Gbujama was born in 1936 as Shirley Macaulay, in Kent,[1] a coastal fishing village around the peninsular in the Western Area Rural District of British Sierra Leone.
[1] Her mother was Violet Keitel, a Methodist Mission School teacher from the Bonthe District.
[1] Her parents named her, their eldest daughter, after American actress Shirley Temple, a child star of the day.
[3][self-published source] She then moved to New York City, in the United States, to pursue a Master of Arts degree in mathematics, graduating in 1964.
[4] Gbujama was appointed as Sierra Leone's ambassador to Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia, presenting her credentials to Haile Selassie in Addis Ababa,[5] and serving in that position from 1972 to 1976.