Kent News - Rousing finale for blind school choir's UK tour

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Rousing finale for blind school choir's UK tour

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The choir at Canterbury Cathedral

Immurrana Vandy, the Sierra Leonean journalist

The Sierra Leone Blind School Choir has bid farewell to the UK after a triumphant fund-raising tour.

The 25-strong choir of the Milton Margai School for the Blind treated friends and supporters to a rousing West African-style send-off in Kent, on Sunday evening.

The touring party stayed at Dorton House School for the Blind in Seal, near Sevenoaks, during the first week and last weekend of the tour.

On Sunday evening, headmaster Albert Sandy, school chairman Reverend Henry Samuels and school charity chairman Peter Penfold all paid tribute to the choristers.

The choir then performed an impromptu mini-concert of 'thank you' songs for everyone who helped.

Mr Penfold, who organised the UK tour, said each member of the choir had touched hearts across England and Wales with their inspirational performances.

Mr Sandy thanked Dorton House, home of the Royal London Society for the Blind, for the use of its excellent facilities.

He also thanked KOS Media, the publishers of Kent on Sunday and kentnews.co.uk, for the role it played in organising the opening concert at Canterbury Cathedral.

School administrator Barbara Davidson said: "Canterbury set the tone for the whole of the tour. Once the first went well, it gave us the incentive to carry on."

In response, Kent on Sunday editor Bernard Ginns thanked the students for sharing their "amazing talent" with audiences in the UK.

The choir performed shows in London, Hastings, Reading, Cardiff, Hull as part of the Sing Freetown tour, which celebrated the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade.

The group also visited the Houses of Parliament where members witnessed re-enactments of the speeches of William Wilberforce, the MP who led the campaign to abolish slavery.

The final concert took place at Westminster Central Hall on Friday evening and was attended by nearly 2,000 people, including many Sierra Leoneans.

On their last weekend in Kent, the choir members stocked up on items such mobile phones, CDs and shoes - which are very expensive in their home country.

A DVD featuring footage of the choir and interviews with the school's staff has been produced and is available through the UK charity that supports the school.

Charity bosses are keen that people who enjoyed the recent concerts join the UK Association for the Milton Margai School for the Blind to continue support for the school, which is the only registered blind school in Sierra Leone.

In a country that is officially the second poorest in the world, the school depends on overseas contributions to stay open.

For more information, please visit www.miltonmargaischool.org or write to the UK Association at 9 Fisherman's Wharf, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, OX14 5RX.

One of the choir members, Immurrana Vandy, a 23-year-old journalist, wrote a compelling feature about his experiences during the tour for Kent on Sunday's Review magazine.

Here, we reproduce his story.

THE very first time it was announced that I was going to be flying out of Sierra Leone, my mother, who has spent her life farming and never been to school, could not believe it.

She had been badly affected by 11 years of civil war and had lost her joy during her years of captivity with the rebels.

But to think that her son would now come out of the country and contribute as an ambassador representing her and the rest of the
family abroad!

After the initial disbelief, this idea brought happiness back to her life.

The year was 2003 and I was among the 30 members of the choir of the Milton Margai School for the Blind in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone.

We were aged between nine and 25 and had been chosen to spend three weeks touring the United Kingdom, singing in venues across the country and finishing with a performance at Westminster Abbey.

The choir had become well known at home and had won several contests, but the idea of taking the choir overseas came from Peter Penfold, British High Commissioner to Sierra Leone from 1997-99.

During his term of office, Peter came to know the Milton Margai Choir through its many performances and he soon became a friend of the school.

He then took on the challenge of coordinating a tour of the UK by the choir.

This would expand members’ knowledge of so many aspects of life and also sensitise a wider public who had never had the opportunity to meet, see or hear blind people perform.

After months of preparations – rehearsals, costume fittings, sorting out passports for 30 children who did not know their dates of birth, and moving around telling friends about our adventure – we were ready to go.

I felt so afraid. What if our plane was involved in an accident? Who would sit with my mother and encourage her?

