In Memory Of Comrade Adama Faburay
1950 – 2008
Comrade Adama Faburay was a breccia of goodness and generosity throughout his life; personal qualities that remained inviolable despite the aggressive cancer that snatched him away on Thursday July 24th. Like a huge hole sliced in the sky, Comrade Adama’s transition precipitated a gaping emptiness, a landscape without geography; an emptiness that gulps our collective sorrow and evokes a miserable and incessant brooding about life, about death, about the mission to liberate and about the struggle that will outlast us all, his mourning comrades.
Adama was a complete soul, uncomplicated and without frills. Ready to forgive, desperately eager for reconciliation and blessed with a face sculpted with a permanent smile; a smile that cracks open graphite hearts and dissolves the iciest of stares. A smile that wanes only by the awesome power of a roar that raises from his innermost depths, shaking the earth he treads.
Born to Falanding Faburay and Mba Awa Jabby in 1950, Adama hailed from Dippa Kunda, where as a teenager in the late sixties, he scooped up emotive energies from the urban youth rebellions supporting the anti-colonial struggles throughout the continent, and the contagious fervour of the Black Power movements waging militant campaigns for freedom and racial equality in the United States. Kwame Touré a.k.a Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale, Malcolm X, Steve Biko, Thomas Sankara all were amongst his cluster of revolutionary icons.
Inside Dippa Kunda Adama, alias Adia was very early a cherished household name, an energetic youth leader for whom all doors stood open. He actively ran a youth club, the Beb Katas, with friends such as Saul Senghore, Tijan Sohna, Sheriff Ebrima Conteh, Fabakary Keita and others; while managing a soccer team of young teenagers like Matar Jaiteh, Ebou Keita, Momodou Camara (alias Barry), Pa Ousman Jaiteh, Bass Drammeh (who was Adama’s super goalie) and many other prospective stars from Dippa Kunda. Adia was even then, a tireless organiser who proudly sported a Guevara beret.
By the time he left home, trekking the desert via Niger into Libya, colonel Gaddafi’s Green Book revolution was already in vogue. Once as a survival strategy in Libya he had adopted the pseudonym of Peter, a story for which he suffered jokes at the hands of a few sisters, now all of them puffy-browed and red-eyed from litres of tears poured at his funeral.
Adama coasted to Sweden in 1977, at the tail end of that country’s industrialisation and construction boom with an economy eagerly absorbing guest workers mostly from southern Europe. He got trained as a mechanic but subsequently worked as a bus driver/instructor for SL (Stor Stockholms Lokaltrafik). He eagerly deployed his energies raising his family and all of his free time doing political and cultural work both in MOJA-G (Movement for Justice in Africa – Gambia) and the Organisation of Gambians in Sweden. This latter association, which became the envy of other immigrant groups in Sweden, owed its immense popularity to the selfless work of people like Adama Faburay.
Adama’s social skills and generosity of spirit immediately made the Faburay residence a nexus of political activity while he lived in Rinkeby, a famous suburb of north-west Stockholm. Endless meetings in preparation for a series of demonstrations against the Senegalese occupation of Gambia following the 1981 rebellion were all organised there. Adama was host to dozens of Gambians: political refugees, hustlers en route to other European metropolis, true and fake revolutionaries, limitlessly bored residents-in-waiting, and a long line of visitors from the old Dippa Kunda fraternities. There was always food to be shared in Adia’s house amidst fiery debates about everything, often lasting into the wee hours.
Comrade Faburay made his political mark by canvassing opinion against the fiercely unambitious dictatorship of erstwhile PPP governments and by defending and promoting the right of Gambians to organise themselves autonomously for political and social progress. Together with others he helped champion the causes of the poor and oppressed, and in promoting international solidarity by collaborating with other exiled political groups in Sweden.
Comrade Faburay heeded MOJA-G’s call to work towards establishing a truly democratic state that would be incapable of liberating itself from the popular masses, thus recognising the crucial need to build strong, responsive and representative mass organisations. He assumed a leading role in the Bantaba Cultural Group which performed in most of Scandinavia in the mid eighties, while penning bits of poetry during his more reflective moods.
Gambians in Stockholm lost a true brother; an incredibly open and amicable companion to everyone - the incessant refrain of mournful voices at his internment on July 29th.
To his colleagues at Söder Bus Depot his departure means the end of a wonderfully memorable and congenial partnership; tearful colleagues who bade him farewell with wreaths of roses.
To his friends and comrades his absence spells an endlessly severe personal loss of an unpretentious and plain-speaking fighter.
To his family, Adama’s passing spawns the painful absence of a dearly loving husband, and a caring and dutiful father. We salute Mrs. Mampol Janneh Jobe for standing by her adopted brother through thick and thin.
We praise and honour Adama’s widow Jabou Faal Faburay for her complete devotion to Adama and all his struggles. We address our deepest condolences to her and all the four children.
Long Live The Memory of Adama Faburay.
For the Struggle,
Adama Faburay’s Comrades
(August 2008)