschewelle (Voice of Germany) that they were expanding their African Service. Under its Director of the African Service, the ever-driving Dieter Brauer, Deutschewelle was wooing big talents to propel the vocal sounds coming from what was endearingly referred to as the Grand Old City of Cologne. They had the resources and the sophisticated equipment to entice the big names. They wanted Eric to do a breakfast show that would hit Africa with a bang. Their terms were winnable.

Eric innovated his programme `The early birdies' and then the big one: `Eric the Peril' show. With repeated scoops in global personalities being interviewed in that morning programme, the Eric the peril show was a huge hit from its very inception in 1969. At its height, Eric had earned a huge reputation as a radio host, a disc jockey extraordinaire and as a promoter. He promoted one of America's first musical megastars, `Isaac Hayes,' in the early 1970's, on Hayes' tour of West Germany and other parts of Europe.

Deutschewelle was rolling on. It had top of the line personalities: Ruth Weiss, Nigeria's Peter Enahoro who was a journalist's own wordsmith, Sierra Leone's David John etc.

Eric landed me the job of correspondent for the global programme `Window on the world', which required my reporting and commenting on the news breaking events in Sierra Leone.

And they were pretty heady enough: the 1970 assassination attempt on Siaka Stevens by Brigadier Bangura and co, their trial and eventual execution; the 1973 attempt on Prime Minister Christian Kamara-Taylor's life; the trials of Mohamed Forna, Ibrahim Taqi and others and their executions and a host of others in the 1970s.

There were other aspects of Eric James that people did not know. Considering that he hardly ever drove a vehicle in his later business years, many would be astounded to learn that he was such a lover of fast cars that while in Europe he revelled in racing speed cars though from an amateurish perspective. It couldn't have been otherwise, a professional racing car driver can hardly find time for extra involvement.

Eric met, courted and married the beautiful Helga, an indigene of Cologne. She was also at Deutschewelle though she was more on the technical side. We would sit in the twilight in Eric's flat at Grungurtelstrasse, working on concepts while Helga pieced out things on the electric typewriter.

Eric James was an innovator through and through. He was at all times brimming with mind blowing ideas of how Africa and particularly his own country, Sierra Leone, should move on. Like many, he was aghast that Sierra Leone, potentially one of the richest countries in terms of natural resources was still in the list of poorest nations. His mother, Mama James, an ardent Christian who would fly to Israel on religious maters, believed the problem was religious. That Sierra Leoneans had turned their backs to the Almighty Creator who placed all the bounties of the world in this territory to make it a paradise. Hence the plummeting and the nose-dive.

Eric came home in the late 1980's to help make a difference. His flair for innovation saw him, now as head of the James International company, flexing out into pre-financing, agricultural produce on a large scale, mining, haulage, penny-penny supermarkets, cash n carry shopping outlets, landed property import/export, distillery etc.

The Eric James innovative flair was manifesting itself. At its height James International was a multimillion dollar outflexing business empire that could hold its own with many of its kind in the continent. The railway went, so James International replaced the railway with some of the biggest haulage trucks that the nation had ever seen, plying the routes, transporting raw and finished goods every where.

The other siblings particularly, Tunde and Keddy, all took part in what was intrinsically a family business. Eric's son, Eki, was also learning the family business. Mama James had knit a close friendship with numerous chiefs and elders in the provincial towns she did business with. Many were the children who simply walked into the James household and stayed as family.

In one flow of his innovativeness Eric brought in one hundred (100) small scale vans that he made available to farmers mostly in the Eastern province. They were to pay for those in cash or kind.

The objective was that with mobility the farmers would be better able to subscribe to the produce buying programme that `James International' was pursuing. James International was at the time distilling gin, mining for precious minerals and working on a ship building project, the ideas were overflowing. It was a business empire that was Sierra Leonean and home grown - a Sierra Leonean success story.

The eleven year rebel war took a cruel toll on the business. Much of the company's investment was in the provinces. On many occasions, rebels ambushed James International trucks and trailers while farmers were brutalized by marauding gangs. Many vehicles were commandeered; mining sites were roughly grabbed by the drugged rebel gangs. It was a huge disappointment for the man who had put in so much, investing in his native land. "Typical", he told me with a wry grin. But you could see he was deeply hurt.

"It's as if nature took all the bad people and put them in one country!" he once told me after somebody he had trusted woefully let him down. Eric had so many friends of various inclinations and his office saw a daily flow of press people, business people, politicians, sports people and the like.

There were youths also who just wanted sponsorship for all sorts of ideas, some weird indeed. Eric chatted, joked with them all and helped whom he could. Before he had a terrible fall that partially affected his movements, he had always been humorous with a quick wit. He was not averse to an evening cigar or two with a glass of whisky.

"No more whisky?" I asked him one day after he had completed his daily session with his physiotherapist. He gave me his infectious grin.

"Look, Ricky, I have to beat this thing. I must beat it".

Well, fate took over in a South Central Regional hospital in Petal, Missisipi in the USA on 10th July, and Sierra Leone has lost a true patriot who lived and breathed, yearning and moving for his country to emerge from its slough of despond and become the beacon of light and progress that the good Lord meant it to be.

Jeillo Edwards: Good-humoured cast matriarch on television and BBC radio

Jeillo Edwards was an important figure in the history of black actors in Britain. She was the first woman of African descent to study drama at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and one of the first black actresses to be cast in a mainstream television drama series - Dixon of Dock Green.

Jeillo Edwards, actress: born Freetown, Sierra Leone 23 September 1942; married Edmund Clottey (two sons, one daughter); died London 2 July 2004.

