Dear Sir,
Until today I had not quite realised how young you are ( until you said you were an undergraduate 1980 - 84) coinciding with my wonderful days lived in the then Rivers State (Melford Okilo & Akaso Cultural Society ) and Imo State (Sam Mbakwe and Dr. Sir Warrior) in Nigeria...
Well, I'll have to consult with my classmates such as dear Omodele Wariboko if I can get hold of him - I know from other classmate dear Charles Macaulay( old youth) that Omodele is around making history , chasing his (Charles daughter), probably in the Philadelphia area , I'll have to consult with them as to the exact date, I think it must have been circa 1960 when after the morning assembly at our Prince of Wales School the Principal Mr. A. Thomas ( fondly known as "Pompey" by us urchins) said he had a special guest that was going to address us that morning and surprise, surprise, introduced the Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago, Dr. Eric Williams who then spoke to us for about twenty minutes on the theme of Freedom vs the legacy of slavery and the spirit of capitalism . I must say that he got us all fired up - especially the Sierra Leonean Nova Scotians and diverse Creoles who of course were going to have none of that. Around that time and I guess, right up to now it's a special trait among people born in Freetown that we do not allow anyone to push us around, the emphasis being on the FREE and the idea in Deuteronomy 17 :16 , after all those years of slavery in Egypt the Almighty commanded us His people "You shall not return that way any more !"
Sir, who would have dreamed or prophesied the exact history of Sierra Leone from then to now?
Going to take a closer look at this
Please pray for us!
Dear Oga Cornelius:Thanks for sharing this. I really appreciate it. In my undergraduate days(1980-1984) at the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria Professors like Claude Ake made us read this great book. As a leader of the Marxist youth movement both at Uniport and in the country, this book was Bible to me. I loved it so much that when I came to Columbia University, New York for my MBA and met a fellow business school student who was from Trinidad and Tobago I immediately became friends with her. She was the closest person I could reach to come into the ambience of the great Eric Williams. I felt I was vicariously meeting him through her. I wanted to discuss the book with the "daughter of the soil," to know how it felt to come from the land of an excellent thinker who revolutionized how the world thought about slavery and capitalism. Alas, she had not read the book and, in fact, did not know about the basic thesis of the book. I was disappointed, hugely disappointed. She was not aware of the book.
Thanks, Cornelius for reminding me of this book. I will go back to it. William's book and Walter Rodney's "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" were canonical in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Port Harcourt. We also read books by Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, two American Marxists. We also read Nigerian and African scholars. But this is a story for another time.
Blessings,
Nimi WaribokoBoston University
On Jan 24, 2022, at 10:40 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAFYPD-TM9SdQAiG_TWr4vqoEfEoDPrfRfSFcH2dd5FczAivUdw%40mail.gmail.com.
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/342069c6-e92e-4ac0-ba53-343d27398852n%40googlegroups.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment