YOUR VOICE MATTERS: FIND IT, OWN IT, RELEASE IT_ BY AMB. BISHOP SAHR ISAAC PETERSON

In smatter years ago, I never for once thought my voice would be heard across Africa and world over.

I was just a boy with a pen in a noisy room. I spent difficult days and nights finding my niche. I would write a line, tear it, write again, hide it under my bed, afraid of what people would say. Who would read a young Sierra Leonean boy from Kono? Who would listen to a preacher who also writes poetry?

Until I started writing and speaking.

That is the secret. You don't find your voice by waiting. You find it by using it.

In my journey, I aspired for world global writing awards. I entered competitions I had no business entering. I lost many. But I learned. And I won some. In 2024, I became one of Africa's voices as a Judge for poetry in the subregion of Africa. I sat on panels reviewing works from Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Kenya, South Africa. I was judging, yet I was still searching.

In all these snippets, I never felt fulfilled. I stepped forward, tiptoeing from one platform to another. Like a man walking on broken glass, careful, fearful, hopeful.

Forget the critiquing. Forget the attacks. People will critique what they cannot create. They will attack what they cannot understand. That is their job. Your job is to write.

Until 2025, recently on the heels of last year, I was equally conferred upon the title of BEST CONTENT WRITER among 25 countries and thereabouts by the Greater Writers Association, Nigeria. A crown I did not chase, but which chased me because I refused to be silent.

Away from other things, my presence on a particular platform called Authors Hub, Striking Ideas - Strida, Nigeria, being administered by a young female lecturer in Lagos - pushed me to a standout figure. Strida did not just give us a platform; she gave us a pulpit. She taught us that objectivity is not neutrality, it is truth with courage. That platform was like a blacksmith's forge. Many entered as raw iron, but left as refined steel.

Why do you need this from Peterson? Simply put, you are meant to be heard.

Inside you is a library that has never been opened. Inside you is a well that has never been drawn. Your story, your pain, your childhood, your faith, your failure, your Kono, your Freetown, your little village - someone needs it. Africa needs your syntax. The world needs your accent.

Don't feel the hiccups of the rantings in media. Social media will make you feel your voice is too small. The noise of politics, gossip, insults, and comparisons will make you lock your phone and throw away your pen. Don't.

Go for what you like. If you like poetry, bleed in verses. If you like preaching, thunder in sermons. If you like fiction, build worlds. If you like advocacy, shout for the voiceless. Your niche is not found in the market; it is found in your burden. What keeps you awake at night? Write about that.

Today, I write as Winner and Best Content Writers Awardee in Africa, not because I am the best, but because I refused to bury my talent. Jesus told of a servant who buried his talent in the ground - Matthew 25:25. Don't bury yours.

Listen to yourself. Find your voice. That's your digital watch. Your voice is your timekeeper. When you lose it, you lose your time. When you find it, you redeem your time.

I have learned three scholastic lessons on voice:

1. Voice is forged in solitude. Before the crowd hears you, God must hear you in your closet. My best lines came not in conferences, but in quiet midnight prayers in Ghana, in Sierra Leone, in buses, in lonely rooms.

2. Voice grows through consistency. One article does not make a writer. One sermon does not make a preacher. You must write when you feel like it, and write more when you don't. I wrote when no one liked, no one commented, no one shared. That was my training ground.

3. Voice matures through humility. The moment you think you have arrived, you stop growing. Stay teachable. Accept corrections. Read other writers. I still read writers younger than me and I learn.

I specially extend my salutations and unfazed commendation to Strida, for promoting an objectivized and motivating theory of pushing budding and professional writers in Africa. This means that our voices would be heard at all times. You have not just built writers; you have built watchmen for the continent.

To every young writer reading me in Kono, Makeni, Bo, Lagos, Accra, Nairobi - your village is not too small, your English is not too broken, your story is not too dirty. God used shepherds, fishermen, and tent-makers to write Scripture. He can use you.

So pick your pen again. Open that laptop again. Record that voice note again.

The world is waiting for your sound.

Break a leg.

Yours truly,

© AMB. BISHOP SAHR ISAAC PETERSON 

Best Content Writer, 2025, Greater Writers Association, Nigeria