A Cabby’s Good Deed Makes Him a Hero Back Home

By KIRK SEMPLE

Published: February 24, 2011xx

As public relations jobs go, selling a positive image of Sierra Leone has to be among the most challenging. Amid endemic corruption and widespread poverty, the small West African nation has struggled to recover from a decade of civil war that left tens of thousands dead and displaced millions — not exactly making it a place where investors are scrambling to park their money.

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Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

Zubiru M. Jalloh, a taxi driver from Sierra Leone, returned a bag of valuables worth more than $100,000 left in his cab last week.

But then along came Zubiru M. Jalloh. He is the New York City cabdriver, born in Sierra Leone, who last week discovered a bag containing $100,000 worth of jewelry, photographs and cash in the back seat of his taxi, tracked down the passenger who left it and gave it back.
In New York, this charming story of a humble immigrant’s honesty came and went in a couple of news cycles. But in Sierra Leone, that fateful Feb. 13 cab ride has become something much more: The government there is hailing Mr. Jalloh as something of a national hero, who has single-handedly overhauled the country’s image around the world.
“New York Taxi Driver Rebrands Sierra Leone,” announced a Feb. 17 headline on Cocorioko.net, a Sierra Leonean news Web site owned by a government official.
“You cannot rebrand your country any better than this,” the article began, in English, the country’s official language. “Sierra Leone is a land of honest men and women. Taxi driver Zubiru Jalloh just proved it to the whole world. This is a story that will make you proud to be a Sierra Leonean.”
Last weekend, an information attaché for the government flew into New York and interviewed Mr. Jalloh. The attaché’s report — published on Cocorioko and at least two other Sierra Leonean news Web sites — continued the theme.
“The good name of Sierra Leone is now the talk of Americans and other immigrants in the tristate area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut in particular and the United States in general,” the article said. Mr. Jalloh, it added, “is now one of the main issues of discussion in government offices, shopping centers, restaurants, taxi cabs, buses, trains, to name but a few.”
The Rev. Leeroy Wilfred Kabs-Kanu, minister plenipotentiary at Sierra Leone’s mission to the United Nations and the owner of Cocorioko News, said Mr. Jalloh’s good deed dovetailed with the “agenda for change” of Sierra Leone’s president, Ernest Bai Koroma. “We are trying to rebrand to let people know that the war is over, that people can go there for tourism, that people can go there for business, that the business climate is good, that there’s peace now,” Mr. Kabs-Kanu said.
Mr. Jalloh, he said, “is working according to the government’s program of rebranding.”
For his part, Mr. Jalloh, a Brooklyn resident and a father of three, said he had simply acted in accordance with his Muslim faith and out of respect for the United States — a nation, he said, that had made him feel welcome and given him citizenship.
“I think I’m doing great, so I have to return something to the country,” he said in an interview on Thursday while idling curbside in his cab in the East Village. “I think what I did was correct, correct?”
Mr. Jalloh, 42, said he had not seen any of the Sierra Leonean press coverage, and when told that the government had adopted him as a marketing tool, he seemed amused. “That’s a good one!” he exclaimed. “I like that!”
Since he turned over the bag of valuables, Mr. Jalloh has been swept up in a whirlwind of attention, from the news media onslaught to the phone calls from friends and family to his newfound fame among the community of cabdrivers, who constantly tease him that he was a fool to return the loot. A couple who recognized him the day after the story broke gave him $20 for a $7 fare. A mechanic who repaired his taxi knocked $20 off his bill.
Besides the interview with the attaché, the only contact he has had with the Sierra Leonean government, he said, was a call on Tuesday from an official in Freetown, the nation’s capital. “He said he saw me on the news,” Mr. Jalloh recounted. “He said he was so proud.”
But the conversation ended quickly. “He said it was an international call and he couldn’t speak long — only three minutes — because it’s an international call and it’s expensive.”
“Africa!” Mr. Jalloh added, smiling and shaking his head. “You know, you know.”