By Umaru Fofana
There is hardly any consensus that I know of, over whether the term “First Mother” is accepted in the English language to mean the mother of the president of a country. While some argue that it relates more to the biological mother of an adopted child, others say it follows the logic that if a president’s wife is called First Lady then his mother is the First Mother, his daughter the First Daughter, etc. I have to say that I just like the phrase First Mother when it refers to the president’s mother. Anyway…
But while I say goodbye to that linguistics conundrum, I also say goodbye to the late mother of President Ernest Bai Koroma – our First Mother – who was laid to rest in Makeni over the weekend. It was a showpiece event that encapsulated honour, dignity, celebration-peppered grief and a befitting farewell to a woman who lived a fulfilled life and left a happy woman. What else could she have asked for – died at a time when she still had a close affinity with God as represented by her leadership role at the Wesleyan Church of Sierra Leone; passed away when her son was head of state; and laid to rest after helping educate especially women in a very conservative part of the country. No wonder, as expected, it was attended by the largest single gathering at any funeral I have attended even if there was not as much tear-shedding as there was when the then First lady Patricia Kabbah passed away. Obviously the circumstances are somewhat different. With the First Mother now laid to rest, some inconvenient truths can now be told.
Like I wrote in the book of condolence opened in her honour, her death unified the country for the first time in a long time and it is hoped following her burial that will be solidified. Flurry of condolence messages reminiscent of those that followed the death of the grandmother of then Senator Barack Obama in the lead-up to the presidential elections in 2008. Interesting how the main opposition challenger Julius Maada Bio reportedly left Kabala to visit the bereaved family in Makeni. Charles Margai who has had no good words for the president lately employing the services of a hankie as he bemoaned the passing of Mami Alice. The list is endless. This show of reunion, if handled well by politicians and the media, will bode well for our country’s peace and stability and will engender an issue-based election. But just give them a few days…even before the coffin rests properly in the grave the salvos will start flying, again.
But while every one showed empathy – some sympathy – the real thoughts of a mother who loved and cared for her son and showed that love and affection, will start to dawn on the children and the children alone. For some time to come the president will be in State House and at the Lodge getting lost and thinking of the disappearance of that colossal figure that has been present in all his life until now. It also means that for certain, regardless of who wins in November, the country is destined to be without a First Mother at least for the next five years since Maada Bio’s mother is also of blessed memory.
Hairdressing salons made a fortune. A friend told me of how ladies queued up throughout the week to have their looks made trendy as they prepared for Makeni. Udat se na beri nor mor all man bi de go for?
However in the wake of the death of Mrs Alice Rosalyn Koroma (Mami Alice) a lot of unpleasant things came to the fore. First it has to be said that the laying-out ceremony was impressive. The entire civic ceremony was hair-raising. State institutions and by extension state resources were, arguably rightly, put at the disposal of the occasion. It begs the question therefore why the All People’s Congress party did not warn its members to desist from making the affair a party one. At the laying-out at the Miatta Conference Centre it was completely uncalled for that any one would have asked everyone to stand up to sing the APC Victory Song at such a ceremony owned by all without regard to party.
When I lost my very close friend some two years ago, my wife was raving mad when someone who used to be close with him wore red to attend the funeral in Kambia. And her madness had nothing to do with our political red. When I enquired she and many other people said to me that wearing red at a funeral means lacking any sympathy at all for the deceased. So when I saw many people clad in red neckties or shirts or t-shirts I wondered whether they had gone to sympathise or make mockery. Besides the symbolism of red at a funeral, these stalwarts of the APC should have kept politics out of the funeral of Mami Alice. Can we not as a people, for a moment at least, divorce party bigotry from something more civic, civil and national?
But while that occupied my mind many others blew up my mind. I received a deluge of telephone calls from bank managers, mining companies, et al, who told me of incessant telephone calls from senior state officials asking them for money towards the funeral of the late First Mother. A town crier in Gbendembu town in the Gbendembu Ngowahun chiefdom in Bombali district announced that every adult must contribute Le 1,000 towards the burial of Mami Alice; a clear case of robbing the poor to please the rich and defying the Robin Hood theory of taking from the rich to tend to the poor. How Jesus was right!
Paramount Chiefs in at least six districts said they were ordered to contribute one cow each towards the funeral. Some people were even blackmailed into attending the funeral, as they told me.
Perhaps most unbelievably was the fact that the Secretary to Cabinet who heads the civil service, wrote a letter to senior civil servants who in turn harassed their junior colleagues, asking them to contribute towards the funeral. Le 100 million was said to have been collected. What was the rationale for this we are yet to be told while the man is kept in office as if to say to him “thank you very much for caring for the president”. It is great to have read a disclaiming press release from State House warning people to desist from raising money in the name of the funeral. Meanwhile civil servants die almost by the day due to lack of care and facilities and all that’s spent on them is stationery to write their obituaries on and paste around the office.
Another thing the passing of the First Mother exposed was the poor state of affairs in Makeni. Her remains had to be brought to Freetown because, like everywhere else in the entire provinces, there is no mortuary in Makeni. If you think this is shameful, how about this: At a time like that when the emergency services must be on overtime, the public hospital in Makeni was almost non-existent on the weekend of the burial of the First Mother. Some journalists who were involved in a road accident near Makeni had to be taken to the Makeni Government Hospital just to be greeted by the nothingness therein. There was no doctor on call. The nurses almost nowhere to be found and nothing to respond to the accident cases with. It took the intervention of the Catholic-run Holy Spirit and their distinguished medical doctor Turay to rescue them.
What was the heaviest traffic in the history of Makeni, surpassing that which greeted the visit there by then Nigerian president Ibrahim Babangida, was met with some level of idiocy. One would have expected that abandoned trucks and other eyesores that bedaub the NP Station on the Azolini Highway would have been cleared even if for that weekend alone. Where was the Mayor of Makeni and the Police???!!!
Come to think of it, agreed that the Deputy Speaker of parliament had not been feeling very well in the weeks and months leading to his death, but Chukuma Johnson could have been resuscitated if there was a serious emergency service on hand. I salute members of the Sierra Leone Red Cross Society who were somehow visible around the church lasting the funeral service and after, but that was not enough.
While I wish the First Mother all the best in the world beyond, I urge the authorities to address those issues in the world we are, raised, for the umpteenth time, by her passing. RIP, Mami Alice.
