About Us - Sheiku Mansaray
In 1974 Greg went to my hometown called Sinkunia (located in the Northern province of SIERRA LEONE, WEST AFRICA) to work as a "Peace Corp Volunteer". Greg worked on an inland rice project building paddies, irrigation systems and making lots of friends, which includes most of the late and current chiefs and chiefdom elders as well as ordinary people. Greg adapted and immersed well into the culture and because of his good sense of humour and my people treated him with respect and great hospitality. At this time my dad who is the current Paramount Chief was working with Greg as a Civil Servant and no one knows if what is happening today could have ever happened.
When Greg returned to USA, the memory of Sinkunia still lingers in his head and could not stop thinking about ways to help the people of Sinkunia. Based on his passion, he re-established contact with my dad and they started exchanging amazing letters. In one of the letters my dad informed him that the late Paramount Chief passed away and that the guy he worked with many years ago is the current Paramount Chief.
During the war, I was lucky to narrowly escape and immigrated to Canada and despite running from murderous rebels, I was able to secure Greg's coordinates. When I arrived in Canada, I phoned Greg and re-established relationship with him to the point that we started sending frequent emails to each other. Since then our relationship has been wonderful and very progressive. When I was in university, Greg and his family including his late mother (May her soul rest in perfect peace) contributed financially towards my education and they were all there for me throughout my difficult times. When the civil war broke out in Sierra Leone, Greg and his family contributed financially in alleviating the plight of our people. They sent monies to me in Canada, which I sent over to my dad who in turn bought essential food items for our people who were starving and destitute at this time.
Greg and I started planning a trip to Sinkunia since 2004 and at this stage it was like a dream for both of us. Personally, I wanted to give Greg and especially his family the opportunity to see for themselves the other part of the world and to decide what they can do to help. I did this because I believe in the idea that "seeing is believing" and what is reported in the news and the reality on the ground is completely different. We kept our dreams alive and In December 2007, I met Greg and his family for the first time at the airport in London. Although Christmas in this part of the world is time for families but Greg and his family put aside everything including looking after their old parents and took the trip to help change lives. It was an exhausting, exhilarating, enlightening and frankly, life-changing experience. Armed with our desire to help others, we then travelled to a country where the devastation of war and desperate poverty stood in stark contrast to intense natural beauty and local hospitality. We stayed in Freetown for few days and then to Sinkunia where illiteracy and subsistence farming and herding have been the reality for quite sometime. We were all sceptical as to the deplorable conditions out there but despite all odds, we eventually made it to our final destination (Sinkunia) where we spent Christmas. To my utmost surprise, as soon we got to Sinkunia, after too many years Greg was able to identify the house where he used to live and a steady stream of people came to see him as they remembered him very well.
During a visit with my dad and the chiefdom people, with all due respect and appreciation, Greg and his family were given traditional Yalunka names. Greg was named Manga Foday (my great great great grandfather who was a very prominent and powerful Paramount Chief). Clare was named Kanko who is my dad's mother (Queen's Mother) and Lily was named Kadie (My dad's first wife).
Despite the fact that there is abject poverty in the town, after series of meetings with my dad and the chiefdom people, my dad made it crystal clear that on behalf of his people his first priority in the town is education. He said "with education comes hope and with hope you can do anything". He made a personal plea to us to assist him and his people by building new classrooms to accommodate the influx of school children due to the law he had just passed which required all school aged children to be enrolled in school regardless of sex. This led to overcrowded classrooms with fewer teachers. Currently my dad is providing accommodation for the teachers and for more than a year my dad was the one who paid the teacher’s salaries as they were not on government payroll by then. During the brutal war, the schools were burnt down and after the war the government built new schools but with lesser classrooms to accommodate all the children. Also there is the need to build secondary school for older students so that they wouldn't have to travel away from their families and usual place of residence in pursuit of higher education.
It was out of this dire need that we decided to form the organization named "Schools of Sinkunia, INC". Since our return, Greg and his family and friends has been working relentlessly to raise funds to support the project. This newly formed non-profit organization, Schools of Sinkunia, Inc. 501c3 (Tax ID) raised $17,000 USD in 2008 that was sent to Sinkunia for the construction of a classroom. Construction started January 2009 on the first classroom in Sinkunia. Our goals this 2009 are to increase the number of textbooks in the library (currently they number 3 and those were bought by Greg and his family in 2007) provide salary incentive for better teachers
and help pay tuition and uniform fees for children whose families are unable to send their children to school. Future goals include setting up “Beyond Sinkunia” scholarships for deserving students to travel away from home to attend college. All donations are tax-deductible and all donors would be provided with periodic updates regarding the progress of the project.
In light of the above, I would take this golden opportunity to personally invite you to join us in our struggle to support education in Sinkunia. In a time of much fear and uncertainty, when the world seems to have lost its sense of direction on the road to peace, I hope this project will give us hope for a new direction.
Warm Regards,
Sheiku Mansaray