She was not a star, but rather a foot-soldier in the battle to entertain, of over 40 years' standing. That she did not have the profile of Mona Hammond or Norman Beaton was in part owing to her African origins (limiting the number parts offered to her) and in part to an endearing shyness about her professional career.

As a young radio drama producer working for the BBC, I met Edwards for the first time in 1986. Preparing for my maiden production, I nervously ran through the cast list with a fellow producer. "Oh if you've got Jeillo in the play you'll be fine," he said. Edwards was short, pleasingly plump and gap-toothed - a Sierra Leonean Wife of Bath. Her voice was loud and imperious, her phrasing almost military in its precision. Her eyes were huge and beautiful. And my friend was right. Angry young men with bruised ambitions became cheery lads in her presence, brittle, glamorous and insecure actresses turned into the willing daughters you always wanted.

Any cast was transformed into a family with Edwards in its midst as the matriarch. She brought good timing, common sense, patience and delicious food to the drama studio. A fantastic cook, she would show up for the initial read-through with provisions of pepper sauce, chicken and akara (small doughnuts) - always on time, usually a little early. Her good-humour was the more remarkable because she uncomplainingly endured periods of bad health and for six years was on dialysis.

One of six children, Jeillo Edwards was born in Freetown in 1942. She came from a Krio family who valued education, hard work and English manners. Her father was employed by the mighty United Africa Company as a buyer of commodities - cocoa beans, cotton and palm kernels. Jeillo followed in her mother's footsteps and was sent to the Annie Walsh Memorial School, one of the oldest girls' schools in sub-Saharan Africa.

Her earliest memory of performance was as a child of four. Stepping in to replace a nervous cousin in a church fund-raising concert, she read word perfect from St Mark's Gospel, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's . . ."

She came to England as a teenager in the late 1950s, staying first with her sister in Leeds then moving down to London to study drama at the Guildhall. Her parents were not happy with her acting ambitions. Treading the boards was not considered a respectable job in newly independent Sierra Leone, although her mother had been a skilled storyteller, and the capital, Freetown, had a considerable tradition of entertainment. It was in London in the early Seventies that Jeillo met and married Edmund Clottey, a telecommunications engineer from Ghana. Theirs was a long and happy marriage.

Jeillo Edwards Clottey was a realist but never a cynic. Being a black actor in Britain is hard. Arguably attitudes and story-lines have improved a great deal in the past 10 years, but in the 1970s and 1980s black actors faced a relentless grind of often fruitless auditions, accepting small walk-ons or badly written parts, where one's skin colour seemed to be the only point to one's existence.

Edwards knew the score but never got grumpy. She gave up on having an agent and took the line that, if they wanted her, she was free; and if they didn't - well, her life was full of other interesting things to do. She was a devoted wife, mother - of Victoria, Edmund Junior and Andrew, and to her nephew Alfred - and grandmother; she was an active school governor, a keen church-goer and, in her latter years, the highly acclaimed proprietor and chief chef of Auntie J's in Brixton, a favourite eating place for young actors in between auditions. She learnt to make wine and became so proficient she taught others.

She often found herself playing Caribbean women. One of the few outlets for playing African roles was the BBC African Service's annual drama season. Plays by writers as diverse as Wole Soyinka, Zakes Mda, Osman Nusairi, Bode Sowande and Ben Ateku were performed with what amounted to a small informal rep of African actors, including Willie Jonah, Yemi Ajibade, John Sorbah-Green. At the centre was Jeillo Edwards.

Outside the cosy confines of Bush House's N41 drama studio, Edwards accumulated a host of small and not-so-small roles in film and television. She appeared in drama series including The Bill and Casualty. She was memorable as the mother of the out-of-work dictator in Channel 4's In Exile (1998) and the freed slave Mary Prince in the 1992 BBC2 drama documentary A Skirt Through History (The Two Marys).

Her comic timing ensured her parts in a number of cult comedies including Black Books, Red Dwarf, Absolutely Fabulous, The League of Gentlemen and, recently, Little Britain. Her film credits embrace a number of low- profile British films including Memoirs of a Survivor (1981) with Julie Christie and Beautiful Thing (1996) with Meera Syal. Her most recent film role was as a hospital cleaner in Dirty Pretty Things (2002).

Her secret wish was to play a romantic lead, she said. She came close to it. In Yusuf Audu Joe's Another Life, a radio play about the hardship of being an actor in Nigeria, Edwards shocked and delighted with her portrayal of an unscrupulous and outrageously sexy sugar-mummy. On the commercial front she was a sweet old granny for the Royal Mail, while cinema-goers all over Britain gloried in her shapely body in 1990 when Pepe Jeans imaginatively chose her over the usual stick-thin models to promote their product.

(Fiona Ledger, Courtesy The Independent)

ARTHUR OSMAN FARQUHAR STUART: THE "PEOPLE'S DOCTOR", SIERRA LEONE

Among Sierra Leoneans and the wider West African community, Arthur Stuart was known as "the leading physician of his generation."The weekly magazine West Africa said that "in a country whoseperverse politics no longer treats people as people, Dr Stuartwas first and last the people's doctor." He came to England forhis medical training, going back to work in the remote parts ofhis beloved country, and returned to England 10 years later tostudy at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. But he spentmost of his life and career in Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown,where he cared for rich and poor alike. There he would probablyhave stayed if, a couple of years after his retirement in 1995,the political and violent unrest in Freetown had not forced himand his wife, Louie, toflee.

