26/10/2007 - 27/10/2007 - Guildhall - Hull

This conference at Guildhall, Kingston upon Hull, will bring together community-based groups and individuals in the UK who have links with partners or an interest in West Africa. We are holding this conference in collaboration with Freetown Society and Hull City Council.

Hull City Council has a long standing link with Freetown in Sierra Leone which involves many of Hull’s schools, churches and community groups. This conference will be part of the Wilberforce 2007 celebrations around the abolition of slavery. We are also delighted that John Prescott MP has agreed to open the conference on Friday 26th October.

The purpose of the conference is:- To learn more about each other, to promote and develop community-based links between West Africa and the UK for mutual benefit § To explore slavery in today’s world, focusing on slavery in UK and West Africa.

The cost of the conference will be £50/head or £10 for students. This will include attendance at the conference and meals during the two days but not accommodation or travel costs. For more information please contact Pepi at UKOWLA email: pepi@ukowla.org.uk

For further info please click here :-

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The first Freetown Day will be held on October 25 to celebrate the link between Hull and Freetown – the capital of Sierra Leone.

Over the past 27 years Hull and Freetown have shared ties between churches, schools and community groups.

And now those links will be celebrated through Freetown Day which will see its first celebration on October 25 and will continue as an annual event.

Activities have stepped up even further during the Wilberforce 2007 commemorations with several projects linking the two cities including visits, education and arts projects including a visit and performances by the Milton Margai School for the Blind.

On Freetown Day the Mayor of Freetown will attend a breakfast meeting followed by a tour of the Walking with Wilberforce Trail. This will be followed by a CD launch at Streetlife Museum

Later in the day will be the beginning of the Freedom Trail where five 4×4 vehicles will be driven from Hull to Sierra Leone to focus world-wide attention on the issue of Slavery and donate the vehicles to NGO charities.

Business support has come from firms and organisations including BP, Hull Rotary, Warners Sport Health and Fitness, Hull City Council, Reckitt Benckiser, William Jackson and Son, Snap-On Tools, Kingston Facilities Management, Interserve Industrial Services, Oceaneering and Classic Hospitals.

There will also be the World premiere of Sold at Hull Truck Theatre, which tells the harrowing and often dehumanising story of some of the 15 million women and children who are sold into the sex trade each year.

Following Freetown Day there will continue to be events linked with Sierra Leone and the Wilberforce year including Greetings! Wilberforce Women 2007 Exhibition which is the culmination of photographic training and workshops by women in Hull and Sierra Leone. Their photographs were turned in to greetings cards which were sent with messages on the four themes – pride, belief change and Freedom. The exhibition will launch on October 6 and continue until October 28.

Meanwhile, Cllr Winstanley Bankole Johnson Mayor of Freetown, will visit Hull to speak at the United Kingdom One World Linking Association Conference at the Guildhall in Hull on October 26 and 27.

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Hull museums and galleries and the University of Hull will be hosting a series of displays, events and lectures as part of October’s Black History Month.

A series of family-friendly events will be held at Wilberforce Museum and Ferens Art Gallery as part of Black History Month.

There will also be a series of workshops, lectures and poetry readings and a Gala run by the University of Hull.

Activities including story-telling and drumming, exhibitions by internaitonal artists and the chance to design your own African mask and fabrics will be held at the musuem and gallery.

Black History Month is an annual event but will have extra poignancy this year as they city commemorates William Wilberforce and his work to abolish slavery.

For more information on the museum and gallery events visit our calendar.

The university will see lectures and readings from Award-winning poet SuAndi OBE, poet and record producer Lyndon Kwesi Johnson, Naomi Pabst from Yale University and Canadian actor, director, writer and producer Nicole Stamp.

For more information on the university events see our events calendar.

For more information on black history and culture visit www.black-history-month.co.uk

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FREETOWN (AFP) — At least 20 people have died from cholera in the past two weeks in poverty-stricken west African country of Sierra Leone, a government health official said Thursday.

Alhassan Sesay, director of disease prevention and control in the ministry of health, said 15 of the deaths were recorded in the northern district of Kambia, near the border with Guinea, while five were registered in a village on the outskirts of the capital Freetown.

Emergency health workers have been drafted to both areas to step up treatment and prevention campaigns to stem the outbreak that has struck dozens of people, he told reporters.

The last major cholera epidemic hit the war-scarred country last year killing at least 77 people over a three-month period between August and October.

The disease is an acute intestinal infection caused by consuming food or water contaminated with the cholera bacteria. If not treated immediately it can cause rapid loss of body fluids and can be fatal.

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Ferry from Freetown

Originally uploaded by Jon - Cafesociety.org

An anxious passenger onboard a Lungi airport-bound ferry, the Murzuk, called to tell me today that their ferry is stranded at sea, that the engine went out suddenly and the ferry is smoking.

The passenger who is a government official requested for his name not to be mentioned fearing that he may be fired from his job if the SLPP-led government officials find out he supplied information about the stranded ferry to journalist owing to the fact that 21 foreign passengers had perished in a helicopter crash at Lungi airport last week.

On Sunday June 3, 2007, passengers, including the Togolese minister of sports and sports fans, perished in a decrepit helicopter that, according to the Freetown press, had been grounded by the government only to resume service without clearance before the crash on a seven-minute flight to the airport.

The Murzuk was returning to Freetown from its last trip to drop off the minister of mines of Sierra Leone, Mohamed Swaray-Deen, who is travelling to the UK on official business when the engine shut down at sea.

The worried passenger, in a shaky voice, told me: “Our ferry is stranded at sea. The engine has gone out. No one seems to know why. I really don’t know what is going to happen to us. I am afraid, especially that 21 people died in a helicopter crash last week. This country is a wreck.”

Moijue Kai Kai, a resident of London has just posted a statement on a popular Sierra Leone listserv, LTAMU, confirming that a passenger onboard a ferry in Freetown has also called him to say that they are stranded at sea.

We will bring you details as the story unfolds.

Sweet Salone - Freetown

Originally uploaded by Jon - Cafesociety.org

FREETOWN, 23 February 2007 (IRIN) - With general and presidential elections looming in July, women’s rights groups in Sierra Leone are battling what they say is deep seated discrimination for more women to be included on the ballots.

Nematta Eshun-Baiden, founder of the Fifty-Fifty Group of Sierra Leone - a non-governmental advocacy organisation named after the 50-50 gender balance in the population - said her group is “vigorously campaigning” for women to run for and win at least 30 percent of all elected posts in the July general elections.

“Women in this country have been expected by men to be in the kitchen, but we are fighting hard to erase this notion”, Eshun-Baiden said.

“For so long there have been major barriers depriving women of playing active role in government… most men do not give credence to women as decision makers”.

The July poll will be the first presidential election since United Nations peacekeepers left the country in 2005 and only the second since the end of a decade-long civil war in 2001.