Meet our Man Crush for this week, Raymond D’Souza George (Papa Ray)

Raymond D’Souza George, popularly known as Papa Ray, is a popular figure among students at Fourah Bay College and Sierra Leoneans in general.

Papa Ray was born in 1947 at Brookfields and raised at Sanders Street of Freetown. Having left secondary school in the 1960s, he had to work as a temporary clerical assistant at the Ministry of Education, where he earned thirty-four leones as his first month salary which he used to pay for his first year university fees.

Upon graduation from university, Papa Ray taught at the Muslim Brotherhood for a year before leaving for the civil service as an administrative officer, where he served for ten (10) years.

 

Papa Ray later got a scholarship to study drama at Leeds University in the United Kingdom, where he obtained a Master’s degree in Drama and Theatre Arts.  Returning to Sierra Leone, Papa Ray went again to the civil service before going on secondment to FBC in 1985, where he has been ever since.

 

Papa Ray has represented Sierra Leone as an actor at the Second World Black Festival of Arts and Culture in Nigeria where one of his works “Borbor Lef” was fortunate to be selected for performance at the London International Festival of Theatre.

He later went to Canada to produce one of his works written on the experience of Shengbe Pieh, “The Broken Handcuff” at the Canadian Fringe Theatre Festival in 1994.

 

Papa Ray has also represented Sierra Leone as one of the judges who decided the winner for the Lyrics of the ECOWAS anthem in Abuja. He was subsequently appointed a resident director for Kalamazoo College, which appointment led to the exchange of students from the college and FBC.

 

In the 2018 elections, he stood as the Mayoral Candidate for then opposition, Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), but lost to the All People’s Congress (APC) Mayoral Candidate, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr.

He was appointed in May 2018 as the Minister of Works and Public Assets in the government of Sierra Leone.