I took my last class as an LLM student at Harvard Law school today! It was all smiles from my class mates as they shouted “Happy Last Class Day, Francis!”. Almost done! After the class I reflected a little on how I got here. It started in September 2022, when one of my really close friends and now Lawyer Colleague, Joselyn Turay, who I call “Ghost” went to see me at the office. He was announced and I asked that they let him in. He pushed the office door and stood at the entrance without greeting me and said “Francis! What are you waiting for?”. I looked up at him and said “waiting for what?!”. Quite a tall fella, he raised his hands in the air nearly touching the ceiling and gestured writing as he read out “Harvard” with a mischievous smile. I said “what? I’m not going to school again, man. I already have sophisticated Master’s Degrees and each of them interdisciplinary and loaded”. He said “no Francis. It’s true but just go to Harvard. You are one of the most brilliant lawyers ever. You need Harvard. It’s the icing on your cake. Do that and you will be in a different league. You can do it!”. I said I don’t want PhD as it will take too long and I frankly don’t need it. He said “no, I don’t mean PhD. Just another Master’s” He laughed out loud again. I kept protesting and he kept insisting. . . When leaving he looked back to me sitting on my desk and said “LLM Harvard” as he closed the door. I realized what he really wanted was for me to have “Harvard” on my already powerful CV. Joselyn and I go way back since our early days at Fourah Bay College and later when we were both students in London while I was studying LLM in Law and Economics there and he was doing his LLB. He was one friend who would always come to see me and encourage me. later I became his own academic adviser and I do all his references and advising. On my advise, he even did the Same LLM I did in UK at the same University - Queen Mary University of London. But this one took me by total surprise. I had given up on Harvard when I won the Fulbright Scholarship in 2015 and Fulbright did not place me there after I recorded it as my first choice. They said funding needs as Harvard was too expensive for them to spend that kind of money on one student. I understood. They placed me at UT Austin in stead - a great School in the US where I went and did the LLM in Comparative Constitutional Law and Human Rights as a Fulbright scholar in 2017. So I didn’t think I would bother to go to Harvard again. I was fine, I had told myself. But when he left, I sat and thought about how badly I had then wanted to go to Harvard which came from a prayer I had heard on my mother’s lips after our father passed away while we were Refugees in a Refugee camp in Guinea during the war. I was 8. I heared her pray promising our deceased father that she would do her best for me and my 3 siblings to get education including Harvard if possible. . .It was the first time I heard that name “Harvard”. I had no idea what it was at 8. But it remained in my sunscoscious since. . .and I later got to know what it was as I grew up. Unbeknown to him, Joselyn had triggered a powerful past I had forgotten. . . He left my office and I sat reflecting on the rather bizarre demand he had placed on me from nowhere. . . TO BE CONTINUED. . .
@FrancisKaifala The sky will be your limit brother. Just keep flying for us and you will make it