If you know me well, you may know the admiration I have of my Grandfather, Thomas Decker, and his dedication throughout his life, of not only telling Sierra Leone stories, but his defense of it, particularly our language, in a colonial and post-colonial era where our national and local identities were placed on low points and regarded as inferior. Despite the challenges, he persisted and wrote poems and plays from the 1930s until the 1960s in our language

Noting from numerous coverage in the local Freetown local newspapers, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, this small West African country knew and loved the work of the African American Poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar. Dunbar was likely the most acclaimed African American Poet since his predecessors almost a century before him.

Fewer African Poets, in Africa, could be found during the 19th century, who used the English language and principles of western poetics to tell their story as good as the English. But to assume there was none, or those that could be found were mediocre at best, would be to underestimate the creative genius of the African.

To be a master of one’s own native language is one thing; to be a master of another’s is extraordinary. It's hard these days to find an African, anywhere in the West, who isn’t multilingual. If we are to give much credit to the colonizer for the dominance of his language, surely we should acknowledge the genius in those who aren't native to it, but still manage to master it, and use it to their own benefit.