Public History Efforts (1985 To 1997)
Opala lectured at Sierra Leone's Fourah Bay College (FBC) from 1985 to 1992, teaching in the Institute of African Studies and the Department of Linguistics and African Languages. He also acted as an informal adviser on cultural policy to President Joseph Saidu Momoh and to the U.S. Ambassadors who served in Sierra Leone during that period. Drawing on the strong support he had from the Sierra Leone Government and the American Embassy, Opala launched a series of public history initiatives that focused the country's attention on Bunce Island and the "Gullah Connection" for the next five years. His efforts ranged from public lectures (often at the U.S. Embassy Library), to radio interviews, film shows, and newspaper articles, to workshops for teachers and students, to the Gullah homecomings that galvanized the attention of the entire country. During that period Opala also secured research grants for two of his Sierra Leonean colleagues at FBC — Akintola Wyse, an historian, and Joko Sengova, a linguist — so that they could travel to the United States and do their own independent research in the Gullah region.
During his trips back to the U.S., Opala engaged in an ongoing dialog with the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) with the blessing of both the Sierra Leone Government and the U.S. Embassy in Freetown. He was trying to convince that agency to send an expert team to survey Bunce Island, which it did in 1989. After seeing the castle, one of the NPS experts expressed his support for a preservation project quite dramatically, saying at a press conference at the U.S. Embassy that he had "never seen an historic site so important for the United States in such desperate need of preservation." Opala's success came from his acting as an informal liaison, moving back and forth between President Momoh's staff, the U.S. Ambassador, and U.S. Park Service officials. Later, he played a leading role in that manner once again by helping convince Herb Cables, then Deputy Director of NPS (and the first African American to hold that position), to come to Sierra Leone to see Bunce Island for himself. Cables made the trip in 1992, arriving with a pledge of $5 million for Bunce Island's preservation. But a military coup took place only days after Cables left the country, and the new NPRC military government had no interest in the project, calling it "Momoh's thing." But these efforts did not go in vain since they put the idea of a Bunce Island preservation project on the agendas of government officials in both countries, where it remained even through the dark days that lay ahead for Sierra Leone.
After the Sierra Leone Civil War erupted, Opala set his historical work aside for a time and joined with two Sierra Leonean human rights activists, Zainab Bangura and Julius Spencer, to establish the Campaign for Good Governance (CGG). With Mrs. Bangura leading the organization, CGG played a major role at that period by working with other civil society groups to promote a democratic election as the means to unseat the brutal military government. During the run-up to Sierra Leone's 1996 election CGG sensitized citizens to the dangers the election posed for them personally, but also the great opportunity it afforded the country as a whole; and when the election was held, citizens took to the streets by the thousands facing down the soldiers trying to create chaos at the polls. CGG would later evolve into Sierra Leone's most prominent civil society group, but the victory it helped win for the restoration of order during the 1996 election was unfortunately short-lived. The following year, RUF "rebels" and renegade soldiers stormed into the capital city, forcing the elected president to flee the country. They also targeted the leaders of the pro-democracy movement, most of whom also fled. Opala left Sierra Leone for neighboring Guinea at night in a fishing trawler so packed with refugees that the passengers could only sit on their legs. The desperate passengers kept a watch on the sea throughout the voyage as the water was never more than a few inches below the deck. If the sea had not been dead calm, the overloaded ship would have sunk
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