Freetown @ 222

The number 222 is, among numerologists, hugely significant. A search on Google brings up in just 0.24 seconds, a boastful 341,000 results, the top ten of which tell of a wide variety of blessings that the number can bestow. So, one may hope that, at 222, Freetown could be on the threshold of another beginning leading to much happier times. Doubt me not. I love the place dearly but I also always think that it has a whole lot of room for improvement.

The exact date of the birthday is subject to debate, with a range of options from which one can choose. A fairly obvious one is that date in March 1792 when the first of the small flotilla of ships that left Halifax, Nova Scotia six weeks earlier, entered the mouth of the Sierra Leone River; or if one likes, one can pick the day when the flagship of the commander, the youthful Lieutenant John Clarkson, the Lucretia, dropped anchor at St George’s Bay; or, indeed, the day when the first wobbly-legged arrivals stepped on dry land after their long sea voyage. But of all these, perhaps the most emotionally-loaded day is that first Sunday, March 11, when the group of hopefuls congregated around the prominently located and, by now, venerated Cotton Tree, to give a praise of thanksgiving for their deliverance.

That occasion was re-enacted a few days ago, when descendants of those Nova Scotians and indeed the descendants of others rescued from slavery in the ensuing century, gathered around that same Cotton Tree to celebrate the survival of the city from those early days. True, the beginnings of the city were far from auspicious, with less than 1200 free black men, women and children plunged into a hostile environment in which they were at risk of capture and re-enslavement by aggressive slavers who had their headquarters just a few miles up the river at their Bunce Island stronghold. And besides, the indigenous people, from whom land had been bought to plant the new colony, soon began to have twinges of seller’s remorse.  Moreover, disease and the climate ravaged through the infant colony that was short of the basic necessities of food and shelter, and not to mention the incompetence, greed and to some degree, malice from the British Parliament-sanctioned Sierra Leone Company that had organized and subsidized the entire venture.

When Lieutenant Clarkson, who became the colony’s first governor, left at the end of 1792, his confidence in its future was not high. His doubts were articulated in a twelve-hundred word prayer so patronizing, that it is a wonder that the colony did not actually sink under its weight. But survived it did and here we are, 222 years on with a city more or less ready, we think, to take on new challenges and, perhaps, realize its full potential at last.

Tell Fren Tru