By Hajaratu Kalokoh
Tribal heads from across the country have held a one-day engagement to discuss the revival of Sierra Leonean culture. The engagement on Friday was done to coincide with the National Multicultural Day on 1 November.
The event at the British Council Auditorium was organized by Fayandi Communication Team, in partnership with Ministry of Tourism and Cultural Affairs and the Sierra Leone Local Content Agency.
"We Sierra Leoneans are losing our culture and tradition gradually by imitating Western culture. Even when our elders are representing us at international platforms we have nothing to identify us as Sierra Leoneans, whereas the Nigerians and Ghanaians put on their traditional attire which are Agbada and Kainte,” Dwarty Fayandi Koroma, Chief Executive Officer of Fayandi Communication, said.
Fayandi is a non-governmental performing art media organization. Among many other things they are engaged in advocacy to strengthen and promote Sierra Leone’s cultural heritage.
Koroma told Politico that the engagement was a steppingstone in efforts to restore Sierra Leone’s culture that is gradually fading.
"It is good we portray ourselves through our traditional attire by wearing Ronko and Country Klos. Let people get used to it. Let the White people recognize it that anyone putting on Ronko is from Sierra Leone.”
He said following this engagement they would put a paper together to convince the government to adopt a policy on traditional attires in the country.
"We are asking the Ministry of Tourism and Cultural Affairs to start putting papers together and forward it before cabinet for it to become a law that every Friday is a multi-cultural day. We should [consume] our locally made food, drinks, wear our traditional attires and tell our stories and speak our local dialects," he said.
Chairman of Tribal Heads in the country, Chief Sahr Gbekie said people had negative perceptions about cultural attires.
"People have this perception that wearing Ronko symbolizes fetish. Before now it used to portray culture. So, for us to tell our younger generation about cultural attires is not new, we were in it," Chief Gbekie said.
He also stressed the role the media must play in promoting traditional attires.
"The media has a pivotal role in showcasing our tradition. The state owned Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) should play our cultural music. However, SLBC allocates only 30 minutes to cultural programs which is not enough," he said.
The campaign for traditional attire in the country is not new. The late President Ahmad Tejan Kabba encouraged Sierra Leoneans to put on traditional attires on Fridays. A call re-echoed by the former president, Ernest Bai Koroma who during a state opening of parliament, called on Sierra Leoneans to wear local outfits on Fridays.
Sierra Leone’s clothing market has been flooded with cheap textile, known as ‘junks’ from Europe and America, and more recently by Chinese imitated Gara.
The high price of traditional attires over the years has also not helped the situation. A traditional Mende ‘country cloth’, for instance, sells for over Le200, 000.
© 2019 Politico Online