In February 1996, after a number of rigged elections, Sierra Leone finally had a free and fair one and the military leadersof a previous coup were thrown out to live on their stolen millions.But as people were at last beginning to appreciate the benefitsof democracy, on 25 May 1997, they heard machine gun fire andthe deep boom of grenades. The army was back with another coup,but one that was far more violent than before. Many who couldfled the widespread looting, shooting, rape, and the amputationof hands or legs, but Arthur Stuart remained for several weeksuntil evacuated on 2 June in a pampam, a small wooden boat. Havingtransferred to an old Lebanese tramp steamer, he became the ship'sdoctor, treating women who fainted in the heat. Having arrivedin Guinea, he flew to Stansted, and sought asylum in Manchester.

Arthur later wrote of his ordeal: "What a relief to be free of the soldiers who would cut a pregnant woman's belly open tosettle a bet whether she was carrying a baby boy or a baby girl,amputate arms so that the owners wouldn't be able to vote, burndown houses indiscriminately, put a gun into children's mouthsand threaten to shoot if they were not given money and kill innocentbystanders with their indiscriminateshooting."

Arthur Stuart was the first African to be posted to Sierra Leone's Hill Station Hospital and later became consultant physicianand head of the department of internal medicine at the ConnaughtHospital, Freetown. He left the government medical service in1972 to found a much respected private practice. He was a foundationfellow of the West African College of Physicians. In 1984, hewas made an officer of the Order of the Rokel of the Republicof Sierra Leone, the country's highestaccolade.

He had a wry smile and a strong sense of humour and he could bridge social and cultural barriers with ease. He enjoyed houseand beach parties, and clubs and dances, and had a huge preferencefor good whisky. He leaves Louie, and twochildren.

Arthur Osman Farquhar Stuart, former consultant physician Connaught Hospital, Freetown, Sierra Leone (b Freetown 1927; q Manchester1953; OR, MRCP, DTM&H, FWACP), died on 13 March 2002 after a seriesof strokes.

[Hugh T Fay E Luke I B Amara.Courtesy BMJ Medical Journal]

THE GREAT DR. OLOH; GUMBAY AND MILO JAZZ KING OF SIERRA LEONE

Olufemi Cole, commonly known as Oloh, was born in the mountain village of Leicester near Freetown on the 20th of March 1944. Born of humble parents, Dr. Oloh never enjoyed the luxury of a secondary school education.

Due to the limited financial resources of his parents, he was forced to leave school at an early age to earn a living. He traipsed all over Freetown in search of those houses where musicians used to practice. It was clear that Oloh was looking for the opportunity to get into the music business. He was always fascinated by the maestro and guitarist, Dr. Dynamite (Masokoloko). His influence on Oloh was profound. At that point in his life, he was toying with the idea of becoming a priest. But his weak educational background hampered him and he quickly abandoned his ambition of becoming a priest. Oloh then switched to music and discovered a niche in the market. As they say, the rest is history.

Dr Oloh discovered that he could still preach to people through his music. He organised his first group, comprising percussion instruments. He composed and performed songs, which were relevant to the community. Oloh rapidly became a household name.

At the early age of 10, he started making music with empty milk cans and bottles. His musical ingenuity and his unending desire to develop Sierra Leone’s rich cultural heritage, forced him into the full-blown music scene. Oloh‘s ambition was to blend the native Sierra Leonean music Caribbean and Latin American musical influences. That was the birth of his internationally famous ‘Milo Beat’. Although ‘Gumbay Beat’ had existed, Oloh saw the need to blend both sounds in his repertoire. Oloh began gaining dominance after he was invited to perform with the Creole music exponent and legend, Ebenezer Calendar.

Oloh was “awarded” a Doctorate Degree by a grateful Sierra Leonean community, which was greatly impressed with his dedication and contribution to local folk and popular music. Oloh continued to develop his musical genre, which ultimately became known as ‘Milo Jazz’. Getting people out of their seats on to the dance floor was an easy task for Oloh. His music was exciting and electrifying. There were no steps or moves to learn. It was simply a matter of responding to the beat.

That was the new circuit of ravers that Oloh animated and musically helped to de-colonise in the late Sixties and Seventies. Prior to that period, the Creoles of Freetown remained in contact with their Africana roots through ‘Gumbay Music’. That music evolved during sojourns of their ancestors in the West Indies, and they brought it back with them after surviving the long period of enslavement.

Sierra Leoneans did not only dance to the infectious beat of Milo Jazz, they also accompanied him in the singing as well. It was no longer just the music of a group of people afraid of losing their culture; it became the music of the entire nation seeking to be reunited by its culture. Oloh had many student musicians in his college and had the ability to supply an ensemble for several engagements at the same time.

In 1989, Oloh was awarded the OR (Order of Rokel) by the Government of Sierra Leone, during the Presidency of H.E. Joseph Saidu Momoh, for his musical excellence and contribution to the national development of music and culture.

Dr. Oloh had a large repertoire. Dr. Oloh and his Milo Jazz Band performed for the first time outside Sierra Leone in 1991, when he was invited by international music impresario Akie Deen to perform at the Sierra Showcase Event at the prestigious Empire Ballrooms in Leicester Square, London. In 1992 he travelled again to the United Kingdom on tour. In 1994 he performed with other Sierra Leonean musicians at a benefit concert for the late musical legend, S.E. Rogie. His last performance in London was in 1996 when he performed at the Centenary Celebration of one of Sierra Leone’s heroes, Bai Bureh.

