The NIA’s Chambers of Horror -A Story 

By Mathew K. Jallow, Associate Editor

Associate Editor Mathew K. Jallow

The night dragged on so slowly, Samba thought daylight was never going to come. It was dark outside, and in the bedroom next to the kitchen, he could hear the soft snoring of his little son, Demba. It was music to his ears; as if Hotcha Baldeh was singing his melodious songs of love and betrayal to him. A rain storm had passed barely an hour before Samba returned home to his family, but by the time he entered the rented apartment he shared with his wife and young son in the northern outskirts of Sukuta Sanchaba-Sulay Jobe, his clothes were uncomfortably soaked wet and seemingly glued to his athletic body. Now, as he sat on the new living room love seat, he could hear the dull thuds of the raindrops break the stillness of the night. He looked at his watch impulsively and realized it was still 2 a.m. in the morning. He straightened up in a corner of the seat to listen to his son and wife as he had done the past several nights. They were both fast asleep and oblivious of the storm that had just passed. And as Samba listened, he was suddenly overcome by a sense of guilt. He had not slipped into bed with his wife, Ndungu, and their son, for so long, he felt like a bad husband and father. And now, his rare, but apparent withdrawal was beginning to weigh heavily on his conscience. He sat pondering and reflecting on the events of the day that had just elapsed, and in the distance, barely audible to the naked ear, he could hear the faint mowing of a bull from the direction of Yuna, a small Fula village nestled among the woods south of Sukuta.

Slowly but surely, Friday morning crept in lazily, and as the crowing of the cocks began to pierce the dawn darkness, Ndungu got out of bed early as she always did. For the fifth straight day, she noticed that her husband was not in bed with the family. She could not understand why, and she wanted an answer; today. But, the more she thought about it, the more her anxiety consumed her thoughts and sapped her fragile strength. She got out of bed and walked measurably towards the living room in that gracefully and majestic gait that characterize the rare beauty of her fellow Fulbe tribes-women. Ndungu placed her hand gently on her husband’s hand and called out his name in a whisper. Samba! Samba! Will you wake up? In a slow motion, Samba opened his right eye first, then the left. He blinked rapidly and raised his left arm to shield his eyes from the piercing light of the encroaching daybreak. “Go inside and sleep with Demba, while I prepare breakfast for you,” Ndungu said softly. “I will prepare nyeeri with sour milk from your favorite cow; the one your father bought from Sare Gubu,” she added. Samba’s older sister had brought them the sour milk the previous afternoon, but she returned home without waiting to see her beloved brother. Samba got up without saying a thing, but he did not go to bed, instead, he went to the bathroom to brush his teeth and take a shower. He came out, dried his body and walked into the bedroom where his son was fast asleep. He kissed him on his cheek and walked out again. He had only managed three hours of sleep, and he felt his body could not take the physical stress any longer. As Samba and Ndungu were having breakfast together that morning, Samba held the nyeergel above the breakfast calabash and called out his wife’s name in a muted voice. “Ndungu”, he called in a depressed tone she had never heard before, “I have a very important thing to tell you, and you will not like it.” “What is it,” she responded with an eagerness she could hardly contain. Did they fire you from your job? She asked. “No”, he said, “It is far worst than that.” “Do you remember my friend, Sang Pierre Gomez,” he asked her. “He has been in detention at the Old Atlantic Hotel for the past five days.” As Samba narrated the tragic story of Sang Pierre’s fate to his wife, tears of sadness and helplessness flowed down both their faces. Yahya Jammeh’s ruthless NIA boys had just picked up Sang Pierre from his house late evening the previous week, and since then, they have been torturing him every single night in their dungeons of death. They had a long chain wrapped around Sang Pierre’s waist, which was tethered to the bolt protruding from the concrete floor. When Samba first laid his eyes on his old high school friend, he could not believe what he was seeing right before his eyes. He began to sob so uncontrollably, that he had to hide in the bathroom until his tears dried up. He knew that to express sympathy for his old friend so openly, was almost a death wish, and he would not take any chances. He had a beautiful, loving wife and a handsome baby boy to bring up, but in his mind, he was conflicted and torn apart between self-preservation for his family and the injustices that were being done to his friend. In the end, Samba vowed to expose to the whole world what was happening to his friend regardless of the dangers he might put himself in.

