BY: ING. Yayah A. B. Conteh.
The awful news of the death of a man I have always considered a charismatic icon of philanthropy proved too much for my shattered nerves.
“ Ngo Munda,” as he was affectionately referred to by many, stood taller than most of his professional colleagues in the institution that we found ourselves working at as engineers, which is the SLRA.
Our paths crossed when I got employed in September of 1992 as a pupil mechanical engineer in the then Ministry of Works (MOW), located close to the Pademba Road Prisons, which later transformed into the Sierra Leone Roads Authority (SLRA), a government parastatal committed to ensuring that the national road network remains safe, reliable, and sustainable. He was already by then Chief Engineer, Western Area.
The first couple of months of our working together proved him to be someone with an inclination to ensure the progress and development of others, ranging from relatives, friends, and acquaintances. He did not only express this philanthropic attitude of his in words but demonstrated it in action too.
Even in those early years of our encounter, as we discharged our official functions, apart from the fact that we practiced a similar profession but dissimilar specialties in the engineering discipline, Ing. Munda was always more than enthusiastic and desirous to extend a helping hand towards us. This was an attitude hardly noticeable in others of his kind subjected to the same working conditions.
His usually burning desire to lift up the spirits of the less endowed within his surroundings and beyond knew no bounds. He would rather prefer to lavish all his financial and material resources on them and remain virtually with little or nothing at all than to see them wallow in abject wretchedness. That was Ngo Munda in microcosm. Very few God-fearing men of our present generation, or none at all, can replicate these startling and unique qualities possessed by a man whose perpetually philanthropic spirit always yearned for the betterment of mankind. He always dreamed of and reveled in anything that was worth accomplishing for the progress of the human race.
If there is indeed anyone qualified to say of having lived through an idyllic spell of a professional working life from which thousands have benefitted, he was! For Ngo Munda’s philanthropic approach towards his fellowmen and women propelled them to heights hitherto undreamt of and put them on a positive trajectory in the struggle for survival.
So for me to have heard that this incomparable philanthropist of our times got involved in an accident as he and driver were descending the steep slopes of Spur road in the West end of Freetown, threw me into spasms of erratic reflections on the life and times of a man whose boundless generosity had transformed the lives of many.
The impact of his goodwill and kindness to the human race in general will forever remain fresh in the minds of many.
Part of the mysteries of life constitutes the spending of our days and existence on planet earth living in hypothesis. We keep strategizing and planning towards a tomorrow that might never come. For God suddenly snatches us from the action stage at the middle of the excitement of our various engagements. And thenceforth the only trace that is left of us is what we ever said or accomplished whilst still alive.
I can only imagine now what the family and friends of Ing. Munda could be going through.
As an old friend of mine often says, it is part of the mystery of life that every palpitation of a man’s heart brings him closer to the finish line. In other words, death lives inside us from the very day we are born to the day it takes its toll. And as we glide down the river of life, the sand in our hour glasses keeps running low, little knowing that we are unconsciously inching towards the sunset, Death indeed strikes us when we least expect.
Let me register my sincere condolences to his family and all the beloved ones who, at one point or another, interacted with him.
We pray that the God who endowed him with those extraordinary philanthropic gifts will, by His grace, permit him to see His face, and grant him a permanent abode among the redeemed who dwell in His heavenly vineyard.
Above all, we firmly believe that by the passing away of this paragon, this man of boundless energy and enthusiasm towards ensuring the progress and development of the human race, Sierra Leone, and perhaps the world at large, has lost one of its illustrious sons of the soil.
We thank God for his life.
May his soul continue to rest in peace!
Ing. Yayah A. B. Conteh is the former Director of the Mechanical Services Department ( MSD) of the Sierra Leone Roads Authority( SLRA).
Tel. nos : +23276640364 / +23277718805.
E-mail : contehyayahab2020@gmail.com.
