On page 39 in
The History of Sierra Leone, C.M. Fyle says that Kent village, on the extreme southern tip of the Freetown peninsula, was among the seaside peninsula villages founded by Governor Charles MaCarthy in 1819 to settle "disbanded African soldiers who had been fighting in the British army against the French. These soldier-settlers were joined in these villages by recaptives with whom they intermarried and soon became one people." "Recaptives" refers to those persons from along the coast in West Africa released into Sierra Leone from slave ships intercepted before they crossed the Atlantic by the Courts of Mixed Commission in Sierra Leone. The "one people" to whom the author refers are today called the Krio, one of Sierra Leone's ethnic groups.
Kent village today is ethnically a highly diverse community, but the ruins of a gated wall from those early days and the proud awareness of the history of this unique village (which in the late 1800's provided two principals to the
Sierra Leone Grammar School) remain.
Between the years of 1989 to 1994 at SELI in Tengbeh Town I intermittently recorded the recollections of an employee in the SELI compound in Tengbeh Town named William Africanus Beckley. Mr. Beckley was born in 1916 in Kent village, a century after its founding and nearly a century ago. He lived there until 1934 when he moved to Freetown. Although he never returned to the village to live, he always thought of himself as a "Kent boy" and wanted this to be the title of his recollections. I recorded many conversations between us, many describing his accompanying his grandmother on long river trading trips among the Sherbro.
As is the nature of conversations, topics would appear, disappear, and reappear again, unpredictably. I typed out the scripts, and then organized his recollections into chapters. In January, 1994 I finished a dummy of
Kent Boy and read it aloud to Mr. Beckley, who was an avid reader in English but did not read Krio. He suggested some changes. I attempted not to put any of my own words into his book, with the idea that a native Krio speaker with some knowledge of the period of history he was referring to would later help us edit his text.
Mr. Beckley often used proverbs, and we also recorded these. Over several years he would come to work in the morning with one written on a scrap of paper to ask me whether I'd included it. I identified two key words in each proverb, and alphabetized his list according to these words; this meant that the over 400 proverbs in his list became a book called
Krio Parebul containing more than 800 items, each proverb listed twice. He was not one to explain proverbs, and was opposed to the idea of including any translation in the book apart from the occasional word that had fallen into disuse. I agreed with not translating the proverbs because I thought it wouldn't be helpful: anyone who has spent time around a proverb-user knows that they are explained in terms of the situation that they enlighten and not by the words they contain.
In 1994 I gave copies of both books to Mr. Beckley. He left work not long after that time, and died in January of 2001, at the age of 85.
Admission was free with registration in advance. All participants chose the primary language they wished to write in, and spent an hour writing a poem, story, personal experience, and/or a folktale.
Then we all gathered in language groups, with light refreshments, to read our work aloud to others who understand our language. The writers took their work home with them, hopefully to continue writing in their mother tongue. For a few, writing in their mother tongue was not new, but for most it was a very challenging, new experience. The New Citizen newspaper was present, and they wrote along with us! 
The participants thought this should be an annual event, and proposed that those present--just twelve this year, writing in Mende, Themne, Koranko, Susu, and Krio--keep encouraging each other to write, and be the catalyst unit to publicize the event next year. Wonderful idea!
The SELI Young Writers Club for JSS II (Form II) students now meets at the Sentinel English Language Institute in Tengbeh Town, from 11:30 am -12:30 pm, four days a week (Mon., Tues., Thurs., and Fri.), allowing students to reach their schools in time for the opening bell at 1:00 pm. As usual, this activity is being offered at no cost to the student. We hold our mini-lessons in a 415 sq ft palaver house first (shown here), and then move on to the classrooms to write! 
We've set up a display board for final drafts, and any member who has produced four final drafts (Whew! They produce 3-5 drafts per topic just to reach the final draft stage!) can choose her/his best to publish in the club's newsletter.
The presence of community activities such as clubs is vital if our schools are to succeed. The clubs which, decades ago, schools in Sierra Leone used to offer were not frivolous, but played a vital role in broadening and developing our children.
In both schools where clubs are being offered during this term, a primary school fully occupies the classrooms during the mornings. The junior secondary school that occupies the compound in the afternoons is an entirely different entity from the primary school and also fully occupies the facility. Since the school day ends for the junior secondary schools at 6:00 pm, our clubs are held at 11:00 and 12:00 am, before school begins and during the time the primary school is in session. Clubs meet two times a week in classrooms provided by the participating schools (pictured here) at no cost to the student or to the school. Schools were selected according to need.
Kent village today is ethnically a highly diverse community, but the ruins of a gated wall from those early days and the proud awareness of the history of this unique village (which in the late 1800's provided two principals to the Sierra Leone Grammar School) remain.
As is the nature of conversations, topics would appear, disappear, and reappear again, unpredictably. I typed out the scripts, and then organized his recollections into chapters. In January, 1994 I finished a dummy of Kent Boy and read it aloud to Mr. Beckley, who was an avid reader in English but did not read Krio. He suggested some changes. I attempted not to put any of my own words into his book, with the idea that a native Krio speaker with some knowledge of the period of history he was referring to would later help us edit his text.
Everyone learned seven teaching methods, or structures, which have been found effective in second language instruction. We used teacher training videocassettes borrowed from SELI to demonstrate the methods; I demonstrated the methods in class; and then each participant chose a method to teach the group one aspect of his/her language of instruction. Once we used this drawing one of the teachers made of her language class as a symbol when I demonstrated Freire's Problem Posing method.
Our group was mixed in terms of education (from preliterate to semiliterate) and age (teen to middle age). The class wanted to gain literacy in English, not in the language we all were speaking to each other (Krio). 
I brought a lot of cooking leaves in to class one day, and we spread them out on the table. 
Before more than a few moments had passed, I realized the conversation had moved from cooking to medicine! This was a better topic, because although we all knew how to prepare the same dishes, each one of us had different herbal knowledge to share. To my surprise, many of the women had admired the rich assortment of useful herbs in the SELI compound as they had come and gone from classes. We all went out collecting. Here you see four leaves that we found: mango (common), fig nut, guava, and sour sop.
We agreed on short medicine-preparing recipes. I recorded them in English and printed up a booklet which I brought to class and pantomimed my problem. I'm sick, and I need to find the right recipe! How should we organize the book so I can find what I need quickly? 
We talked about organizing it by the suggestor's name, by the leaf, or by the sickness, and they decided it would be most useful to organize by the sickness. In that session, we drew up our table of contents, and settled on Keep Well as a good title.
