After being introduced to the familiar cultures of historical
societies, it was as an African, with illustrious cynicism looked upon, the way
in which the many accounts of mortal life were preserved, some with an almost
systematic means of remembering the eras of their existence; that life accounts
lost almost everything in meaning the closer examined to their death. Indeed,
the obituary in any simple newspaper often alludes to the irony:
“when they see your death, then they
will know what life is...”
In spite of this, there is in the absence of life and its
history, also knowledge acquired, since life often seems to engage in a debate
to prove itself; if anything, in a debate to substantiate an incompletion.
Therefore, as a modest addition to any formal assortment of events relating to
Fredrick Sherman Macaulay, relating to, as history is defined, “significant
events” more so than just events in his life; I felt it most necessary to
contextualize my own view of him as man and grandfather, since it was a role
like many who find themselves engulfed in the pluralism of their social life,
that he performed both instinctively and purposefully. An overcoming like
father, like person, that was absorbed into the greater workings of his
identity, which is perhaps reason for the explanation given then, to any
narration of his life.
Fredrick Sherman Macaulay was father to my mother and Aunt Anita
or preferably Ola, often termed as Papa by his daughters (and the term
daughters is not to suggest that both women were anything below 25 years of age
in hindsight), and an estranged husband to my grandmother who chided him when
ever they were together as Alfred and for me and my two sisters as well
as cousins, commonly referred to as Grampa.
His only son died shortly after birth.
In the early 1970’s and well into the 1980’s, he lived in an
earth fractured hamlet structure on the more populated lower side of Bumpe; though much of such descriptions take into account
that such was reasonable habitation away from the bushes, in front of which Maraka or Sarakulaemen every so often, engaged in the play of Ancient Wari.
Macaulay, my grandfather for the most part spent time back and forth to Freetown and other areas;
but particularly to Bat’s Street Brookfields, where
he found a familial place to relax in suspenders, white vest and pants or like
a typical African, a casual short sleeve patterned print shirt with buttons.
Seldom could there be play in his room except perhaps some allowance
given to admire the camel figure he used to role tobacco cigarettes or inhale
the aroma residue of his pipe. He also found place in the home of his daughter
Ola in Kingtom, as well as his many sisters he
visited during his trips in between Freetown
and Bo. Physically, he was a slim man, and in retrospect of current
fitness emphasis, one could consider him an unspoken guru in that regard. He
sported a baldhead that displayed a perpetual shine with two rows of slick hair
above both ears as side. What invited most when out of view was his laughter,
which often ended with inner wind scrapes to the upper portion of his mouth. It
was raucous laughter, that in obvious symbolized perhaps amity with his
parliamentary associates or if not, something he developed in teaching over the
years that made his scholars sense that they were a
part of an implicit strictness. Without a doubt he transferred this certainty
to all, including his family - with biblical parables, African proverbs and
tales that he reinterpreted from text books and the heritage of life; from the
complexity of Shakespeare’s The Tempest to the wisdom of the Chicken and the
Cockroach, to the fascinating stories of Aladdin and Ali Baba and a host of
situation narrations from his experiences. His favorite phrase being, even
among his old scholars, performed in English with wide eyes: “If I
beat you, will see stars with wings!”
F.S. Macaulay was also an unapologetic lover of films,
especially the manner in which they brought the text books of history to life
and an appreciator of the variety of pan-African music available, such as
Nigerian Fela, American Soul - James Brown, and
Caribbean music, Roaring Lion and Mighty Sparrow, over and above the cynicism
of Sierra Leonean Kalenda, which seemed a
necessary part of any effect of Freetown Krio and its
linguistic aura. This imagery of civilizing fact and fiction was projected,
whether in a common uproar of enjoyment in 1974 at the Freetown Odeon in view
of screen literature and history; Oliver Cromwell and Oliver Twist; or at the
Globe Cinema in gaze of the Asian amulets of dancing gods and boiling pots on
early Indian film which gradually became modern by the late 1970’s onwards -
deferring traditionalism by 1976, to the discipline of Chinese martial arts.
