The independent West African nation of Sierra Leone may seem to be far away from Bermuda. But close social and cultural exchanges between people of the two lands date back more than 100 years.

This was put into sharp focus at the thanksgiving and prayer service on Sunday at St. Mary's Anglican Parish Church in Warwick. The service was to mark the peaceful transfer of political power following the brutal civil war, and to highlight the role Bermuda residents played in high-level international councils that helped accelerate the war's ending and to protect Sierra Leone's diamond mining resources.

The service proved to be a stimulating one, conducted by Archdeacon Andrew Doughty. Puisne Judge Ian Kawaley discoursed on the Bermuda-Sierra Leone connection. Testimonies were read from Sierra Leoneans at home and in the diaspora. Drummers from the Bermuda African Dance Company provided background music. Scripture readings were in Krio as well as in English; and following a blessing and closing by Anglican Bishop Ewen Ratteray, a banquet took place in the church hall.

Mr. Justice Kawaley gave some interesting reflections on the historical connections between Sierra Leone, where his father was born and bred, and his mother's native Bermuda.

The judge said despite the absence of obvious links between the two countries ordinary Bermudians and ordinary Sierra Leoneans had for more than 100 years contributed to each others' social and material development. These ordinary people had achieved extraordinary things, living global lives, and assuming global identities, long before modern notions of a global village were born.

David Wilson joined the West India Regiment and came to Bermuda in 1899, with a few other Sierra Leoneans whose antecedents I have not yet been able to trace. Wilson was among the first known Sierra Leoneans to freely migrate to Bermuda. He married Agnes Nora Thomas (also known as Hodgson) in 1915 and had children here, Theophilus, Alfred, Henry, Iris (Matthews), and Edith and the youngest being Sammy Wilson MBE, a giant in the youth development arena.

Mr. Wilson's paint contracting business is still being operated by his grandson, Kavin Wilson, whom I met by chance in the Arnold's parking lot in Somerset, having overheard him boasting: "My grandfather was an African!"

David Wilson's son Alfred is credited with starting the H & H Gombeys and helping to shape the modern form of Bermuda's main indigenous musical art-form.

Bermuda contributed to Sierra Leone's legal system, religious fraternity and educational system.

Sculptor Desmond Fountain spent his early years in Sierra Leone, where his mother was an art teacher. Lawyer and judge Sir Allan Smith was Chief Justice of Sierra Leone in the 1940s. A minister of religion, who later became Canon F. Edmondson, an ancestor of Janet Fubler, left Bermuda for the Gambian Anglican Mission, and ended up settling in Sierra Leone where his descendants still live today.

William Conton, son of a Bermudian, became Chief Education Officer in Freetown in the second half of the last century. In the early 1960s, Elizabeth Musson Kawaley went to Sierra Leone to teach for five years with her Sierra Leonean husband, taking me and my sister Kathy to the Independence celebration on April 27, 1961. In the 1980s, Michael Bradshaw would join his wife Edmina Askill in Sierra Leone and taught at Fourah Bay College, which in 1876 had become the only degree-granting university in West Africa.

Time and limited information make it impossible to identify the contributions of each and every Sierra Leonean who adopted Bermuda as their home. But Sierra Leoneans would contribute to fields including engineering, education and human rights in Bermuda.

Guy Porter, of Sierra Leone, trained as a mechanic in Birmingham, England, and was recruited to work in a private firm in Bermuda where he married into the family of Dame Marjorie Bean. Solomon Kawaley was recruited in London to teach chemistry at the Berkeley Institute in 1951, and worked in Bermuda's public education system for nearly 30 years.

Meanwhile, Marlene Trott, trained as a nurse in England, was wooed by ex-RAF officer Sierra Leonean T.S. Johnson after the end of the war. "T.S." was not only a lawyer, but was also a newspaper proprietor and the owner of a Freetown restaurant my sister and I nicknamed "the hotdog hamburger place" in the 1960s.

Two of the three Johnson boys, Philip (the laid-back photographer) and Ayo (the hyperactive Sierra Leone human rights activist) would eventually return to Bermuda with their mother. Ola Gabisi, an educator from Freetown, met Bermudian Michelle Grant in London, and they eventually returned to Bermuda.

Ola has taught at the Bermuda College and elsewhere in Bermuda for many years. The father of late Somerset taxi-driver Milton Lewis, and grandfather of Barbara Lewis Mills, was Sierra Leonean. Dr. Cindy Morris' grandfather , who was also from Sierra Leone.

Edmina Bradshaw would eventually come to Bermuda, which she now uses as a base of an international consulting practice. Sierra Leonean engineer Ngadi Kamara came to Bermuda with her husband, Bermudian engineer Abayomi Carmichael, and she has been organising African cultural events (such as Sunday's service) in Bermuda ever since.

Lawyer Jasmina Gilpin came to Bermuda some years ago with her Canadian husband. Henry Thomas, who works with the Bermuda Monetary Authority, recently married Bermudian journalist Cathy Stovell.

The connections continue. Millie Cleveland recently came to Bermuda and has been successfully representing the Island in female body-building competitions. Her mother Muriel, visiting Bermuda from London with fellow Sierra Leonean friend Alfreda, grew up in Waterloo two houses away from my father's paternal family home.

My Uncle N'Gozika told my father that he remembered fleeing from Muriel as a child when she told him he was too quiet and was going to "rough him up". Millie comes rightly by her desire to prove that the Sierra Leonean woman has strength as well as charm!

What can we learn from these pioneers of ad hoc global co-operation? Perhaps that as much as human beings are inclined to distinguish themselves from each other based on all manner of superficial characteristics, be it colour, culture or class, human beings of whatever background, have the same capacity to succeed in life if given a fair chance.

As Ayo Johnson, executive officer of the Human Rights Commission, will tell us, important collective co-operation has taken place between Bermuda and Sierra Leone in recent years, building on these more personal connections. To conclude then, if we learn from the positive lessons of the past and do not repeat the mistakes, over the long term both Bermuda and Sierra Leone will surely prosper.