Whats with dreams in Sierra Leone?

Lion Mountain

These days in Sierra Leone, many people seem to be dreaming bad dreams, spreading these dreams on social media, and almost all of them want you to take their dreams very seriously. The social media platform WhatsApp has been a real boon to the bad dream disseminaters.

To put things in perspective, I do not underestimate dreams, neither do I discount other peoples belief in the truthfulness of their dreams.  However, I really want these bad dreamers to give other people a break. If you have a bad dream (nightmare) and want to talk it over with your pastor or imam, that is fine, but don't spread these dreams on social media as if you have just received a personal telephone call from heaven verifying the truthfulness of your dream.

Occasionally, everybody has a bad dream.  I do believe even our former Queen Elizabeth II, who was born with a golden spoon in her mouth, sometimes has a bad dream. Even though the queen  has survived more than 300 other leaders since she became queen over half a century ago, there are times when she has the occasional bad dream, even if it involves her sitting alone in the same dining room with Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler and Idi Amin Dada.

So if you lie down and see the entire city on fire, maybe the dream is telling you something about your life and not telling you to start making apocalyptic predictions or spread messages on social media that will get other people scared, especially innocent young people with a smartphones. 

There was one particularly irritating dream teller that I unfortunatelydeleted from my phone. It was one in which this dreamy eyed lady was trying to get the whole Freetown scared, because she had had an apocalyptic dream in which she saw the city on fire. It was the longest dream I have ever heard and she seemed to take particular enjoyment in retelling it. She was so confident her dream was true that it was truly irritating. Of course, our people, always gullible, are bound to take these predictions seriously and send them to others, just to spread the dread. 

These days a cottage industry seems to be developing in Sierra Leone around the dissemination of bad dreams via social media, with unscrupulous dream interpreters being the main beneficiaries. Men of faith have already seriously started thinking about taking advanced classes in dream interpretation. 

People in Sierra Leone should really start questioning everything they read on social media.  Just as people who have serious news view social media as a quick way to reach an audience, so do dreamers, superstitious village bred folks, liars and rumor mongers. 

I Dream of You!

Somebody dreams the sky is red, they would wake up and quickly spread it on WhatsApp, with a warning of dire consequences that would follow if the people of Sierra Leone do not follow that particular dreamers interpretation of their own dream. Some will even have the audacity to declare several days of fasting, causing unnecessary suffering for an already starving people.

So my Sierra Leone brothers and sisters. If you have a bad dream, remember that everybody, even President Ernest Bai Koroma and President Obama, have bad dreams. Deal with you dreams and don't go about trying to scare the hell out of others. It could simply be that you had too much to eat before you went to bed. Let others live in peace while you deal with your bad dreams.

As the Krio people say, " dog dream die nar in belleh."~Dogs never recount their dreams. "Unu leh we yeri far."