Tag: Sierra Leonean-Americans

Embassies & High Commissions, News

Sierra Leone’s Mission in Washington D.C. Host U.S. Congressman Gregory Meeks, Chairman of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee

Washington D.C. (TN Tribune)–The Embassy of Sierra Leone in Washington D.C. this week hosted U.S Congressman Gregory Meeks, a Democratic Member of the House of Representatives from Queens, New York, who recently became Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. The invitation for the evening was made by Ambassador Sidique Abou- Bakarr Wai of Sierra Leone the host.

Also invited were Ambassador Seydou Kabore of Burkina Faso, Ambassador Kerfalla Yansene of Guinea, Ambassador Frederic Eden Hegbe of Togo, Ambassador Barfour Adjei Barwuah of Ghana, Ambassador George Patten of Liberia, Ambassador Mahmadou Nimaga of Mali and Ambassador Mathilde Mukantabana of Rwanda. Former NYC Commissioner Patricia Gatling, Rev. Dr. Abdul K. Sesay, Dr. Fouad Sheriff, Rakie Macarthy, Head of Chancery of the Embassy of Sierra Leone were among the other dignitaries present.

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African Food

My auntie’s jollof rice, and other things Covid-19 stole from me

by S. Fambul | The Counter

We West Africans take our regional dish—and communal celebration—seriously. When I remember the days when an unmasked face at the bank did not frighten me, I cannot help but to think of the ways I have called my family outside of their names in the act of love.

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News

Trump student visa rule | Department of Homeland Security pushes F1 changes for US colleges

By LINDSAY SCHNELL | USA TODAY

Leon Lewis-Nicol can still hear the gunshots. If he closes his eyes, he can picture the burning buildings.  As a child in Freetown, Sierra Leone, a nation in West Africa devastated by civil war, Lewis-Nicol often imagined a better, safer life. His family fled the fighting, then returned to Sierra Leone, before ultimately moving to Ghana, some 900 miles away, when he was 15. But friends who traveled around the world used to speak of an even safer place, with clean streets and unlimited opportunities: the United States.

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News

Kei Kamara | Sierra Leone footballer joins teammates to protest the killing of Jacob Blake

By Sports Africa | BBC

Ex-Sierra Leone striker Kei Kamara feels the campaign for social justice is more important than sport in the United States at the moment. He was talking as his MLS side Colorado Rapids chose not to play a game on Wednesday against FC Dallas in protest over the shooting of Jacob Blake.

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News

Sierra Leone leader: Add Africa to UN Security Council now

By TED ANTHONY

The leader of Sierra Leone has demanded that the U.N. Security Council reconfigure itself to add permanent representation for Africa, saying the continent’s “patience is being tested” by its longstanding exclusion. 

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Festivals

How Nigeria and Ghana have lost to Sierra Leone in a series of Jollof Rice festivals across America

By Staff writer

It seems the best jollof rice cooked across America may not be by Nigerians or Ghanaian but rather by Sierra Leoneans and Senegalese who have come tops across four Jollof rice competitions held across America so far.

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Culture

Ko-Thi African Dancers Honor the Past, Prepare for the Future

By John Schneider

In 1969, just into her 20s, Ferne Yangyeitie Caulker won the opportunity to study with the National Dance Company of Ghana, West Africa. A native of Sierra Leone already living and studying modern dance in Milwaukee (“It’s a long story,” she says), she’d set her sights on dancing with the famed Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre in New York City. She’d even received an encouraging letter from Ailey. Then, in Ghana, she visited Elmina Castle, the most famous of the fortresses along the Ghana coast used by Americans and Europeans as holding pens for captured Africans.

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People

CNN Star Quit to Pen Book About Nigerian Schoolgirls Kidnapping: “I Didn’t Want to Do Any More Trump”

Isha Sesay left cable news to write about her time covering the 2014 abduction of 276 Chibok schoolgirls by the terrorist organization Boko Haram: “An ‘othering’ of Africa still exists in newsrooms.”

Isha Sesay became a TV news star in 2014, leading a CNN news team to a Peabody Award with her coverage of the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Chibok, Nigeria, by the Boko Haram terrorist group.

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Opinion

Refugees and the spirit of America –

By Omar Kallon

Growing up as the son of a Sierra Leonean refugee in Egypt during the 1990s wasn’t easy. My father couldn’t return to his homeland because of a brutal civil war, and although my mother was an Egyptian citizen, Egypt’s patrilineal citizenship laws meant my father and my sister and I were never considered Egyptian.

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