Salone

My gracious, my picturesque, my beautiful Serra Lyoa
Beauty is yours, because beauty abounds
Beauty in the sea, beauty in the air, beauty beneath and above the ground

Has this innate beauty been your curse?
Has this beauty made your inhabitants betray your trust?
They’ve ravaged your beauty for diamond, rutile and gold

Though you’ve been ravaged by all sorts of barbaric savages
Like the good mother you are, you still accept all and sundry within your bosom
Your receptiveness, your homeliness, your kindheartedness will always be your leverage

My beautiful Serra Lyoa, in this your scenic flora and fauna
You wouldn’t find Fauna*
But there is radiant Mabinty and gorgeous Hawa

My dear, you’ve always had handsome sons and beautiful daughters
Please my dearest, don’t mind all the previous bloodshed or human
slaughter
For a new day has dawned, a day of fun, a day of love, where even butterflies
happily flutter

That day, that forever new day is , April 27th, my beautiful pearl of the Atlantic
Ocean
That day you became an independent sovereign nation
This journey fifty years ago, led you to that noble institution called the
United Nations

My dear, as you continue this arduous journey of nationhood
We shall pray for your beauty to last, and for your indigenes not to
betray your past
For though you were discovered by mishap, your discovery was meant to
come
to pass

My beautiful Serra Lyoa you have seen it all, the good, the bad and the
ugly
And through all of this, some thought your beauty had flew
However though, you stayed true, you stayed true to the green, white and
the blue

My Beautiful “Serra Lyoa”(Sierra Leone).

By Albert Momoh

‘Banga’ - Palm Kernels

‘Banga’ - Palm Kernels

(Source: Flickr / unep_dc)


The Tingi Hills in the eastern part of Sierra Leone

The Tingi Hills in the eastern part of Sierra Leone

(Source: Flickr / unep_dc)


A boy rests in a dugout canoe on the Moa River in southern Sierra Leone

A boy rests in a dugout canoe on the Moa River in southern Sierra Leone

(Source: Flickr / unep_dc)