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“For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, sayeth he to thee; but his heart is not with thee.” Proverbs 23: 7 KJV

When I wrote a piece in the Salone Times on International Women’s Day in 2001, very few Sierra Leoneans used the internet then. I had to wait late to get UN Scribe then, Kofi Annan’s, statement marking the day, and I believe I was the only commemorative feature piece in print that day. Fast forward to today, nobody dares or can afford to miss it. And there is something called Social Media that reaches remote villages in the country. As I wrote in that article, in light of the challenges, everyday should be women’s day. They continue to fight for emancipation, empowerment and equality with the phallic other. From Language, one of the most violent of tools available to humans, to just about every area of life, it is still a man’s world. More Sierra Leoneans are Muslims and many are Christians. The language and edicts of both religions prefer the male gender and sanction misogyny and a patriarchal world where women should be kept in “their place.” Above Bible verse is a metaphoric substrate for revelation that is our daily lives. Substitute the Subject “he” to mean men in general, and the Object “thee” to mean Salone women. For context, the Bible depicts a situation where one is invited for a meal at a rich man’s table. For our purposes, it is women having a seat of equality at the table, sharing power and resources with men, in charge, since Eve found out she was Woman.

Our verse is important because what one thinks, one says and is; Sometimes with duality, dissonance and deception to boot. Are we what we think? How much do we voice what we think, or not? And why? When we swear, curse or cuss people, is that our true uninhibited, (sub)conscious, self-speaking?

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Long before social media was ever conceived, insulting other people’s mothers (Mammy Cuss), with reference to their private parts, has been a tool used by both victims and bullies. It’s sacrilege and commonplace, a recourse for justice and a tool of terror, especially by the oppressed and offended. It costs nothing. Just a mind and mouth ready to go down dirty and nasty with the stock vocabulary or variations of verbal sexual assault on women.

There are other qualities to Mammy Cuss. It rubbishes class, and cuts across age and status. Another thing? In ours, as in other cultures, “Curse” and “Swearing” have a queer or trans relationship with meaning. In this English language I use, “curse” could be the same as “cuss” and “swear words’ ‘ and “cuss words” could be used interchangeably. In Salone, to put a curse on, is “swearing” (to Sweh) and there is Mammy Cuss (MC)- invectives. Both share in common, hopelessness, helplessness, frustration, desperation, vexation and exasperation as ingredients for stewing people to resort to them. In a culture where inequity is rife in both public and private spaces and there are few or no opportunities or possibilities for legal recourse or restitution; people find ways to get even or take the law, so to speak, into their own mouths. Mammy Cusses (MCs) and Swehs work in our culture precisely because of an oxymoronic streak: Taboo enough to serve as some deterrent as nobody wants their mother verbally sexually assaulted, but common enough to be available to everybody and even be industrial. Someone recently, glowingly, on social media, spoke of some Mammy-Cussers-for-hire (Aibuki Macauley of Fourah Bay et al) in Freetown, alleging that even Albert Margai used to alight from his limousine and counter launch invectives at people who cussed his mother. As a kid growing up in Njala, I remember seeing a man hawking the Sweh for thunder to fall on people, which the Mende call Ngelebga.

The technology was a contraption of metals in a bamboo case. Isn’t it common to hear the phrase borrowed from Nigerian culture “Thunder fire you!”? The technology of MC, like Sweh. is mostly illogical, irrational, invisible, intangible and may be employed for its cathartic, even therapeutic effects -relief or reprieve for Mammy Cusser. The former invokes, in referential, female private parts, when launched, aiming at feelings, while the latter invokes the supernatural, aimed at the fortunes of a person(s).

Social media does not create content, it only amplifies it, gives it a platform. As humans, Sierra Leoneans, evil, murderous, slanderous, envious…you name it, thoughts and ideas are always lodged in our (un)conscious minds. Our conscious minds don’t act out all their fantasies because of Pavlovian conditioning and repression. Society makes taboo, outlaws or frowns upon certain speech and actions and we know them as wrong. When law and order or the social contract is buried or thrashed, as was during our civil war, the light is beamed on our more ‘animal’ parts.

The basics of communication theory among other things divides the communication process starting with Encoding, which is preparing the message, the Channel which brings us the message, Noise or Static that sometimes accompany the message, and Decoding, the reception and understanding of the message. I will hazard that social media is the Channel and MC, the Noise. To complicate things further, there are times when the Message and the Noise are inseparable, for good reason.

