Franklyn Kaloko
This is the strikingly candid portrait of a poor rural boy who rose from a traditionally uneducated polygamous family in the backwaters of Rogbane village in Sierra Leone to the highest echelons in academia. He devoted his intellectual and soccer gifts, and his extraordinary capacity for hard work, to succeed where many faltered through the academic rigors of Njala, Czechoslovakia and finally England where he crowned his accomplishments with a Doctorate degree in Geography. This is a gripping and inspirational book for people from humble and deprived origins not to ever quit when they are under concerted and relenting assault orchestrated by institutional barriers, human ingratitude and madness. The accounts of academic politics at Fourah Bay College and other places he has worked in the world, revealed the life of this humble university don with all his talents and contradictions, told openly, directly, and in his own completely recognizable character. His university career was shaped by an unfaltering commitment to shape and improve the lives of his students, fellow colleagues and the public. Even the civil war mayhem in his native country of Sierra Leone did not daunt his spirits and today he lives in asylum in the United States with his ever supportive wife and illustrious family. 3
