In January 1986 a tenant in a house in the middle of Leah Street in the east end of Freetown, prudently gathered up the fag ends of her firewood from the communal kitchen, took them into her room and went to bed to be woken by the heat of flames which wiped out the ambience and the culture of the neighbourhood in which my childhood, youth and early manhood were moulded. Sam Metzger, the veteran journalist and editor of We Yone, a fellow eastender, chronicled the event with reference to our family. Chukwudinka Kawaley wrote from far off Bermuda lamenting the loss of No. 18 Leah Street. The two family houses in which I spent all my years from my birth to the age of twenty-five, were totally destroyed along with the properties of several cousins and family friends. One half of our relations on my father's side lived in that short stretch of Leah Street. The parallel Vinton Street, housed most of the other half – the grand residence of my father's elder sister, ‘BigMama”, the matriarch of the Jarretts. Another cluster of Jarretts lived merely a stone's throw away on Kissy Road. This close proximity of the Jones/Jarrett clan made for a rich family life with children and adults constantly going in and out of the various houses enjoying the particular characteristics of each.