By Oliver Wilson Ottley III
I don’t know Abu Bakarr Jalloh from a can of paint.
Never met the man. Never heard his voice. Never shook his hand. The only reason I had the pleasure of making his acquaintance is because I messaged him to fact-check a quote I found in one of his Burkina Faso pieces that I wanted to use for my own. (You can check that story out here.) Matter of fact, had I not Googled his name, I’d probably still be wondering what he looked like.
And as embarrassing as this is to admit, I didn’t know much about Sierra Leone either.
Correction. I didn’t know anything about Sierra Leone. Not really. Not beyond what Kanye told me when he rapped it in a verse. So in my mind, Sierra Leone was conflict diamonds. Child soldiers. Maybe some headlines I half-remember from a magazine after the song blew up. But that’s it. That’s all. Ridiculous, right?
Or is it?
Because in my defense—and I say this not to excuse the ignorance, but to name it—the cultural divide between us stretches across oceans and centuries. Our disconnection is so vast, it feels like time itself was split in half just to keep us apart. B.C. A.D.
Before Capture. After Dispersal.
And somewhere in between those violent syllables, familial amnesia embraced us both.
I forgot that my ancestors weren’t just enslaved—they were erased. That I’m not the afterthought of a history—I’m the unburied memory of a stolen beginning. That my blood doesn’t just run Southern—it runs sovereign.
That before they stole us, we were scientists, architects, poets, traders, alchemists, teachers. Before they branded us with shackles, we were branding cattle. Before the plantation, there was Timbuktu. There was Songhai.
There were empires so advanced, they mapped the stars long before Columbus begged for a boat.
However, my kinfolk forgot too.
Forgot our departure wasn’t voluntary. Forgot our DNA was in the diaspora. We were forced to adapt to our western skin. We didn’t ask to be cut from the womb of our mother, Africa. We were snatched—screaming and pleading—through a wound that’s never healed. And in the silence that followed, stories spoiled. Names survived, but meanings rotted. Bloodlines blurred. Truths got buried beneath betrayal and bitterness.
Some were told we abandoned them. Others were taught we were voluntary foreigners. Rumors replaced remembrance. And in the absence of us, they built myths—some beautiful, some bitter, none whole.
We became each other’s unfinished sentence.
A question mark passed down through generations. Strangers passing in the night. Ghosts in each other’s mirrors.
So when Abu reached out and invited me to contribute to The African Dream, something shifted.
Not because I knew him.
But because I knew what it meant.
It meant a door was cracking open. The disobedience of separation was breaking down. I didn’t have to be a visitor in my own lineage. I could write myself back in.
Because here’s the truth:
I don’t want to cover Africa like a reporter.
I want to come home to it like a son.
I want to use this platform to build bridges between our broken narratives. To name the shared grief. To celebrate the stolen genius.
To remind us that Blackness is not a nationality. It’s not a flag. It’s not a language. It’s not a restriction.
Blackness is an inheritance. A calling. A reunion waiting to happen.
So I took a week to familiarize myself. To sit with it. To read. To listen. To unlearn.
And it didn’t take long to see the parallels.
The same poverty in Freetown walks the same corners in Flint Michigan. The same corruption that rots African ministries blooms in American city halls. The same spiritual crises. The same rigged elections. The same buried brilliance. The same egregious penal systems. The same addictions—be they kush or crack cocaine.
Different soil. Same scars.
And in that reflection, I found the reason to settle in.
Because this isn’t about mimicry.
Or about finding African versions of American excellence. It’s about recognizing that the greatness was always ours—just scattered.
That’s why for every Gwendolyn Brooks, there’s a Gladys Casely-Hayford. For every James Baldwin, a Syl Cheney-Coker. For every Nina Simone, a Sia Koroma. For every Langston Hughes, a Lansana Fofana. For every Angela Davis, a Zainab Hawa Bangura. For every bell hooks, an Aminatta Forna. For every Toni Morrison, a Delia Jarrett-Macauley. For every Huey Newton, a J.B. Dauda. For every Assata Shakur, a Miatta Fahnbulleh. For every Bayard Rustin, a Tijan Sallah. For every Paul Robeson, an Edward Wilmot Blyden.
Different names. Same power. Same pulse.
Which only proves:
Even after lifetime of disassociation—we were always vibrating toward one another.
I didn’t grow up with griots. I didn’t inherit the oral traditions. But I’ve got a pen, and a promise.
So if this platform is the bridge, let this be the first brick.
Because the dream doesn’t belong to one nation. It belongs to all of us willing to wake up and write it down.