Enter Dr Sylvia Blyden, a strong female opposition politician and media personality and (a dude, diaspora person, influencer, social media personality, phenom?…mehn he’s tough to label…) Adebayor. Coming from different gender, class or place, the two things that unite them are MC and social media. Being that I only belong to seven WhatsApp groups with strict rules, I can count on both hands how many Adebayor audios I have listened to, obviously because they are strewn with unprintables- MCs. I have listened to countless fireside chat-like Dr Blyden audios, the 00-something series, even as revisionist historical narratives. What got my attention was a response by Blyden to Adebayor, pointing an accusing finger at the former first family of Ernest Bai Koroma as the chief patrons of Adebayor, with specific reference to Mrs Koroma.

The idea, I suspect, was to guilt-shame her (assuming she has any knowledge/control of Adebayor’s verbal sexual assaults on her) because she is a woman and therefore should be in solidarity with her. Blyden, who believes she is at the vanguard of women empowerment in the country, was seen announcing a meeting with the First Lady Fatima Bio, another women’s rights protagonist and old friend. The meeting happened. Some APC person with the moniker “Possible” made possible something no one saw coming. Silvia who was a casualty of Adebayor’s profligate MC-ridden audios, took a leaf right out of his playbook and launched MCs at “Possible” quoted as saying she could not endure the struggles of being in opposition, hence her meeting with the First Lady. She caught flak; doubled down with the MCs, fluently, retorting that even the American President had recently cussed, SOB, in a hot mic moment- that certain contexts required MCs. Culture and context are crucial to the workings of MCs, whether in the USA or in Sierra Leone. Yours truly will not cast (certainly not) the first stone at Blyden or Adebayor, because it will be dishonest and self righteous to do so. Have I ever launched MCs of my own? Big fat YES. Anyone who attended The Bo School knows the anger, frustration and powerlessness of waking up, frantic to do your morning chores, and find out your broom, slippers, bucket, plate or something else has been snatched from where you kept it. You may see it again, but right then you can do nothing about it! In rage and/or exasperation, you can shout “Manners Maketh Man!” or…The same way the person who turns their chicken loose to fend at dawn, and does not see them return at dusk, can go to the police or… And spare me the hypocrisy here in the West about the use of cuss words and other vulgarities in audio-visual form or in print. The anachronism, Federal Communications Commission here in America, regulate and police media (they don’t know quite what to do with the behemoth frontier, social media) content for lewdness and ratings. It is hypocritical to those officials to think that with all the access kids have to information on the internet especially, if they see “BULLS#@T” in print, or hear “I don’t give a b-l-i-p about…” on radio or TV, it protects them from cuss words and vulgarity. It’s an insult to their intelligence and just cultural posturing.

Social media is a freeway with not much for signs and markings. What Adebayor has done is use profligate MCs when encoding his message, like an emergency vehicle uses the noise of sirens- to tell motorists to shove to the side and give them right of way. There is so much content and ever-dwindling attention spans out there (wonder why ads these days are almost about everything but the product itself?), therefore MC-peppered messages have kept Adebayor relevant and resonant, because many of us are MCers inside and/or are giddy to hear powerful people pulled from their high horses and dragged into the cesspit. Since Siaka Stevens was handed that staff from Okoro-Cole making him Executive President, the country has known asymmetrical power vested in the Executive, and people cheer and gloat when the ‘crazy man’ they wouldn’t want to give birth to, at the street corner, derides it: Adebayor.

Coda: By that doubling down Blyden meant, let’s just say it, Son of a Bitch (SOB). SOB, like Nigger, has a troublesome relationship with who says it, where and in which context. Rooted in misogyny, it can fly around in locker room vernacular as normalized; Like, “you pain in the ass.” Nature, North or South on the globe, puts women as the default carers for the offspring, and for people of African descent, that has always meant a lot more sacrifice and effort. In the Americas black fathers and absenteeism is almost synonymous, through slavery, chain gangs and mass incarceration.

In Africa, polygamy, patriarchy and toxic masculinity makes the woman almost solely responsible for raising the kids, therefore closer to the heart of the children. It is mightily hurtful for someone to say; “Yo Mama this…or that..” to a black person in America or Salone. Whether we are talking about President Obama, or Bio, single mother is the constant. We’ve seen moms shock us, dust their arsenal to launch MCs, when that owl howls or some night bird shrieks, from a tree in the neighborhood, adding: “Kokoh go! You want to eat my children!”. Yeah it’s culture, but forget all I have said, MCs should never be celebrated! We sit astounded at epidemic rape and assaults on women’s rights, and we should know it does not take much of a leap to go from verbal sexual abuse, to the real thing. My Bible verse? It’s been over 25 years since we adopted the Beijing Declaration; Women equality rights are guaranteed in the 1991 Constitution, revised in 2001; Up onto the Gender Equality and Women Empowerment Policy in 2021, we talk the talk, but are we serious about women empowerment and equality? MCs are not the best way to show it.

*Fayia Sellu is a Sierra Leonean Journalist who has migrated to the US