Timap volunteer Ed Sawyer was killed in a car accident near Koidu on May 19. He had volunteered for Timap for Justice in early 2007. Below is a letter from Timap to Ed’s family.
May 21, 2007
Dear Mrs. Sawyer and family,
I am writing on behalf of Timap for Justice, an experimental legal services organization which Ed served as a volunteer during his time here. We received news of Ed’s death with utmost grief.
Ed participated in our two-week paralegal training in late January and early February of this year. He was the top scorer on our daily quizzes and, despite our staff’s competitive bent, was a favorite of all participants. Ed then worked, at his own initiative, to develop drafts of four chapters of our forthcoming paralegal manual. All four chapters were on subjects with which Ed was previously unfamiliar — criminal law, criminal procedure, and health and education policy’s but Ed approached the task with diligence, curiosity, and creativity.
Ed brought this spirit to every one of his endeavors here: from producing Paps’ debut album and managing his music career, to conducting research on transitional justice in the far reaches of the country, even to the arduous task of cleaning up the Timap case-tracking database.
Ed truly loved Sierra Leone. He lived simply in a ‘panbodi’ house, like so many ordinary Sierra Leoneans. He savored Sierra Leonean food, he relished speaking Sierra Leonean Krio, and he fell for Sierra Leonean music so hard that he joined the industry himself. He wanted to see every corner of the country, and to learn from everyone he met. He insisted on visiting every Timap office, from Magburaka in the North to Kania in the South. He planned to write his dissertation on this place, and to be a friend of Timap and of Sierra Leone for life. He wasn’t quick to share with us the sacrifices he had made to come here, like the five months he spent working seventeen hour days as a short order cook in England. But when he did tell us we were touched. His time in Salone was no holiday jaunt. It was true love and devotion.
And Sierra Leoneans loved Ed: his kindness and gentleness, his curiosity and sharp intellect, his commitment to justice, his humor and his lust for life. Traveling with him, it seemed he had friends in every village and every town he had visited. Friends of all walks of life: a motorbike rider, a sneaker salesman, a schoolboy.
We are grateful to you for sharing him with us. We are devastated by this loss. We will remember him always.
The paralegal manual will be Timap’s most important resource: an encapsulation of information about Sierra Leonean law and government, and also a culmination of the knowledge Timap has gained over the last three years about delivering effective justice services in the difficult socio-legal context of Sierra Leone. The manual will be dedicated to Ed Sawyer.
With love and respect,
Vivek Maru, Nancy Sesay, Daniel Sesay, Michael Luseni, Edward Koroma, and the entire Timap for Justice team