In this article
Field notes from WSA, India, and the encounters that stayed.
Reflections from Joseph Jawah Kebbie’s journey to India.
The drawing reached me through WhatsApp.
Someone had forwarded a photograph of a page torn from a notebook. On it was a small figure with very tall hair, outstretched arms and a red heart on the chest. Beside the figure stood the Indian flag.
The message explained that a child who had been at the birthday celebration had drawn me.
“This is Joseph at the birthday party.”
My reply was immediate in spirit, even if the timestamps tell their own story: this was the sweetest thing I had seen that day. Tell the little champ I’m honoured.
I had travelled to India for conversations about technology, inclusion and possibility. Somewhere along the way, a young artist had found a completely different way to remember the visit.
From Bo to Hyderabad
The journey brought me to the World Summit Awards Global Congress in Hyderabad, representing Sierra Leone as a WSA Tech Youth Ambassador and serving on the jury for the winners’ pitches.
The congress brought together people developing digital solutions to social challenges. Its theme, Digital Democracy & Us, opened up conversations about equity, misinformation, digital divides and whose experiences technology reflects.
My exchanges touched on artificial intelligence, financial inclusion and inclusive policymaking - subjects with real consequences for Sierra Leone, for Africa, and for communities far beyond either.
There is something valuable about bringing a local perspective into an international conversation. You arrive with the problems you know, the constraints you have worked within and the questions you are still trying to answer. Other people arrive with theirs.
Then the conversation gets interesting.
A solution that makes sense in one setting may need to change substantially in another. Access, language, affordability and trust all shape whether something becomes useful. Those differences deserve attention, especially when an idea looks convincing on a screen.
For us at MeDomot, these are questions worth carrying into the work: Who can use what we are building? Who might struggle? What needs to be understood before a solution takes shape?
“What are you building?”
One exchange from the trip still makes me smile.
Firdoush asked whether I was a venture capital investor, adding a compliment about my hair and outfit.
“Maybe someday,” I replied. “Thank you… What are you building?”
I like how quickly that conversation found its way to curiosity.
At an event full of introductions, that question gives someone room to talk about what matters to them. What are they trying to make happen? What have they figured out? What are they still working through?
The photographs hold some of those moments: people gathered around a phone, introductions among exhibits, arms around shoulders, smiles between sessions.
They also hold a fair amount of personality. The clothes. The hair. The slightly unexpected poses.
All of it belongs in the memory.
India beyond the congress
The welcome continued beyond the event.
In my posts, I tried to capture the warmth I encountered - from Hyderabad to Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar, and from airport security teams in Mumbai and New Delhi.
There was curiosity. There was attention I had not anticipated. There was enough of it for me to joke that I was living an “accidental celebrity” life, apparently powered by freeform dreads and a big smile.
That joke deserves to stay in the story.
So do the photographs from the birthday celebration. The balloons, the group poses, the ease and playfulness in the room. Alongside the congress photographs, they show another part of the journey: the pleasure of spending time with people and being welcomed into a moment of their lives.
It is possible to travel for a very specific reason and find that the experience grows beyond it.
That is what these memories hold for me.
A portrait, sent later
And then there was the drawing.
The hair was unmistakable. The arms reached out. A heart sat in the middle of the figure’s chest.
I would not try to explain every choice the young artist made. The drawing belongs to their imagination. Knowing that they had remembered me from the celebration was enough.
I asked whether it was the child dressed in black. The screenshot preserves that little question alongside the gratitude.
What a lovely thing to receive: evidence that an encounter had stayed with someone else, too.
What we carry forward
The WSA experience belongs to a continuing conversation about the kind of technology we build and the people it should serve. It offered space to contribute, listen and exchange perspectives across borders.
The wider journey gave that conversation faces, humour and memories.
At MeDomot, we want to remain open to both: the serious questions that make our work better, and the ordinary encounters that deepen our understanding of people.
There is room for ambition in that openness. There is also room to be surprised.
Sometimes a journey continues in the conversations it begins.
Sometimes it arrives again in a WhatsApp message, on a notebook page, with very tall hair.
The world, a little closer.