On a recent visit to Ndaabu community, Kailahun District, the community expressed Fambul Tok has reminded them the importance of traditional practices and togetherness. Six months after their ceremony, chief John Bockarie said there is communal understanding of reconciliation. He said people who decided to reconcile on the Fambul Tok bonfire night are managing to sustain the reconciliation. He said indeed people meant the confessions, the forgivenesses and the reconciliations.
As a community, they now have a community farm that all matured people participated as a symbol of unity. Even though they all have their individual farms, the community decided to come together as a result of the unity forged by the Fambul Tok reconciliation process. Chief Bockarie they now have enough food for any visitor in their village as that was the essence of the community farm, and to share the seedlings with those who do not have seedling to farm in their community.
He said they have learnt a lot from their past mistakes and that is why they are embracing the Fambul Tok project that is geared towards community reconciliation using traditional practices. Chief Bockarie said they intend to use some of the proceeds of the community farm to build their community barrie where they will meet and discuss issues relating to their village.
Generally, the community people of Darbu said they are experiencing perfect quietness and love as people no longer resort to court actions but the reconciliation committee that is a custodian of the community reconciliation process. The reconciliation committee is made up of religious leaders (pastors and imams), youth leader, women’s leader and the community chief. They mediate among their people in their own traditional way as Fambul Tok dictates. No fines are inflicted but peace is sought through traditional patterns that gives satisfaction to the aggreived and the perpetrator.
An elderly woman in Darbu community, Madam Musu, said she is now seeing some semblance of love and cooperation among the youths in the community. She prayed that the reconciliation holds so that their great grand children will know peace and understand that their traditions and culture are valuable and should not be neglected. She said such traditions held their communities together in the past but that they all lost that practice as a result of the war or westernization. She said since libation was poured to their fore fathers for tranquility and good harvest, Darbu has produced plenty food this year than experienced in twenty-five years time. She said it was because people neglected their culture which promoted discipline and communal work for development that was why they lost the blessings of their ancestors. But she said she was happy Fambul Tok is uniting them and making use of their valuable traditions and cultures that held them together.
By PEL Koroma
