Preserving History

A week ago I came back from a visit to Sierra Leone, just a few months after my last one. I have to say that it was most encouraging to see how the country is getting on as it tries to shed some baggage of recent history. There were many signs that things are beginning to stir for the better, with wide-ranging efforts directed at resurrecting infra-structure on which we can build a future.

All over the country, roads are being built, ensuring the re-connection between the centre and the margins, so that the alienation that led to the civil war can no longer be invoked as a reason for destabilization. And of course, such projects carry their own destabilizing influences, too, because of the need for additional land to create new roads or widen existing ones. Here, the problem is that there is wholesale uncertainty about titles to land and differences in land tenure laws between different parts of the country. This is not helped by the poor quality of records and archives kept in various places.

In my recent visit, I tried to get some information held at a number of sites, and was appalled by the state in which the records are kept. Moreover, the lack of a freedom of information law provides a cover for civil servants who have a vested interest in withholding information largely for the purpose of personal gain.

I should say, however, that when I visited the archives held at the University of Sierra Leone, I was highly impressed by the enthusiasm and knowledge of the young archivist who helped me to search for what I wanted. That was in contrast to the condition in which the records were being stored and I could not but wonder what their long-term fate would be if their condition of storage was not improved. For those of us out there, this should be a call to arms to rescue and preserve the repositories of our history in this the golden jubilee year of our independence from British colonial rule. If we don’t, we may well give credence to the Hegelian view, echoed by a once-reputable professor of history at a famous British university, that Africa has no history.

We wouldn’t want that now, would we?

Tell Fren Tru

History & Pain of sickle cell: Accra 2010

Today, Thursday, was the day we looked back into history. The first instance was a look back a hundred years ago at the personalities involved in the case of Walter Noel Clement, who was the first case of sickle cell described in the western medical literature. Although Clemens’ case had been worked out by the intern at that hospital in Chicago, it was his boss, Thomas James Herrick that took the credit and got the fame. Nothing new about that, I hear you say. Clement returned to Granada eventually after qualifying, and set up practice in St George, the capital. Strangely, virtually nothing of him survives, except his signature. Not even a picture. So, although we know what his blood looked like, we have no idea about the man himself. We were taken to his graveside by the lecturer, though, who showed us tombstones before and after hurricane. We also went and raided the contents of a tomb that was 3200 years old. During the last year, researchers from Egypt and Europe were able to do detailed examinations of the mummified body of the boy-King Tutankhamun, after which, they concluded that the Boy King had died of malaria. This conclusion has been contested by other experts who now think that it was more likely that sickle cell anemia was the cause of death instead. This mater was brought up at the congress in the context of discussing how long sickle cell has been in African populations.

Sickle cell anemia is dominated by pain, and so a big chunk of today’s session was dedicated to pain and how to deal with it. The major point that was made was that caregivers need to understand the suffering that pain induces in sickle cell patients and to be ready to deal with it. Not treating pain adequately is one of the most serious complaints that sickle cell patients have about the way they are cared for. It seems that there is still a serious need for education among care givers and sickle cell patients deed to be on the frontline to make sure that the required lessons are taught.   

Tell Fren Tru