When Time Held Its Breath

Julius Maada Bio, President of Sierra Leone

By Alpha Amadu Jalloh, author of Monopoly of Happiness: Unveiling Sierra Leone’s Social Imbalance

There comes a moment when even time itself stands still. Not out of beauty. Not out of awe. But in mourning. In Sierra Leone, time did not move. It stood at the door of our broken dreams and wept. It saw our pain. It smelled our poverty. It watched leaders rise and people fall. And so time, in sorrow, held its breath.

In Freetown the lights flicker like dying fireflies. In the provinces there is only darkness. In our hospitals silence has replaced the sound of healing. Babies die. Mothers bleed. The doctor is missing. The medicine is not in stock. The generator has run out of fuel. The nurses cry quietly behind surgical masks, not because they lack skill but because they lack everything else.

Our children walk to school with bare feet and empty bellies. They sit on cracked floors. They listen to unpaid teachers teach from torn textbooks. They do not dream anymore. What use is a dream when the only thing you know is hunger? What use is a degree when jobs are sold like merchandise? What use is a voice when silence is safer?

Our youth are not lazy. They are lost. Buried under lies. Swallowed by a system designed to forget them. They are not criminals. They are casualties. Kush is not just a drug. It is a graveyard of potential. Every puff is a protest. Every high is an escape from a country that told them they matter, then tossed them to the gutters.

And while the people cry, the leaders dance. They jet off to conferences with nothing to show. They smile for cameras while mothers bury their children in shallow graves. They speak of GDP while rice is priced like gold. They clap for roads built with borrowed money. They praise free education when the schools are dead and the students starving.

They promised transformation. What we got was betrayal. They promised new direction. What we got was the same circle. They said they cared. What they meant was they cared for themselves. Their mansions rise as our houses fall. Their security grows as our safety disappears. Their voices grow louder as ours are crushed by fear.

We live in a land of silence. But this silence is not peace. It is pain. It is a mother choosing which child to feed. It is a father hiding tears behind broken pride. It is a child who no longer asks questions because no one ever answered. It is a people who clap not because they are happy but because they are tired of crying.

Sierra Leone is bleeding. Not from war but from neglect. Not from rebels but from rulers. The battlefield is not the bush. It is Parliament. State House. The Ministries. The real enemies wear suits and wave flags. They talk unity while sowing division. They speak of democracy while ruling like kings. They kneel in mosques and churches then rise to steal from the poor.

Time watches all of this. But time will not wait. It moves with or without us. Rwanda is rising. Ghana is running. Senegal is reforming. And Sierra Leone? Still crawling. Still begging. Still bleeding. We are spectators to our own destruction. Witnesses to our own funeral.

Time held its breath because we stopped breathing. We stopped fighting. We stopped asking questions. But it will not hold forever. It is moving again. And if we do not rise, we will be left behind forever.

Sierra Leoneans have been left behind like orphans of a broken republic. No guardians. No protectors. Just rulers who rule and steal. And laugh.

But we are not cursed. We are not doomed. We are not helpless. We are only sleeping. And now is the time to wake up. To rise. To speak. To act. Not for party. Not for tribe. But for country. For justice. For the children not yet born.

This nation belongs to us all. Not to a family. Not to a first lady. Not to a party that campaigns with hope and governs with cruelty. It belongs to the nurse in Kenema. The teacher in Port Loko. The fisherman in Shenge. The student in Njala. The grandmother in Kabala. It belongs to us. The forgotten. The betrayed. The true owners.

Time will never hold its breath again. It is breathing. It is running. It is rising. The only question left is, will Sierra Leone rise with it or be remembered as the country that clapped while it crumbled?

The choice is ours. And the time is now.