Film had been part of the ascendance of Fredrick Macaulay’s
contemporary experience when in the early 1930’s he aggravated the cultural
norms of his wife’s Sherboexpectations,
insisting the name of his first daughter to be Shirley, after watching
the performance of a little American girl on screen, Shirley Temple. Yet
his life was not a film but the real act of Sierra Leone. This boldness was
exercised beyond the naming of his daughter to whom he capitulated eventually
adding the name Yema in the Sherbro tradition of second female child, having lost a
first born son. Yet, there was no indication that F.S. Macaulay was a devout
enthusiast per se to be swayed by any manner of fanaticism during his life.
Still, he could be given picture of, as an educated person; a characteristic
which stood out above all.
It was education that distinguished his personality, laid his
reputation, and maintained the appearance of his formal expertise,
notwithstanding as an organic African. For instance, narratives have it that
in the early days when his wife Violet fell ill and was taken to a local
spiritualist in a village town then was delayed in the process of failed cure
after cure, Macaulay would not have it! So on his return from mission, Macaulay
pulled his wife from the bosom of the spiritualist, with a fearless and
reverential shout against any form of cultural experimentation. He at once
loaded her on public transport on route to the nearest hospital. For F.S.
Macaulay, Africa may have been existent by
learned rule, whether traditional or modern; and this was evidenced in his
acquired Mendecountry-cloth robe or his
little suitcase filled with documents, hard-pressed shirts and ties; not
subject of any result of war, savagery or villainous craft. Thus he was always
filled with cautious warning about traditional demeanor, conduct and ways.
In September of 1978 courtesy of my grandfather with one phrase,
I was alighted at Christ the KingCollege boarding school
in Bo, with him in character as grandfather and intellectual traditionalist.
Soon that same phrase was found in the pages of Chinua Achebe and in the annals
of British literature: The heights that great men reached and kept were not
attained by sudden flight for they while there companions slept were toiling upwards
through the night. Again, years later in 1985 as I departed for an American
tour, he was in blind state quite cautionary with his wisdom, suggesting:
Let your acquaintances be many, but let your friends be few. It was in this
manner F.S. Macaulay’s routine presence shaped the lives of others and by the
time of his death, he was perhaps one of the few Sierra Leoneans who could
recount local Sierra Leone
history as far back as when he was a boy, not as a recent component. He spoke
of relatives like his younger brother, long traveled by ship, conflicts with
British colonialists, African immigrants from sea and migrants by land into Sierra Leone
and how this fusion contributed to language.
Perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of Fredrick Sherman Macaulay
was the assumption that he was from the Caribbean.
On the contrary, his father Fredrick Sylvester Macaulay (1850-1944) through his
own father Chief Chikosi’s Congo Town’s
affiliation with Zachary Macaulay and certain aspects of Christian conversion
on the one hand and secularism on the other, that gradually acquired the
honorarium as retained associates ofZachary Macaulay (1768-1838)
who was an influential 18th century British philanthropist, abolitionist, estate manager in
Jamaica turned Governor to Sierra Leone 1793-1799.
It was this compound populace, migrant Congolese and Yoruba tribes some of whom
inter-married with local Mende and Temne ethnos, that formed a rich part of the complex of
Freetown culture; comprehensive of the Caribbean element.
There is much to add about the man and his politics, from his
precarious cocktail disposition for instance, to his cohesive service as
speaker of the Sierra Leonean Parliamentary House under Steven’s APC, which is
not included in his biography, to the sickle scar above his eye. Indeed, he was
a life-force. Therefore, the narrative of F.S. Macaulay’s life like all
conversion attempts, closely encounter extraordinary political and social
changes in existing values and memory. This is evidenced in the person of Nigeria’s Herbert Macaulay for example,
suggesting if anything, the many transformations of West
Africa, those relating to British colonies, Pan-Africanism, as well as family.
Hailing from Chief Chikosi
in the Congo and Prince Manna Massaquoi both his
great grandfathers, Fredrick Sherman Macaulay was born in MofweiBumpe Chiefdom in the Bo District on 25th
September 1904, son of Fredrick Sylvester Macaulay Snr.,
formally of Bo and Congo Town and Madame Lucia Brainard
of the Mende Massa family of Mofwei.As a young man the late F.S. Macaulay was set
apart from thirty two siblings and brought up by his uncle the late reverend
D.B. Roach through whose influence he attended the ModelPrimary School and the MethodistBoysHigh School.
On completion of his school career, he joined the government service as a
surveyor in 1922, constructing several roads in the Eastern and Southern
Provinces, particularly in the Pujehun, Kenema and Kono districts. At the
end of his days as a surveyor, he worked briefly in agriculture at Njala and at the United Africa Company. Encouraged however,
by Reverend Herbert Thomas, F.S. Macaulay entered the Methodist Mission, first
as a lay worker and later as a Teacher, serving in several places
including Medina Sebureh and GerehunSogbini in the Bonthe
District and later, Kent in the Western Area. In 1934 he married Violet Keitel
from the Bonthe District where she taught at the MethodistMissionSchool
at Gerehun-Sogbini. Two years later, in 1936, the
Macaulay’s gave birth to Shirley Macaulay ( later Shirley YemaGbujama ) who in the breadth of time became
Sierra Leone’s earliest female emissary, OAU and United Nations Ambassadeur, National Consultant, as well as Foreign,
Social & Gender Affairs Minister. After several
arduous years at the Methodist Mission, on the strength of his performance, he
received a transfer from Kent
to the Government Teaching Service in the year 1939 and was first posted to the
Bo School for a very brief period from where he was moved to JimmyGovernmentSchool and later to KoyeimaSchool. He retired from the
government Service in 1955 while at Koyeima where he
had been an effective Nature Studies Teacher, Boarding Home Master and Cashier
for ten years - his most notable scholars being the Sierra Leonean politicians,
Harry Williams and Francis Minah.
Returning to his home chiefdom headquarters of
Bumpe he was called upon to head the BumpeNativeAdministrationSchool,
which by this time had transformed into a DistrictCouncilSchool. Having served
there close to six years, he finally left the teaching field in 1961, the year
of Sierra Leonean national independence. With the advent of Independence, “FS” as he
was popularly known became interested in politics and with the nickname “Gbongon!” (Like the sound of a clanging bell to which he
would reply “Gbangan!”), he succeeded twice to the
District Council seat where he had become a tribal authority until the time of
his death. He was appointed Justice of the Peace in the year 1962 by Prime
Minister Sir Milton Margai and in the following year
1963, he was appointed President of the Native Administration Court, a post he
head for ten years until 1973. As his career advanced he had to leave the
court of his own volition to participate in national politics for a seat in
parliament which he won and became Honorable Member of Parliament for Bo West
Constituency.During his days with
parliament, he was very persuasive and effective with his back bench
colleagues, mainly because of his connections in the Western Area, the Southern
Province and his perfect knowledge of the Temne
language which he acquired while staying with his uncle Reverend D.B. Roach who
had been on transfer in the Magburaka area in those
early days. After one inning in Parliament it became necessary for him to
take a bow because of his age which was now fast advanced at 74. Three years
later in 1977, Violet Macaulay was taken of sudden illness and died, while in
accompaniment of their daughter and family in New York.
In endurance and spirit, although he had left
parliament, the late Pa Macaulay continued to be an effective and influential
part of the politics of Bo West Constituency, in commission as a pioneer member
of the APC party in that area. Shortly after his parliamentary days, he
was appointed a Director of the Sierra Leone Oil Refinery Board by President Siaka Stevens, a post which he held until December 1984
when it was necessary for him to be relieved of his assignment because of a
complete loss of sight. The late F.S. Macaulay served as a lay magistrate in Bo West Constituency Magistrate Court
#2 on several occasions and will be remembered as a very firm arbitrator and an
expert in the Customary Law and Administration of Sierra Leone.
During his final years until his death, though
blind, he continued to recount and serve as a consortium of knowledge in the
first hand history of Sierra Leone,
often staying with the eldest of his daughters Mrs. Shirley YemaGbujama and family in Freetown. F.S. Macaulay was also well
travelled, having been to India
in a Common Wealth Parliamentarians delegation to that country in 1975 and to Ethiopia, US, UK,
and France
on private visits. He is in matrilineal; survived by two daughters the
other being Anita Ola Bowen currently residing in UK, and several grand
lineages; J.M. Gbujama, Amie Gbujama,
Lucia Gbujama, Ade Shinor
Bowen, Akindele Bowen and their progeny.
