Celebrating Easter Sunday


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Happy Birthday, Ama Ata Aidoo

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Happy birthday, Ama Ata Aidoo I'm one of your many fans across the world. The first time I came across your name was probably in 1969, reading an editorial in the now defunct Sierra Leone Daily Mail to my grandfather. I don't recall what it was all about, but I do remember stumbling over your name as I read and Grandpa righting me ever so gently as he often did. I must confess I promptly forgot all about you. Until I got to my 1974-75 school year, and there you were at the top of my Literature in English book list. Those days, the best place for used books was what we called the gron bukshop . I don't know if you've ever been to Freetown, but back then book hawkers were a block or two down from the old C.M.S. Diocesan Bookstore, opposite the famous City Hotel that once stood at the corner of Gloucester and Lightfoot-Boston Street. Inside the old split-level bookstore, price tags were a little steep, so friends pointed you a few blocks down market. There, dog-e...
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Vitabu Reads | Sierra Leone Higher Education: At the Crossroads of Change

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Kosonike Koso-Thomas's book,  Sierra Leone Higher Education: At the Crossroads of Change , traces the establishment of an engineering faculty in a traditional liberal arts university, but the story is also about how an extraordinary graduate in fast-track leadership started out in his academic career and advanced to success in college administration. In September 1962 , Koso-Thomas arrived in Sierra Leone from England and moved into his new job as head of a fledgling Engineering Department. He had been preparing for the moment for over six months.   “Who else do we have in the department? He quizzed the college principal at the meet and greet.  “We expect a new staff member to join us during the session,” came the conciliatory response. “I shifted in the chair thinking I might be gray by the time this [person] arrives,” the young and restless Koso-Thomas thought.  Organization and culture Still, there was a lot about the campus organization and culture ...
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Summer hangout with Pede Hollist's So the Path Does Not Die

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Pede Hollist, a native of Sierra Leone, is an associate professor of English at The University of Tampa, Florida. His interests cover the literature of the African imagination—literary expressions in the African continent as well as in the African Diaspora. So the Path Does not Die is his first novel.  His short story "‘Foreign Aid" was on the shortlist for the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing. Vitabu : I found So the Path Does Not Die a remarkable book. The story travels from a graphic, mystical past to the present time, through almost impossible and sometimes hidden cultural, social and economic issues. How did you come up with the idea for the Musudugu chaper? Pede Hollist: Among the Kuranko, Musudugu refers to a woman’s dwelling, but it also describes a mythical place where only women lived, happily and in sisterhood.  The story of Kumba Kargbo’s confrontation with the elders of Musudugu suggests that the conflict between old and new ways and the tension betw...
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