Dr. Oloh continued his musical career until his death after a short illness in Freetown on the 13th of October 2007

ANIRU CONTEH: AN ICON IN THE TREATMENT OF LASSA FEVER

IWHEN REBEL forces overran the town of Kenema in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone, in February 1997 and then later in 1999, the government buildings were looted and burnt, and most of the government workers fled before them. One exception was the small outlying building beside Kenema Government Hospital. This is the Lassa fever isolation ward - the only such specialist ward in the world, presided over since 1991 by Dr Aniru Conteh.

The notoriety of this killer disease ensured the ward's safety. The modesty of the building - its cement floors are easy to sluice down, wide windows allow fresh air to circulate; a small shelter has been built close by for the families of patients - belies the international significance of the work carried out by Conteh's team, who pursue their task in ever-present danger of the disease they treat.

With the diamond mines of Tongo to the north attracting migrant workers from across Africa, and waves of rebels and refugees crossing and re-crossing the eastern border with Liberia, stability has eluded Kenema for much of the last decade. Moreover houses left derelict by the civil war in Sierra Leone have created ideal breeding ground for the multimammate rat, which spreads the disease in its urine. Food shortages have at times led people to trap the rats for food, leading to further outbreaks.

Aniru Conteh spent most of his professional life combating Lassa fever. It required great courage, discipline and creativity to run such an isolation ward with severely tight resources amidst such instability. He showed countless medical staff both from abroad and in Sierra Leone what can be done in the face of hazards and obstacles, and how patients could be given the best possible chance, and how risks to their carers could be minimised.

Lassa fever is similar to Ebola fever. Difficult to treat, with no reliable diagnostic test readily available, highly infectious and with no reliable therapy or vaccine in prospect, it starts with a high fever that within seven days can lead to massive haemorrhaging, convulsions and often death. It takes its name from a village in Nigeria where an outbreak of a mysterious fever in a mission hospital in 1969 led to the three mission nurses' becoming infected. Two died, but the third survived to be evacuated to America where the virus was isolated at Yale University.

Following a new outbreak of Lassa fever in the Catholic Missionary Hospital in Panguma, Sierra Leone, in 1976, the American Joe McCormick, head of a team from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, set up a research programme in Segbwema, Kenema and Panguma. It was in Segbwema in 1979 that Conteh joined the CDC team.

Aniru Conteh was born up in Jawi Folu, a tiny village near Daru in south- east Sierra Leone. His father was a farmer and village chief. When Aniru was 16 his mother died and he ran away from the local school to Freetown to fend for the family. From school in Freetown he went on to study chemistry and biology at Fourah Bay Colleges in Freetown, taking a Durham University BSc, and initially became a teacher. In 1968, however, he enrolled as a medical student at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, qualifying in 1974, and working for four years at Ibadan Teaching Hospital.

In 1979 he took up a post at the Nixon Methodist Hospital in Segbwema, becoming Medical Superintendent the following year, and with the outbreak of civil war in Sierra Leone in 1991 the Lassa team, still with Conteh as its director, moved to Kenema.

Conteh was instrumental in 1996 in assisting Merlin, the London- based medical-relief organisation, to establish a programme in Sierra Leone, which included support for the Lassa isolation ward and Lassa fever control programme in the region. Throughout the 10 years of war and the period of reconciliation that has followed it he remained at his post treating thousands of cases and saving many lives. His skill in diagnosis and treatment was unparalleled, and resulted in a reduction in mortality of suspected Lassa fever cases to around 20 per cent.

Three years ago Conteh came to Britain to present a paper on the management of Lassa fever to an international conference on the disease hosted by the Central Public Health Laboratory in Colindale. Last year he was again in London to mark Merlin's 10th anniversary and to receive the "Spirit of Merlin" award for his international contribution to the core mission of Merlin "to save lives and alleviate suffering". He was an icon to Merlin's 1,400 relief workers worldwide.

Many of those who worked with him went on to become leaders in the field of public health and infectious-disease research. Dr Abdul Rahman Wurie, World Health Organisation Disease Prevention and Control Adviser in Sierra Leone, saw the possibility of building on the expertise of Conteh and his team to create a West African Regional Centre for the treatment, control, training, emergency preparedness and research into Lassa fever and, potentially, other haemorrhagic fevers - a project awaiting realisation.

Despite the insecurity, the lack of resources and opportunities to work internationally, Aniru Conteh remained in Kenema ministering to those who needed his skills the most urgently. On 17 March, while treating a patient, he accidentally pricked himself with a needle and became infected. He died 18 days later.

Aniru Sahib Sahib Conteh, physician: born Jawi Folu, Sierra Leone 6 August 1942; married (four sons, two daughters); died Kenema, Sierra Leone 4 April 2004.

The late Mrs. Esther Lily Coker passed away on February 18th 2007 in Freetown and will be buried on Thursday March 15th 2007. She was a woman of substance who blazed a unique shining path in the art of leadership that many current and future generations of Sierra Leonean women are going to be looking up to and striving to emulate.

Esther Lily Coker died at the ripe old age of 90 years. It was ninety years that were well lived on earth with examples well set.

Born in Grand Bassam, Ivory Coast on 16th September 1916, Esther Lily was the last of the six surviving children of Ishmael and Naomi de WINTON DURING. She entered the Annie Walsh Memorial School (AWMS) in 1929 after schooling from kindergarten to standard Primary at the Government Model School and the Cathedral Girls School where her elder sister Edna was a teacher.

She finished the AWMS as the only pupil in Lower VI and as the Head Girl of the school. She then went to Fourah Bay College where she did the Higher Teacher’s Course. On finishing she returned to teach at the AWMS.

Esther was an ardent Girl Guider. In 1930, whilst still at the AWMS she enrolled in the 1st Guide Branch (1st Freetown Company) and worked her way from tenderfoot to 1st Class Guide. In 1935, she became a ranger was subsequently appointed Lieutenant and helped form a new Guide Company at the Freetown Secondary School for Girls. She was one of 3 Girl Guides who represented the Sierra Leone Guide Guides Association at the Coronation of King George VI in Great Britain.

In 1938 she got married to Frederick Godfrey COKER and went to live with her husband in Northern Nigeria till 1946 when the family returned to Freetown. By then Esther had four children. For a short while thereafter, Mrs. Esther COKER was a part-time teacher at the AWMS, teaching English and Geography. In 1947, she started voluntary work with the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and was selected to train as National General Secretary. Her training course took her to Liberia, Ghana (Gold Coast), Nigeria and the UK. On completion she worked for five years with Ms. Estelle AMARON of the Canadian YWCA. Esther COKER then took over as the first National General Secretary of the Sierra Leone YWCA, a post she held for 7 years. The ‘Y’ as the YWCA was known, was struggling financially at this time and for the last 6 months, YWCA could not afford to pay her a salary but she never relented in offering her services.

In 1962, Mrs. Coker went to work with the CARE School feeding project for 8 months. She was later asked to help Rev. Warrity who was then Secretary General of The United Christian Council (UCC) [now known as the CCSL]. Mrs. Coker’s services were free and constituted part of the Anglican Church’s contribution to the UCC. She later succeeded Rev. Warrity as General Secretary of UCC with salary provided by the churches’ annual fees. This was minimal as not all churches kept their pledge however she diligently held the post for 4 years.

As General Secretary of the UCC, she coordinated the programmes of 13 denominations but some Heads of Churches could barely tolerate a woman as head of the UCC. After a real struggle, she succeeded in convincing the UCC to accept the United Church Women’s organization (UCW) as the Women’s Wing of the UCC. Working with UCW, she was for several years one of the coordinators of the Easter Dawn Service held at 5:45a.m. every Easter Day in front of Battenburg Building.

As Secretary General of UCC, she served on several committees of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) She became the first elected woman Vice-President of the AACC, and served in that position for 2 terms (a total of 8 years). She served as Chairman of the Refugee Committee and the Finance Committee of the Organization.

She was a member of the Christian Peace Conference (CPC) in which capacity she interacted with members of the Coptic and Orthodox Churches. She inaugurated the UCC Refugee Service during the Biafra War and this Service worked with UNDP to care for refugees from Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa and Zimbabwe. She negotiated with schools in Freetown, in particular, to get them to accept refugee children into their pupil population. She also served the children of Sierra Leone especially on the Children’s Home Committee.

In the 1960s and 70s she conducted Studio Morning Prayers over the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service (SLBS). She also participated in the popular SLBS Radio Discussion Programme - Cabaslot en Kotoku.

Counting on her popularity thus gained, in 1972, she contested but lost the Mountain Area Parliamentary seat, an experience she could only describe as worrying.

In 1979, she entered The Freetown City Council as representative for Freetown Central Ward 1. She served for a one term period of 3 years and was in charge of Markets and Social Services. This included Oversight of Cemeteries, School Recreational Facilities, Thanksgiving Services, Paupers’ Aid and Christmas Treats for the poor and school children.

In the 1980s she further served her school (the AWMS) as Chairman of the Board of Governors.

From 1984-1986 she was one of 12 people appointed by Government to serve on the Freetown City Council’s Committee of Management under the Chairmanship of Alfred Akibo Betts. She helped to organize the Bicentenary Celebrations of the Freetown Municipality.

She was amongst the first set of ordained female Diocesan Lay Readers of the Anglican Church and served on several committees of the Church of the Holy Trinity, the Anglican Diocese of Sierra Leone and the Anglican Diocese of Freetown.

In 1999 when rebels burnt down her house in Freetown, she went to the United States to stay with her children for a while. There, she joined the choir of Walnut United Methodist Church where she worshipped regularly.

She returned to Freetown after the country had somewhat settled and passed away peacefully at the ripe old age of 90 years on February 18th 2007 after having served her country well. Her legacy, especially of blazing a path that showed that women could successfully lead, is one of which current and future generations of Sierra Leone women will look up to and emulate. May she rest in peace.

Berthan Macaulay, QC, was born on November 12, 1929. He died on September 27, 2006, aged 76.

Born in Nigeria, Berthan Macaulay devoted himself to promoting the rule of law in Sierra Leone during the transition to independence.

In 1951 he came to England where he read law and was called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn. His initial career in private practice included three years in Foote’s chambers. Returning to Sierra Leone with his family in 1957, he established the law firm Macaulay & Co, with headquarters in Freetown. He built the most extensive and up-to-date law library in the country.

He took silk in 1963 at the age of 34, the first Sierra Leonean to do so. Later that year he was appointed Attorney General by Sir Milton Margai, the first Prime Minister. But in 1967 the Government was overthrown, and Macauley was arrested and sentenced to death along with 27 other key officials.

Incarcerated, awaiting execution and denied access to his law books, Macaulay filed, argued and won several grounds of appeal before a special appellate court. He ultimately won the release of both himself and the others.

He was invited to relocate by a number of Commonwealth countries, and he eventually took up residence and later citizenship in Jamaica. There he remained active as a member of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court.

Berthan Macaulay QC's funeral began with an Islamic prayer, followed by a Buddhist prayer then a Christian service of thanksgiving. This order, said his cousin Prince Taylor-Lewis in his remembrance, was reflective of Macaulay's beliefs and was done at the departed lawyer's request.

