Feature

By Abdul Tejan-Cole

Thirty-one chimpanzees, led by one named Bruno, an enormous alpha male and uncontested ruler of the sanctuary, escaped the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in April 2006 and vanished into the bush. Bruno's current whereabouts are a mystery – may be presumed dead. Parts of Freetown were gripped by fear. It was perhaps the first time that most Sierra Leoneans heard about Tacugama and the fact that a sanctuary existed there for chimpanzees.

By Ruth Yeabu Sesay

Aminata (not her real name) is a 23 years old university student who started dating older married men after going through what she called heartbreak in senior secondary school obviously caused by a boy of her age and decided that, henceforth she wouldn’t date or have sex for fun. In fact she vowed to never date boys her age.

By Isaac Massaquoi

We are closing the year 2022 on the theme of Media Poverty. It’s not a poverty of ideas, professionalism and ambition but a near complete lack of money and other resources needed to deliver high quality journalism. The kind of journalism that would conform to what all journalists acknowledge as the cardinal principles of the trade – Public Service, Objectivity, Autonomy and Ethics.

By Alpha Abu

2022 is far spent and drawing to a close, with 2023 already around, about to be ushered in. As we look forward to the New Year, there were some moments of Sports worth mentioning, or should I say reliving, in 2022, depending on the spectacle that was played out!

Undoubtedly the most popular sporting discipline in Sierra Leone and the world over, football continues its slow rebirth after torturous years of unprecedented intrigue, infighting and shenanigans that got played out by those considered administrators of the game.

By Mabinty M. Kamara & Alpha Abu

Health authorities in Sierra Leone have been engaged in tackling Lassa fever, a disease that is prevalent in the Eastern Region and notably Kenema district, considered the epicentre.

Despite years of relentless efforts by medics to control the spread of the virus, challenges remain, exacerbated by the apparent ignorance of a reasonable part of the population on the real dangers associated with the zoonotic disease, caused by the Multimammate rat.

By Emma Black

Sixty-five-year-old, Mariatu Koroma, recalls May 2014 like it was yesterday. She was selling bush meat including monkeys, bats, deer, bush rats and wild boar, at the Kingsway Corner Market in Kenema, in the east of Sierra Leone. May 2014 also marked the first recorded case of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in Sierra Leone, in the Kenema District, which is why that month and year are so memorable to Koroma.

By Mabinty M.  Kamara

Skepticism, even fear gripped me as hospital workers carefully wheeled me to the labour ward to deliver my child at about 11:30 am on a normal Friday.  Thinking of the many women who had been in a similar situation but couldn’t make it alive, my labour experience was indeed less of a pain and more of fear that I may die in the process. At that point all I could do was to seek the face of God Almighty and it could have been my last prayer on this beautiful planet.