A Visitor

On Martin Luther King Day, Jan. 19, 2009, the U.S.-based writer, Kewulay Kamara, visited our SELI Young Writers Club.
First he participated in a student content conference, and then he told us all how writing became a part of his life. He wanted to know about all the students' lives, and asked what they meant when they said they had left their villages to become educated. To them, "educated" meant reading and writing in English. He said he considered village people already educated: educated in the ways of the weather and of the harvests; in listening to become wise; in knowing how to protect the water and the land. . . .

He told the students their writing can help other people as much as themselves but only if it is sincere. He said that because their words have the power to change lives, they must take care to end their pieces with a positive message. Many of our members are writing very sad pieces about losing someone who was close to them. Now that we are thinking about how to end these pieces in a positive way, some have realized that the person they lost is still in their hearts, making them stronger.

A student asked our visitor if he had written a poem. Mr. Kewulay recited one for us in Kuranko (which more than half the students present could understand), and explained how he came to write it and what it meant. We were all entranced by the sounds of the poem and its evocative meaning. When one of the students asked if he could suggest a name for our writing club, he answered with a question: do we write only in English, or in other Sierra Leonean languages, too?

In our writing club, skills are taught within the context of solving the problems that real authors encounter when they write. When professional writers visit, they make this authentic connection even more real. Mr. Kewulay left us more aware of the life stories we have in us, and we seem now to have more writing choices than we did before.