As close to the synopsis of F.S. Macaulay’s life it must be added
the quandaries that existed in relation to Sierra Leonean nationalism and its
growth over the years. The beginning of the 1900’s in Sierra Leone
witnessed the end of the Hut Tax War and its tensions, during an era in which
few voices were heard in the colonial context. Any attempts towards
administrative control in Freetown
and the West African colonies were summarily overruled and objected by British
interests. As consequence, historians reason that as result of the 1898 Hut Tax
War, a general suspicion of African involvement in the Sierra Leonean
legislature and colonial government ensued, becoming amenable therefore to
altruist philanthropy and the outreach of Christian missionary expansions.
Perhaps reason to make general statement that colonial lifestyles were
therefore interpreted in terms of Christianized missions, despite any past
attempts in the maturing of a nationalized identity of the local citizenry; in
terms of British colonial representations more so than local state
pragmatism. It was the era that lamented the unfortunate death of
barrister Sir Samuel Lewis in 1903 at the crucial age of 50; just a year before
F.S. Macaulay’s birth in 1904 and that of a more intractable nationalist
character, Siaka Stevens, born in 1905. Indeed, the
dawning consideration must be made, that even the individual who would
eventually usher in national independence and formalize a recognized and more
conventional Pan African association, Sir Milton Margai,
was but in the course of those years, only 9 years old.
Yet, Macaulay distinguished from Stevens, Margai
or Lewis had come from a tradition of local intermarriage, beginning with his
Congolese grandfather Chief Chikosi to a Mende hand maiden (circa 1840), who was austerely referred
to as MendeAhna; and his
father Fredrick Sylvester Macaulay to Lucia Brainard
(circa 1890) of the Mende Massa family of Mofwe. Circumstantial testimony must be made that early
colonial accounts recorded by British explorers tell of the Mende
woman as she appeared in the colony of Freetown,
to be perhaps the most avant-garde and free-spirited of that era compared to
the demure upbringing of colonial women. Therefore by the time of his
birth in 1904, localization and its relations were two generations in the
making for F.S. Macaulay, with at least forty years in Christian conversionary
history as a Macaulay. Gradually, like his father before him, F.S.
Macaulay in death would acquire his own engraved cornerstone courtesy of the MethodistChurch
in Freetown, in honorarium as a memorable
pioneer in the development of missionary teaching in Sierra Leone.
Notwithstanding the retrospective aspects of his early life, it
can be stated that by the time F.S. Macaulay reached the age of 40, the social
and political attitudes towards Pan-African philosophy had progressed
tremendously; eventually affecting the nationalist beliefs of those who lived
within the colonies - specifically remembered in the person of an associate of
F.S. Macaulay, ITA Wallace Johnson. Johnson’s involvement in transnational
movements across West Africa, along with the organizational ascendance of an
elder Herbert Macaulay in Nigeria,
ultimately led to the formation of independence dissention groups across West Africa. Though it may be further
rationalized that F.S. Macaulay’s daughter Shirley YemaGbujama’s involvement with the Organization of
African Unity (1972-1976) was perhaps the generational outgrowth of such
modifications, however, often appearing more conservative, Macaulay’s
local initiatives sought towards the education of the African in the British
protectorate (later turned Sierra Leonean Provinces). His occupational stages
will conceivably always remain his utmost realization, energized more by the
pleasure of teaching than any form of idealism; and this is to consider that
his efforts were not only in the direction of large administrative schools but
those of minimal and interior polities. Local African missionary preemptives that were frontline of this category,
eventually standardized, forged and translated the connotations of the African
beyond that of the idea of Christian literacy; and this is most evidenced in
the future successes of Wole Soyinka and Kenneth
Kaunda both of similar African teaching parentage. Through F.S. Macaulay’s
efforts as a Nature Study Science Teacher, Native Administration Leader and
Judicial Authority of native custom, he thus to some extent played his own
internal role in the debut the Sierra Leonean character, and accordingly was
among the early generation of African Teachers to triumph in modest
interpretations of traditionalist native knowledge, especially in a proximity
well known for its history of Islamic growth. However, if summary were made of
the appeal of F.S. Macaulay and the manner in which he attended to the conflicts
and changes of his era - reference can be made to a 1977 issued Passport, better
identified in the folklore of West African literary prose as; The Passport
of F.S. Macaulay which in standardized annotation distinctive of an African
patrician, simply reads: Politician.
