By Sayoh Kamara
The Director of Tourism and Culture in the Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Foday Jalloh, in a typical lumpen style in reaction to a complaint forward to his Permanent Secretary resorted to ‘Mammy Cuss’ out of emotional overpowering.
In a mobile phone call on the morning of Monday, 6th November instant, that lasted barely 0.39 seconds, the Tourism and Culture Director called yours truly and rained unsavoury insults at myself and my mother.
He used all sorts gutter-upbringing invectives at me and my mother and hung up abruptly. My response was simple: “I will not go down that path with him. It was not out of cowardice but for my respect for womanhood and for all mothers.
My crime: I called Foday Jalloh sometime in Mid-October or thereabouts seeking an appointment and he asked about what. I explained to him that a cousin of mine from Holland wanted an attestation confirming his knowledge and ability to translate Mandingo and Krio languages into Dutch. The cousin, Mohamed Kandeh lives and works in Holland as a language translator. He apparently wants to apply to a bigger firm where he can be given more assignments. Foday’s true initial reaction then was he is no longer doing it for people as many of what he has been given out to so-called Cultural Ambassadors have been misused. I told him Kandeh’s case was different. He however told me to go with Kandeh for his own assessment. We went and he spoke to Kandeh who showed him proofs of his Sierra Leonean nationality and his business card as a translator. Jalloh agreed to do the attestation but advised that we fill in a registration form establishing a Cultural Group. That was not what Kandeh actually wanted, but we could not go beyond his directive. Kandeh gave me Le 1, 500 (New Leones) for his facilitation which I passed on to him. It is however worth noting that he, Foday Jalloh did not request for it nor did he tell us of any official fee. He asked me to write down exactly what we wanted in the attestation, which I did. He thereafter directed us to one of his junior staff, Aziz Bangura to handle the aspect of filling the registration form. We went through that registration. It took us two weeks to get the letter and this followed countless telephone calls which he didn’t respond to. I happen to reach out to Aziz Bangura on the last weekend of October to tell him that Kandeh was leaving on that weekend and that it would be refreshing if he goes with his letter.
Aziz called the following Friday informing that the letter was ready and we should go for it. We went to the Ministry that Friday morning only to find out that the letter was not ready and Jalloh was not yet in the office. Calls were made to him but he picked none. Aziz clearly tells us that they had not done anything regarding the letter. Kandeh explained to him that he was leaving for Lungi that evening because he has some other issues to address there before his flight takes off the next evening. Kandeh was already with his luggages in the jeep.
Aziz then asked me to type exactly what we wanted in the attestation in a word page he opened on their computer. I did so and he asked for money to go and print it out while we await Jalloh. Kandeh gave some money and Aziz went and did a black and white printout. When I asked why he did so, he responded that maybe his boss will want to do some corrections; something I very much doubted. Aziz made a call later about 1500 hours (GMT) and Jalloh suddenly appeared and he was grumbling about how I have been pestering him with calls about the matter. I told him that he had the option of not accepting to do it and that once he had acquiesced, it was now morally binding on him to do so, especially when we were at the nick of Kandeh’s departure. He called for the printed letter and Aziz showed him. He grumbled why didn’t he do it in colours, Aziz responded that he thought he was going to do some editing to what he said was a draft. He therefore instructed Aziz to then go and do the coloured printing. Jalloh left us in that office and went out. We waited for Aziz for like 45 minutes and then he came with an envelope from which he pulled out two copies, one of them was the earlier black and white printout. Both were signed and stamped. He showed me the copies but there was no time to read through especially the coloured copy as I was confident that it was what we had requested. We left almost immediately.
Four days after, Kandeh called from Holland that the coloured copy was in fact not what we asked Foday to do and that its content was completely at variance with what we asked for and different from the black and white printout. I denied until Kandeh forwarded both copies to me via WhatsApp. I was stunned with disbelief that Foday Jalloh could do such a thing.
But I honestly, at that initial stage, I took it as a mistake. I called Jalloh severally to inform him, again as usual he didn’t pick. I sent him a WhatsApp message including a snapshot copy of the two original copies from him via WhatsApp. I did same for Aziz, the junior staff.
