Sierra Leone : Blyden Jenkins-Johnston...
Cornelius Hamelberg
May he rest in peace.
Our condolences to his family
May the Almighty comfort mourners...
“ Jolly Papa” “ The Random Sampler”. Upright. A national treasure. He will be dearly missed. He was my classmate through thick and thin, 1963 -1969. We both graduated from the literary and debating society (along with Joseph Carpenter and Aminata Mahdi) - and a little later, at the annual college freshmen's debate he led the con side of the unlikely proposition that “The university rules should be permissive, not compulsory” against my robust defence of permissiveness (anarchism pure and simple: political non-affiliation, special student permissiveness unto the uttermost ultimate fulfilments of licentiousness and all their lawful lusts in a complete spirit of freedom, not hurting or harming anyone). Left to the jury – the student audience, Blyden the student conservative won the day of course, and predictably became what he was destined and all cut out to be : a lawyer - a legal luminary - and a good one at that, in the thick of it (the political melees) trying to do right - sort things out, throughout, even the most turbulent years...
The last time I met him was April 1970. The last time I talked to him - by phone, he happened to be speaking from his office - which also used to be my bedroom , circa 1965 ff ---some reassuring, deep avuncular guffaws from him him, old Creole stiff-upper lip, upper-crust. That was Blyden the rascal as I remember him : “ Jolly Papa”, “ The Random Sampler” in the good old days of what Graham Greene called “ The Soupsweet Land”