Each weekday members from the listening communities of Sattia, Tombo and Kent along the Freetown Peninsula tell traditional stories in one of five languages spoken in the area. A copy of each program is retained for SELI, and SELI is asking that they also write down these stories in five ledgers, one for each language. SELI is also paying tutors from its Tutor Registry to provide three lessons that will teach literate adults to write in their primary languages. The first lessons are taking place this week: a certified Mende tutor is teaching someone to write in Kisi. Sure, the teacher does not speak Kisi, and sure, Mende is a Mande language, and Kisi is an Atlantic-Congo language. But it's working: the student feels equipped and energized and he has begun writing in Kisi!
Is this writing perfect? Are the writers using orthographic rules that experts would approve? Do all languages in Sierra Leone have established written orthographies? No. But we whose primary language is English tend to forget that it is only in the very recent past that our written rules have developed. What if Shakespeare had refrained from writing because there was no dictionary to consult? Even today, do writers worry about perfection in their first, second, or fifth drafts? Here's to the written voices of all these potential poets, storytellers, and novelists in Sierra Leone!
Let their publishers worry about the final product!