Jalloh called a few days later in an apparent gangster voice telling that he was not responsible “for da wunna stupidity dae.” I asked him what wrong did we do to deserve such an insult from him when it was him who had created complexity around the whole matter and had rushed us into receiving the documents at a time, he knew there would have been no more time for correction or what-have-you. He said as far as he was concerned, he was done with whatever mutual agreement was between him and us. I tried to make him see reason in understanding the situation of his fellow countryman and my own role as middleman and perhaps the impression my cousin will collectively have about us. Jalloh was just too outlandishly arrogant with his words and could not listen to plea at least as a brother. He knows what I am talking about.
I called Aziz but I couldn’t get him. But when I forwarded the copies and a footnote to him, he responded that he was at that moment in China, but that I should just go to the office and his boss (Jalloh) will amend it.
I called Jalloh again severally and responded at one stage that he has told he has nothing to do with the matter again and that if I care, let me wait for the return of Aziz.
It was at this point that I sent a message to the Permanent Secretary with the hope that he will comply with his advice to redo the letter. That was my crime for Foday Jalloh to insult my mother.
He did two phone calls that morning with an avowed determination perhaps to tell me how big he has grown in his shoes in that Ministry. Foday Jalloh had the effrontery in the first phone call to tell me that he will not do anything again regarding the matter and questioned about whether I think the Permanent Secretary can do him anything.
“Way u don tell Kwame u think say ee able do me anything? Ee nor able do me fuck-all” and he went further to extend his arrogant wings to the President of the Republic of Sierra Leone: “No to dae u for don stop. Na Maada was na dae President u for don go tell. Nobody nor able do me fuck-all na ya.”
This is what the Director of Tourism and Culture in Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Tourism and Culture is bereft with now. It begs to wonder what kind of culture such an uncouth and low-life man could be teaching and demonstrating to the country’s young folks. Someone with a demonstrated lumpen character; someone with an outrightly outrageous disrespect for a woman is kept perched in that very important office and with surreptitious commitment indirectly showing how a man should be disrespectful to a woman, his President and Head of State, his Administrative Head and indeed someone with whom he is used to exchanging brotherly sentiments and goodwill?
But what should one expect. In all of my beings at the Ministry over this matter, I had never saw Foday in any normal civilized condition that will signal to anyone meeting him for the first time. My cousin would always ask me if it was official policy of the Government of Sierra Leone for its senior civil servants to go to work drunk. I had always shamefully dodged his questions. The other day, he said he had misplaced his office keys just because he didn’t wanted us to go to his office when I had insisted. He also told us how he doesn’t keep templates of his correspondences and that they are kept by “his boys”. To prove that to us, Aziz had to call somebody different to come with the Director’s stamp; and you know what, the guy came in with the stamp already inked and was placed on a plastic. Aziz had to tell to go to the Director’s office with the stamp.
I am quite certain that my cousin must be reeling in utter disbelief that Sierra Leone is run in part by a set of civil servants who lack honesty and are full of disrespect for their fellow countrymen.
For my part, I thank God I was not pushed to the kind of gutter-upbringing and waywardness Foday Jalloh openly manifested to me. I would have been regretting it and surely throughout the rest of my life. Never in my lifetime has anyone directly or indirectly insulted my mother (late) and that was simply because of the well-mannered nature and environment that I was born in. I was raised up in a complete family setting and my father paid the traditional bride price for my mother including livestock. My father brought in my mother just after her Bondo initiation. I am a blue-blooded offspring of my father. That besides, the community in Koidu, Kono District in which I was brought up, we saw all the mothers as our mothers with no difference.
So, with this kind of proper traditional and cultural upbringing in a family the likes of Foday Jalloh cannot push me into condescending into such nastiness that can just be attributive of a poor upbringing and a disoriented family setting.
A well-mannered and a professional and competent civil servant could have done either of two things: Not accept doing the letter for whatever reason and not accept any remuneration or do it professionally and where there is an error, amend it and end it there.
But because this symptomatic nincompoop and scallywag did not consider any but to resort to insulting someone who has so much respect for women and certainly his mother and all other mothers, simply because his inefficiency, incompetence, rudeness and disrespect for authority has been brought to the fore.
Hopefully this will open a Pandora’s Box.