By Sule Musa (WhatsApp: +23276613799)
Whether night or day, I can no longer remember. Thereabout March or April. It was the year 2000. And at Lamina Sankoh Street in the central business district of Freetown, capital city of Sierra Leone.
This was the address of my short lived newspaper, Daily Adviser 2000 – 2001.
The office phone rang and I dashed for the receiver. Mobile phones were rare then; at least in Sierra Leone. Pioneer operator Mobitel was as rare as it was erratic. You could lay two handsets side by side on a table and dial the other with reports that the second handset was out of coverage area. So, it was mostly land phones.
“Yaah!” I answered in my usually busy note. “Hello!” came back from the other end.
I will never be able to explain how that voice sounded like Emmanuel Turay’s. Emmanuel was the maiden news editor of the newspaper. I had been looking for him for the better part of that day.
So, I heard myself yelling “ah go kick you ass when I see you!”
The response from the other end cut me by the groin. That could certainly not be Emmanuel. The voice responded “miself go kick u ass!”
I calmed down. I knew instantly that something was wrong somewhere. “Who’s this please?” I heard myself pleading. The answer and the voice hit me at once. I sought the ground to swallow me but it didn’t even yield a crack. “This is George Biguzzi” he said and began laughing, asking “where’s Emmanuel?”
My response was in whispers. “Mi Lord, ah don die!” I cried. “I thought it was Emmanuel.”
And he said coolly “Sule, let’s talk about important things. Tell Emmanuel I want to see him.”
I remained in the chair immobile for a long time. What sort of humility is this? I kept asking myself. And have not stopped going over same question whenever Biguzzi came to my mind.
But I had to know the man better from a closer proximity when the then director of Caritas Makeni, Ibrahim Sesay hired me as a communication consultant for the Catholic aid and relief agency. As Bishop of the Makeni diocese, Biguzzi was the chairman of the Caritas Makeni board.
The Daily Adviser newspaper had extensively covered the operations of Caritas Makeni especially in the course of ending the eleven-year war through peace negotiation and consolidation championed by the Sierra Leone commission for disarmament, demobilization and resettlement (DDR).
The guns had barely gone quiet when Caritas Makeni wrestled the child combatants in their thousands from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) high command in Makeni. They were brought to Port Loko in about fourteen trucks owned and driven by the Pakistani contingent of the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL).
In all the hectic and hair raising operations led by Ibrahim Sesay and the dedicated Caritas Makeni team, Bishop Biguzzi was there in the background soliciting for funds from far and wide.
On countless occasions, I would be in the company of Ibrahim Sesay in the Wilkinson Road office of Caritas Makeni late into the night and long after the staff had closed. In nearly all of these sessions, there would be back and forth consultation with the Bishop on issues relating to the peace and relief operations.
The national award conferred on Bishop George Biguzzi by the government of President Ernest Bai Koroma was consequently well deserved.
Developments in nearly every area of human needs brought to Makeni and parts of the north of Sierra Leone are attributed to the glowing accomplishments of George Biguzzi who was always mentioned in one breath with his predecessor Bishop Azzolinni.
Perhaps the most touching pronouncements attributed to Biguzzi was his response to alarmists who ran to him in Freetown during the thick of the war, wailing that all he laboured to build in Makeni was reduced to rubbles by the rebels.
His response was classical patriotic zealotry. He said, “Once the ground is still there we will rebuild.”
When his obituary was published on Monday first of July, accompanying news that his remains would be brought to Makeni for interment according to his will, only cemented the fact that he was always Sierra Leonean by body, soul and spirit.
The soil of Sierra Leone is enriched by the mortal remains of George Biguzzi, a Catholic priest of rare breed.