Sierra Leone Day: Bring Back Our Lanterns and Cultural Masquerades

A year ago, I made this plea to our authorities to bring back our cultural celebrations. Alas, I thought it was going to happen this year. But NO. It seems like we are gradually becoming a nation of Cultural Nothingness, an empty vessel that lacks character.

No lanterns, No Paddle, No hunting, No Masquerades, No Salmafo. Nothing cultural that binds us as a nation to Celebrate except Primary and High School Bourgeois Comprador celebrations of colonial legacies in suits and ties.

Of all things taken away from us in the name of national security in Sierra Leone, the vilification and erosion of our social opium (lanterns and masquerades) and culture hurts the most. This takes away our joy, happiness amidst hardships, our belonginess, our cohesion, innovativeness, and overall sense of identity within the global cultural space.

The biggest loser is not the citizens who would go about their normal business, but tourism and deep economic benefits it brings to our nation. For a nation Sierra Leone reeling in economic hardships and drug substance abuse, masquerades provides appropriate dose of social opium needed for positive reinforcement, counter measure against our kush high, and ameliorating mental health.

Dance and it associated joy on the brain has long been utilized by African cultures as a source of therapy and healing. It is central to our being and resilience throughout history. If development is modernisation minus dependency, culture is central to domestication of modernisation and eliminating dependency.

So apart from the destruction of the institutional memories and patriotism associated with the bans on lanterns, ordelay, orjeh, hunting and so on, we are essentially creating an emptiness, a social nakedness without the veil that culture provides for our nation.

As Prof. Ali Mazrui states, culture serves as a, spring of motivation, standard of perception, standard of judgement, basis of stratification, means of communication, production and consumption, and basis of identity. All of which, we are essentially killing with bans on our cultural parades.