"He found meaning in each faith," Taylor-Lewis said, after relaying an engaging tale of young Macaulay's failed confirmation in the Anglican Church because no one faith could sufficiently convince him.
The service itself, held yesterday at St Richard of Chichester Roman Catholic Church on Red Hills Road in Kingston, was solemn.

Pallbearers take the casket with the body of Berthan Macaulay QC from the St Richard of Chichester Roman Catholic Church on Red Hills Road in Kingston following a thanksgiving service for his life yesterday afternoon. Macaulay died on September 27. (Photo: Karl McLarty)

There were no outbursts of weeping, but it seemed every person in attendance understood Macaulay's importance as a man and the value of his contributions to the legal profession and life in general. Every remembrance of Macaulay painted a picture of him as the consummate intellectual and advocate.

"He never resiled from taking different or even unpopular positions as long as he thought they were right," John Leiba, president of the Jamaican Bar Association, said in his tribute.
"He was tensile in his advocacy and determination," Leiba continued.
But David Muirhead QC in his remembrance said Macaulay knew how to relax.

"He wasn't all work; he was famous for his dinner parties," Murihead said. Muirhead spoke, too, of Macaulay's "viper tongue", adding that the lawyer was a "fighter to the core".
Berthan Macaulay moved to Jamaica in 1974 from Sierra Leone, where he was that country's first native attorney-general.

"And so Sierra Leone's great loss became Jamaica's gain," Muirhead said, echoing Macaulay's cousin, Justice Abdulai Conteh.
Muirhead's remembrance drew to a close with a question that friends and family members tried to answer in their tributes: "How, I ask, will we remember him?"

Macaulay, a well-respected attorney, tried several landmark cases before the local and international courts. He was 76 years old when he died and is survived by his wife, Margarette Macaulay and six children.

Madam Ella Koblo Gulama was born on 26th January 1921 in Moyamba and was educated at the Harford School for girls from 1928 to 1938. She then attended the Women Teachers Training College at Wilberforce, Freetown from 1938 to 1941. After completing her studies she was appointed supervising Teacher for the Provinces, the first to attain this position.

Late PC Ella Koblo Gulama

She was married to Paramount Chief Bai Koblo Pathbana II Marampa Masimera Chiefdom, in 1944. The union was blessed with seven children, two surviving, Obai and Soccoh and many other Kabia children

Madam Gulama was born in Moyamba Kaiyamba Chiefdom in Moyamba District. Her late grandfather Momoh Gulama and father Julius Gulama were Paramount Chiefs of Kaiyamba Chiefdom.

Paramount Chief Julius Gulama worked relentlessly to bring people of all ethnic groups together. He supported and worked for the establishment of the BO Government School and was one of the founding members of the SLPP. After his death in 1953, Madam Gulama succeeded him as Paramount Chief of Kaiyamba Chiefdom.

She soon followed in the foot steps of her father and entered national politics. In 1957, she became a Member of the Moyamba District Council and was also elected to the House of Representatives of Sierra Leone as Paramount Chief Member for Moyamba District. Thus becoming the first female member of that august body. She was re-elected to Parliament and appointed a Cabinet Minister in government of Sir Milton Margai, Sierra Leone’s first Primer Minister, thus becoming the first female minister in Sierra Leone and the sub-Saharan region.

In 1967 she regained her seat in the General Elections. However the elections were marred by controversy followed by a period of instability affecting the whole country, culminating in a series of military coups that finally ushered in a thirty year period of party rule under the APC. Earlier in this period, she spent two and half years at the Pademba Road prisons but was subsequently exonerated and released. She was also deposed as Paramount Chief during this period.

She remained in the service of her church, the United Methodist Church, and from 1985 to 19901 she was the Vice-President of its highest organ, the conference on Finance and Administration.

Throughout the span of her career, Madam Gulama maintained a high interest in educational development in Sierra Leone. In particularly, she worked hard to promote the education of girls and to improve the lot of women folks in this country. She was a member of the Board of Governors of her Alma Mater, Harford School for Girls in Moyamba. She was also member of the Sierra Leone government Scholarship Advisory Board and also a member of the Bursary Committee of Fourah Bay College.

She was President of the Federation of Women’s Organisations in Sierra Leone from 1960 to 1967, and President of the National Organization for Women (Sierra Leone) from 1985 to 1991.

In 1992, Madam Gulama had a renaissance of her Political career, contesting and winning re-election as Paramount Chief of Kaiyamba Chiefdom by a unanimous vote. She worked assiduously with the help of NGOs to bring agricultural and infrastructural development to her Chiefdom and district. The rebel war and its effects were devastating to Moyamba District and the country as a whole, resulting in complete setback to development and progress. She was forced to leave Moyamba and seek refuge in Freetown.

On her return to Moyamba, madam Gulama again put all her efforts into the rehabilitation of her Chiefdom and District. She however suffered setbacks in relation to her health. She served in various capacities as director of the Sierra Leone Export Development and Investment Corporation (SLEDIC) from 1994 to 1996 and also a director of The Sierra Leone Commercial Bank Limited

She travelled widely representing our country in Africa, Europe, the United States and the Middle East. As early as 1957, she was invited by United States Government Department of States accompanied by her closed friend Mrs. Elizabeth Eula Hatib. She completed a four month tour, during which time she met with the then Vice-President Richard Nixon, and was also a guest at the NAACP convention in Cleveland, Ohio and at the Booker T. Washington Institute of Tuskegee, Alabama. She also visited the Lady Mayor in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1964. She led the Sierra Leone delegation to the World Fair in New York and introduced the Sierra Leone national Dance Troupe to an international audience for the first time with the late John Arkar. She also participated in a number of UN-sponsored conferences on matters of rural community development and female education and progress.

