After Supernova - S. Bah Building in Koindu, Sierra Leone (November, 2011)
When this house was built back in the 1980’s, it was the star, the big shiny boy in town. Standing majestically in the middle of the market place, the first floor stores flowed with people, from Guinea, Liberia and of course Sierra Leone; selling and buying wares to take all over west Africa and beyond. On the two stories above, S. Bah (one of, if not the richest man in town)and his family loomed over the city. Mariama Juldeh, one of my first crushes, called this home. I used to stand at my auntie’s stall across the street hoping Mariama would come out and exchange glances with me. She did couple of times. I still remember how she looked, like the Rapunzel I read about in one of the books from our secondary school library.
Lower your expectations anyhow, there are some things you are never prepared for. After getting off the motorbike-taxi, I knew where I was. And yes, there were faded recognition all over the place. As I turned the corner, I knew I was coming up on the S. Bah house, but what I saw before me was nothing like what I had in mind. In 2011, the S. Bah house is a shadow of its former self. The market is gone, the paint is gone, S. Bah and his family are long gone (of course!). But gone doesn’t begin to describe it. Like Koindu itself, the S. Bah house is like a zombie, dead and lifeless, holding on to life only by the sheer power of voodoo.