The Dance of the Leaf and the Lament of a Nation

By Alpha Amadu Jalloh, Africa Renaissance Leadership Award Laureate, Author of Monopoly of Happiness: Unveiling Sierra Leone’s Social Imbalance

Have you ever stopped to watch a leaf as it surrenders to the wind? I have. And each time I am reminded of the gentle dance of freedom, of nature’s effortless grace, of a harmony that needs no leader, no decree, no tax. The leaf, in its dance, responds to the smooth wind that carries it with kindness. It twirls with joy and lands softly wherever it wills. There is no harshness, no oppression. Only a partnership between breeze and leaf. A sacred rhythm of nature where both are free and both are fulfilled.

This morning, as I watched such a leaf dancing to the calm tune of the gentle wind, my heart ached. While the leaf glided and swirled, smiling at the sun and drinking from the rains without fear or cost, my people, the people of Sierra Leone, sat beneath that same sky, burdened, weary, and parched for the very peace the leaf enjoys. The leaf knows no taxes. It owes no one for the sunlight that warms it, nor the breeze that moves it, nor the rain that nourishes its mother tree. It dances because it is free.

How different is the Sierra Leonean. The Sierra Leonean too was born to dance, born to rejoice beneath the wide African sky. But today, his dance is no more. The Sierra Leonean no longer moves freely and no longer sings with the wind. His feet are heavy with the weight of broken promises. His spirit is shackled by a leadership that, though clothed in the appearance of credibility, has failed in its duty to lift its people.

The leaf drinks deeply when the rain falls. Its thirst is quenched as the roots of its mother tree draw in life-giving water. It fears no storm, no drought, for the earth provides and the leaf trusts in nature’s plan. The Sierra Leonean watches the rains fall and sees no blessing. Though the heavens open and though the waters flow, the promises of Tumabum and Bumbuna Hydro remain unfulfilled. The dams that were meant to light our nights and power our dreams stand as monuments of thirst and dryness. Our leaders spoke of hydro, of light, of progress. Yet darkness reigns. Prepaid meters mock us. We load them with our last leones only to sit in homes unlit, unpowered, and uncomforted.

How the leaf must wonder at us. In its world, sunlight is free. It stretches out to the sun and the sun smiles back, asking nothing in return. In Sierra Leone, even the simplest blessings seem taxed, monetized, or withheld. Our people, scorched by the unrelenting heat, cannot even dream of respite. No sweet breeze cools our homes. No steady power hums through our cities. Our fields, which should bloom beneath the rain, lie barren. Our farmers, once the pride of the land, are left with empty hands as government schemes and grand announcements fail to yield a single sheaf of grain. We have become a people promised much but given little. A people whose leaders sing songs of development while our stomachs remain empty, our children remain uneducated, and our future remains uncertain.

The leaf in its dance knows no such sorrow. It knows no prepaid meter, no tax collector, no politician’s empty pledge. It answers only to the wind, to the rain, to the sun. Its world is one of simple, honest exchange. The breeze gives it motion and it gives the breeze its grace. The rain feeds its roots and it gives the rain its green, its life, its promise of tomorrow. The leaf belongs to a system that works. What is promised is delivered. What is needed is given. What is given is cherished.

Yet here in Sierra Leone we are trapped in a dance that is no dance at all. Our leaders, dressed in the robes of credibility, parade as saviors. They speak of vision. They speak of transformation. But the only transformation we see is of hope into despair and of trust into disillusionment. We pay taxes that build no roads, that power no homes, that fill no classrooms. We endure the heat because the breeze no longer visits us. We pray for rain but the rain falls on fields that cannot yield because promises of support have turned to dust.

Why must it be so? Why can we not, like the leaf, find harmony with the forces that move us? Why can we not build a system where the government, like the wind, lifts us rather than oppresses us? Where leadership, like the rain, nourishes us rather than drowns us in false hope? Where sunlight, like opportunity, is something to be seized and celebrated, not something we are made to pay for in ways both seen and unseen?

As I watched the leaf, it seemed to whisper. Sierra Leone, dance again. Dance like I do. Dance with joy, with freedom, with trust. Let your leaders be like the gentle wind, moving you forward with care. Let your government be like the rain, feeding you, not failing you. Let your people, like me, stretch towards the sun, confident that what is given by God will not be taken by man.

It is time. Time for our nation to stop dying of heat while the leaf sings in the breeze. Time for us to stop sitting in darkness while the leaf basks in the sun. Time to demand that our leaders learn from the leaf. To be humble, to serve, to give life rather than take it. Time to rebuild our land so that our people too may dance once more beneath the Sierra Leonean sky.

Until that day, I will keep watching the leaf, learning from its freedom, and praying that we too may be free.