She was the recipient of several awards including the MBE in 1959, the O.B.E in 1966 from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and the Order of the Rokel Award from the President of Sierra Leone, His Excellency Alhaji Dr. Ahmed Tejan Kabbah.

She adored her family and friends and was a strong proponent of African traditional values.

Bishop Thomas S. Bangura, the second indigenous person elected United Methodist episcopal leader of Sierra Leone, died Sept. 24.

Bangura, 81, began his ministry in the Evangelical United Brethren Church and served as bishop from 1979 to 1992.

He died within one day of the anniversary of the Sept. 25, 2005, burial of his wife, Regina. The funeral service is scheduled for Oct. 8 at King Memorial United Methodist Church, Freetown, Sierra Leone.

According to Sam Bangura, his son, the bishop said during his final days that he "was confident that I will see God, whom I have served so well here on earth." Bangura described his father as "a man of deep faith," and in requesting that news of his father's death be communicated to the United Methodist Council of Bishops, he said, "May his soul rest in peace."

The Sierra Leone Annual Conference was established in 1973 under Bangura's leadership. The first indigenous bishop of the conference was Benjamin A. Carew who served until retiring in 1978. When Carew retired, Bangura was elected bishop in 1979 and the conference became a part of the West Africa Central Conference in 1981. It has been led by Bishop Joseph C. Humper since 1992. Humper is also indigenous to Sierra Leone.

Responding to his predecessor's death, Humper said "everybody knew Bishop Bangura to be a committed minister and church leader. He was well respected by the community." In recognition of the high regard in which Bangura was held, all the church leaders within the Council of Churches in Sierra Leone are planning to attend the funeral, Humper said.

?Bishop Bangura was a true servant of God. He was a friend of the poor and a man of great compassion,? said Bishop Janice Riggle Huie, president of the United Methodist Council of Bishops and leader of the church?s Houston Area. ?Through the office of the bishop he extended Christ?s care to everyone, especially those who were among the poor.?
Bangura pursued theological training locally at Fourah Bay College, the first college for higher education in West Africa. He came to the United States in 1950 and studied for a year at United Theological Seminary before returning to Sierra Leone. He was the pastor of churches in Moyamba, Yonibana and Magburka, and was superintendent of the Yonibana District.

The United Methodist Church in Sierra Leone today traces its history to 1855, when the Church of the United Brethren in Christ began mission work there. More recently, the country was plagued by a civil war that began in 1991, and a peace agreement between the government and rebels was signed in July 1999.

Bangura received a bachelor's degree in philosophy and education from the University of Akron and a master's degree in education from Columbia University between 1959 and 1963. He returned home to serve Price Memorial Church in Georgebrook and Baughman Memorial Church in Brookfields, and taught at the United Methodist Taiama Secondary School. In 1975, he became superintendent of the Western District and in 1977 was assigned to King Memorial Church.

The Banguras had four children: Thomas Opa, Jeneba Koni, Philip Sam and Ansumana; and two grandchildren: Regina and Arthur Yaskey.

Alfred Abraham Akibo-Betts, who died last month in London , was an extraordinary politician – probably the most patriotic and committed figure in Sierra Leone 's politics in the last twenty-seven years or so. Various commentators since his death have recalled – more in sadness than in anger – a few of unsavoury incidents in which Akibo (as everyone called him) got himself involved in his early (and extremely faltering) forays into politics. Everyone, however, agree that Akibo soon after transcended those misjudgments, found immense gravitas, and was so successful as a public figure (first by unearthing massive corruption in government, and then by providing by far the most competent and effective leadership of the Freetown municipality in living memory) that many rue his failure (for he made an attempt) to become President of this badly mismanaged Republic.

I first met Akibo when he was Mayor of Freetown in 1993. In less than two years after becoming Mayor, Akibo had transformed the once shambolic City Hall (for many years a haven, like the crumbling City Hotel adjacent – famously Graham Greene's haunt – for prostitutes) into an elegant neo-Georgian edifice. It was an immensely delightful meeting: Akibo's sense of humour, his great ambition for his city, his deep concern (somewhat barely discernible among many in the capital then) for the war then ravaging parts of the country were striking. Months later, Akibo's City Council donated tens of millions of leones towards the government's – then the National Provisional Ruling Council, NPRC, junta – war effort. It was easy then to deride this gesture (wasn't the Mayor trying too hard to be in the good books of the junta? Surely the city itself badly needed those funds?), but one can now only be nostalgic about it: for the farthest that high-mindedness now go within City Hall is for the current Mayor to seek newspaper headlines by grumbling aloud about how paltry the sum is that the government allocates for the cleaning of the streets facing his own office.

Akibo's tenure at City Hall was memorable for two things: he was able to make Freetown reasonably clean and clear major thoroughfares and streets of clogging market stalls; and he was able to make the city solvent. Both of these achievements, taken for granted while Akibo's tenure lasted, can now seem like outlandish dreams. The idea of the colourful, charismatic politician is not always reassuring; but Akibo was able to combine magnetism with great humility: a lover of the spotlight (he assiduously wooed the media), Akibo nevertheless was always self-deprecating. I don't remember him speaking out of turns: and this is remarkable for such an outspoken and articulate politician with such strong views. I think in the end he enraged the current government by his well-timed, occasional criticism of the paralysis which has passed for government for some years now.

