BBC reporter pen down touching note on his birthday

 

Dear Allah,

I want to thank you, again, for enabling me to witness another birthday in sound mind and sound body. 

When I was born in Bumpeh in Kono , I struggled a lot - right from birth, I’d later be told. 

Like many other Sierra Leoneans up to this day, my upbringing was challenging due to poverty in the family. So much so that I dropped out of high school, twice! 

After the first, a friend - Brima Kamara - took me back to school by travelling with me to Makeni. That was the first time I’d leave my birthplace to my ancestral district of Bombali. 

After my secondary school-leaving exams at the Benevolent Islamic Secondary School, I dropped out again. 

I went to Tongo Fields to mine for diamonds, with the sole aim of being able to further my education. 

There, I got a piece of stone which my colleagues and I sold. I gave my share of the proceeds to my maternal aunt to keep. She added it to her capital but her business later collapsed. 

I joined her and her Ghanaian husband to a hamlet called Sulahun - somewhere near Panguma - to saw for board. The chainsaw broke down.  

We started selling cookery on the road at a time when Tongo was booming and the Largor road to there was very bad - almost impassable. 

Our business flourished and I was able to get my diamond money back from my aunt to enter university. The rest, as they say, is history.

It’s not all been gloomy. I’ve travelled the world - been to nearly seventy countries. I’ve met the high and mighty - more than 20 heads of state and royalties. 

Allah you have been good to me. I can’t think you enough. You’ve opened every shut door before me. You’ve kept me healthy and likeable. 

You gave me a head to think that begging and stealing wouldn’t be the way to achieve. So I worked hard and genuinely - and I still do. I pray you inculcate that in the heads of many of today’s generation who buckle under the slightest pressure and give up. 

I thank you for my family, my very diverse family from the north and east, south and west. And I pray that informs the way all Sierra Leoneans think - diversity in love and respect. 

My wife and children have been a key pillar of my life. I’m eternally grateful to them. For without them, I’d not be sane and organized. 

I also thank you for my friends - they’ve been amazingly supportive. I meet people almost every day who end up becoming very good friends.  I’ve been truly lucky, Allah, for which I cannot thank you enough. 

Happy birthday to me.

Credit: Umaru Fofanah.