Oona Kushe! I de talk pan Krio. How de bodi?
Though I normally write and speak in Standard British English, this seems like an appropriate way to start this article. There’s something powerful in being able to go beyond the literary boundaries I’ve often been confined to in the professional sense and honour a language that is part of my heritage and identity.
Krio, or Sierra Leonean Creole, is one of the fourteen languages spoken in Sierra Leone, a country that is home to various ethnic groups including the Krio, Fulani, Mandinka, Temne, Sherbro, Wolof and Mende peoples. Along with English, Krio is a lingua franca of this small West African country, which borders Guinea-Conakry, Liberia and the Atlantic Ocean – a central part of the story as to how it came about.
The Krio people of Sierra Leone form an ethnic group made up of the descendants of repatriated Africans who settled in Sierra Leone during the latter years of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. These repatriated Africans comprised of the descendants of African-Americans who had fought on the side of the British during the American Revolutionary War, Jamaican Maroons who were deported to Nova Scotia in 1796 after a revolt before later being transferred to Sierra Leone in 1800, and liberated Africans from countries across the west coast of Africa who arrived on slave ships intercepted by British forces.