During the gruesome rebel attacks on Freetown in January 1999, Akibo's property in downtown Freetown was destroyed, and he was nearly killed. The war left him a broken man; but till the end he maintained a high spirit and a strong belief that some form of national resurgence was still possible. When I went to Freetown a few months after the attacks, I visited Akibo in his offices – or what passed for an office: a little cramped building with a large desk and several chairs, the only one surviving in the compound – on Bathurst Street . He had painted a sign in front of the building reading “Sierracratic Commonsense Salvation…” There was a touch of self-parody, never mind pathos, about it all; about this great man of grandeur reduced to affecting a sense of high-purpose and resurgence in this shrunken, blighted little edifice with no money and no following.

I spent an hour with him, for most of the time drinking beer and chatting about old days and the great tribulations that the country had gone through. Akibo's memorable old aphorisms enlivened the discussion: the slightly inapt ambience made them sound like some old recordings from a remote, more blissful past. “Our altitude is our attitude,” he would say. I understood him to mean that Sierra Leone can aspire and reach any height once its citizens adopt the right attitude towards their nation. He spoke about his loss and personal suffering and humiliation with no bitterness, only sadness.

I next met Akibo a few years later, in his house on Spur Road . He had been partially paralyzed by stroke, and was confined home – a modest house which now seem near-derelict – in pain, overwhelmed by memories of loss and abandonment. He spoke – in sadness as well as some bitterness – of his unrequited life-long sacrifice for the country. He had not made money in his long life in public office; he did not have money to be taken out of the country for treatment. The government, because Abiko was associated with the opposition All Peoples Congress (APC) and had been critical, did not care about him.

The public that he had served so selflessly did not appear to care either. He pointed this out to me as a lesson: this is a nation that does not reward honesty and selflessness; this is a nation that punishes its distinguished citizens. It is the prime problem of Sierra Leone , he said. He was being philosophical: the words, spoken deliberately, were a searing commentary and a warning. I was very touched. With me at the time were my good friends Kingsley Lington, David Tam-Baryoh, Isaac Massaquoi and Mohamed Swaray. After our meeting with Akibo, we made frantic efforts to enlist the help of a few highly-placed government officials, pleading on behalf of Akibo. We hit a wall. We felt helpless. Akibo showed us mementos of glorious days: medals and awards he had received from other Mayors and dignitaries abroad, invitations, pictures with other Mayors, pictures showing Akibo holding the key to a US city, mementos of Akibo's work to twin Freetown with cities like Hull (in the UK) and many others.

He had grand ideas and dreams for his historic city, thinking it comparable in grandeur, if not wealth, to any other historic city: Akibo towered above all the charming little junkies whose idea of themselves as statesmen is their presumed ability to attract external assistance. Sometime later, I was seated in a Sierra Leone National Airlines flight from Freetown (going to London ) when one of the air hostesses came over to me and told me somebody wanted to talk to me. I followed her to a corner where a man was crouched alone on a seat meant for two. It was Akibo. Some people of goodwill had volunteered to pay his way to London for medical treatment, after many months of suffering. We spoke for an hour or so. It was the last time we spoke. At Gatwick Airport, as I was walking to catch the bus to Heathrow – to take a flight to Canada – I heard a quick announcement on the PA system calling on the people who had come to pick up Akibo at the airport to meet him at a counter…

I'll end where I began. Akibo was an extraordinary man, both as a politician and as a human being. I am singularly unsuited to writing an encomium, but I find that with someone who sacrificed so much for his country, and who was so wretchedly abandoned in the end, I can even find pleasure in being oleaginous. Few, if any, Sierra Leonean politicians in recent memory can claim the moral high-ground, the depth of patriotism and selflessness which Akibo exhibited. None identified as clearly with the idea – all-too-inchoate – that Sierra Leone can rise to become a self-sufficient, proud and honourable member of the community of nations. Certainly none embodied this aspiration as completely as Akibo did.

He lived all his life in Sierra Leone , rising from humble background to becoming a much-admired national figure. He was one of the few public figures in whom one cannot detect, however one is desperate to look, any trace of that old, if understated, national disease: sectarian or ‘tribal' alliance or consciousness. I see Akibo (along with Hinga Norman, another selfless patriot who has been abandoned and humiliated by the country) as a sterling national hero whose loss will be missed for decades to come.

         Mr. Barlie S. Kargbo, a notable member of the Sierra Leone Christian Fellowship , died yesterday at the Mercy Hospital in Philadelphia,
         Pennsylvania. Barlie Kargbo is related to the Editor of COCORIOKO by marriage. His elder brother , Mr. Morlai Kposongo Kargbo , of
         Rokulan, Bombali District, was married to the first cousin of the Editor , Kaday Sesay, who is now dead. Barlie came to the U.S in 1992
         to pursue graduate studies and was brought by the Rev. Billy K.Simbo to Faith Community Church in New Jersey ( A church co-Pastored
         by the Editor , Simbo and some other Sierra Leonean ministers in the early 1990s. There the Editor and Barlie met again for the first time since
         1970 when they spent the long Rainy Season Vacation together at Rokulan and Gbendembu.

         Before his arrival in the U.S, Barlie Kargbo was Principal of a secondary school in the Northern Province. He received his first degree at
         Njala University College and studied for a Masters ' degree in Rural Development in the U.S. His death is a big loss to friends, family and t
         he Sierra Leone Scripture Union and Christian fellowship. May his soul rest in peace.

Eric James: A Trail Blazer

Jeillo Edwards: Good-humoured cast matriarch on television and BBC radio

ARTHUR OSMAN FARQUHAR STUART: THE "PEOPLE'S DOCTOR", SIERRA LEONE