      Samba had been working with the NIA for barely six months with the encouragement and the help of his old friend Sang Pierre. He was first posted at the border village of Sare Ngai on the north shore of The Gambia River in Fulladou. His bosses at the NIA figured that as a Fula, he would not invite suspicion to himself. His first task in Sare Ngai was to blend in and be as inconspicuous as possible. After six months, his performance was rated exceptional, and he was promoted and reassigned to the Banjul headquarters of the NIA. He was still new in his Sanchaba Sulay Jobe neighborhood, and he had not found the time yet to meet and get to know his neighbors. Every time he made plans to familiarize himself with the neighborhood, a job related emergency came in the way. Samba and his wife first met his friend Sang Pierre when the two were boys, and still attending high school. They became fast friends and in the summer of ’92, Samba invited Sang to come with him to his village of Sare Gainako in the Niamina West District. Sang, a native of Brufut, had never seen so many cattle and drank so much milk in his life. He and Samba often walked through a dense forest to visit Ndungu in her village of Sare Ilo just three miles north of Dankunku.  When Samba and his then girlfriend, Ndungu, would argue about which of their villages was the best place to live, Sang would often jokingly take the side of Ndungu. He was so drawn to the beauty of the girls in Ndungu’s village that he would tell Samba to go home to Gainako and leave him behind. Now, those good old times were far behind them and both Samba and his wife were faced with the reality of their lives now, and the events they had no control over. Sang’s condition weighed so heavily on Samba’s mind that he was dysfunctional in many ways, but he was able to push himself and conceal the emotional pain that was tearing him apart. Every day while at work at the NIA’s Old Atlantic Hotel office headquarters, Samba would sneak inside Sang Pierre’s holding cell pretending to interrogate him, and Sang would recount the story of how and why he was arrested and what they have been doing to him. Samba would take detailed notes and hide them in his underwear before he left the cell.

But, one Monday morning two weeks after Sang was arrested and placed in detention at the NIA headquarters, Samba came to work with a special message from Sang’s wife Marie Sylva. She had just delivered a healthy baby girl; good news for Sang Pierre, which Samba hoped would make him a proud husband and father and give him a reason to raise his broken spirits. That morning when Samba opened Sang’s cell door, he discovered to his chagrin, that Sang had been removed to an undisclosed location that night. Samba’s co-workers at the NIA had no idea when he was removed from his cell or where he was taken to, but rumors were flying around the office that the Boys of Kanilai, an outfit trained as Yahya Jammeh’s assassins, took him away around midnight. That morning, the drama unfolding at the NIA head office, was for the first time creating a clear and unmistakable division between Jammeh’s ruthless supporters and those who exercised caution and some dint of humaneness. Samba and his friends feared the worst, while hoping for the best for his co-worker Sang. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the news of Sang’s disappearance had hit the headline of all the on-line newspapers. “An NIA Agent Abducted and Feared Dead,” cried The Gambia Echo’s headline. “Kanilai Murderers At It Again”, cried another headline. "Senior NIA Agent Sang Pierre Gomez Disappears Mysteriously", another on-line paper echoed. And by mid-morning, the news of Sang’s disappearance had spread like wildfire in The Greater Banjul area as concerned citizens printed and circulated the online newspaper clips from one person to another. Everyone was talking about yet another mysterious disappearance; from market women, in tailors’ shops, around the offices, on the streets and everywhere two or more people sat and discussed. The mood in the street was sombre, and there was visible melancholy and a resignation to the fate that had engulfed an entire population. In his mind, Samba now began to realize that death was stalking him and every one of his co-workers at the NIA.  No one was safe from the brutality that had taken root under of the evil regime of Yahya Jammeh, and as long as they worked there, there was no place for them to run and no place to hide. The curtains had dropped on Samba and his co-workers and everyone there was vulnerable, but they did their best to put up a façade that masked their true emotions. That evening as Samba and Ndungu were having a dinner of maffe bohye and peanut soup, they heard a knock on the door. Samba rose up to open the door and there was a surprise visitor standing outside. It was his boss Karamo Jaiteh an old friend of his uncle who now lives in the U.S. His boss had an assignment for him that had to be completed before daybreak. It was a risky proposal, but it had to be done. Samba kissed his wife and laid his hand on his son’s head and turned around and followed his boss outside. The two walked side by side in the darkness until they reached a narrow alley where a taxicab awaited them. Mr. Jaiteh a shy person with an intellectual depth and an easy smile, turned to open the back door of the taxicab for Samba and shut the door after he was seated. He jumped in the front passenger seat next to the hooded driver and motioned to him to turn left towards Sukuta village. Samba had no idea where he was going. He tried to make a sense of it, but no matter how hard he tried he could not figure it out. And the mysterious hooded taxi driver; who was he?

In the next installment, the taxi driver reveals himself to Samba. The three-drive south towards Mandinari village, and a mile before reaching the farmland of Mandinari, the taxi turned into a dirt road that led south into a thick forest. Only then did Karamo Jaiteh begin to tell Samba what their mission was. (Hope to see you here again next week).