Nothing was as I expected when we boarded the plane. There were strange seatbelts and I could sit and be entertained with films.

I never imagined that people could move aboard the plane – I thought it would be like a car, where you sit down and stay down, but I was free to walk around.

It was amazing for me to learn that there was a toilet on the plane and that they would serve me food while travelling.

When the hostess asked what I would like, I asked for rice and cassava leaves, thinking I would be served the same food as I eat at home.

But, to the contrary, I was given something I’d never had before – vegetables in little boxes – and I found it difficult to eat.

Four years later, I found myself stepping onto a plane again, but this time more relaxed, and heading through the skies back to the United Kingdom.

It seems that the children who were part of the 2003 tour represented their country so well that there was the need for another!

As I write this, we are one week into the three-week UK Freedom Tour 2007 and again we are experiencing vast differences in the way you live compared with our own lifestyles – almost every moment for us here is a moment of change.

The tour started at Canterbury Cathedral – and this was a historic event in our lives.

People come from across the world to visit the cathedral and it was a joy that young people from Sierra Leone could join them.

This kind of cathedral is never found in Africa. In Sierra Leone our biggest cathedral holds about 300 people; compared with this, Canterbury is huge.

Through reading we had learnt about people such as St Thomas Becket, who was murdered in the cathedral. Having the opportunity to visit the site itself, though, was something very different.

In Scotland, during our last tour, we learnt that while in our culture we clap our hands to show how much we appreciate the efforts of a person’s performance, in Scotland they clap their hands and at the same time stamp their feet.

There were just so many experiences. We were interviewed by the BBC; met Robin White and Tony Silver, who reported from Sierra Leone during the civil war; ate raw leaves and vegetables for the first time (and lots of sweets); and jumped on a bouncy castle and wished we could have one at home.

I found it interesting to learn how people’s wealth here is measured. In our culture, we measure wealth by the amount of money you have, the number of wives you can look after, and the number of children you can feed.

This is for practical purposes: there is no advanced equipment for collecting food from the fields in Sierra Leone and it’s important to have a big workforce, made up of family members, to avoid famine.

Women are more restricted in Sierra Leone, whereas in the UK women are at the head of many institutions.

Ladies here are encouraged to learn, but in Africa it is not so – we take our ladies to be wives and to farm.

Thank God, we are now moving to the modern age.

We can take back these things we learn here and apply them in Sierra Leone.

Another thing that has struck me is that disabled people here, especially the blind, are given equal treatment and opportunity compared with the situation in Africa.

My feeling is that disability does not mean inability and you can always be useful.

Nothing is too difficult if the mind is committed and I see it as an interesting challenge being a blind person.

All is not lost – just the sight.

While there are many things that we have learnt during our time in the UK, I think that perhaps British people could learn a few things from Sierra Leone, too.

People in the UK are busy – there’s so much to do.

We believe in Africa that alongside a period of work there should be a period of rest and time with the family.

However, we feel that in the UK there is not much time with family members and we don’t see much concern for one another.

Perhaps the difference arises because in Sierra Leone we’re always aware that if anything happens to you, it may affect me, so we are concerned for each other.

Also, Sierra Leoneans are very friendly – they believe in visitors. They believe that other people need to have the very best treatment.

An extension of this attitude in Sierra Leone is that anyone with good intentions is welcome in our country.

There is not much difficulty in the area of immigration – the door is always open for investors.

That is not so much the case in the UK.

When I think about returning to Sierra Leone, I have mixed feelings – it’s a joy meeting friends again after a few weeks away, but it’s also hard leaving new friends behind.

You want to go, you don’t want to go – that’s what it’s like.

When I returned to Sierra Leone after our 2003 tour, my mother was very much on time at the airport to receive me, even though the 112-mile journey from her village – by foot, bus and boat – had taken her two days.

I expect she’ll be there to receive me again.

She wants to have the first smiles from Britain – it brings her a lot of happiness.

POSTED: 19/08/2007 22:30:15

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