AFRICAN PANORAMA
Miatta Fahnbulleh, the veteran Liberian activist singer and founder of the award-winning Obaa’s Girls Educational Outreach, is celebrating her sixtieth birthday in grand style in Monrovia this weekend. According to an official invitation leaflet bearing the photograph of the Liberian musical star wearing a stylish head tie, her birthday celebration is a feature of “the 2nd Obaa Memorial Awards Dinner” aimed at raising funds for the nonprofit organization. It is slated for April 13, 2008 at the trendy Royal Hotel Restaurant in Monrovia under the "distinguished patronage" of President Ellen Sirleaf.
The list of honorary guests of the occasion reads like a Who Who of West Africa as it comprises of the most established of the region's elites a bulk of whom are personal friends of the Liberian artist. Prominent among the distinguished guests are Mrs. Ojoke Muhammed, former first lady of Nigeria and an honorary patron of the fund raiser; Mr. Nana Okufo-Addo, former foreign minister of Ghana, Mrs. Olubankie King-Akerele, Liberian foreign affairs minister, Madam Shirley Brownell, former UN director of information and Mr. Joseph Blell, former deputy minister of defense of Sierra Leone among others.
The theme of the 2nd Obaa Memorial Awards Dinner is "Celebrating Friendship", and Madam Elizabeth Woundo, director of UNESCO Cluster Office in Ghana and presumably former classmate of Miatta, serves as honorary speaker. Invitees are assertively required to wear black ties or traditional African attires.
Miatta Fahnbulleh is indeed a 'third culture kid' - having spent a significant part of her developmental years in various African countries in which she feels at home thanks to a network of relationships. She is the daughter of the late Ambassador Henry B. Fahnbulleh, Sr., the maverick Liberian diplomat whose intellectual airs William Tubman could not stomach. She is the older sister of Dr. Henry B. Fahnbulleh, Jr., the firebrand revolutionary of the 1970s who is now President Sirleaf's national security adviser. In the 1980s, Miatta was in the trenches with Ellen Sirleaf during the despotic rule of Samuel Doe. At a time when the administration of President Ellen Sirleaf is paying lip service to the plight of Liberian women and girls, Miatta's special sensitivity to the needs of disadvantaged Liberian girls culminating into the founding of the Obaa's Girls Educational Outreach is commendable. Long live the Obaa's Girls Educational Outreach!
April 10, 2008
Miatta Fahnbulleh: A Third Culture Kid Celebrates Sixtieth Birthday With Grandeur...
By Ray Martin Toe
Editor-In-Chief/African Panorama
