The NIA’s Chambers of Horror-Part II

By Mathew K. Jallow, Associate Editor

The taxicab came to a halt on a dirt road half a mile from the main Mandinari-Lamin road. It was still dark and there was not a single star visible in the sky. The three men came out and walked slowly towards a clearing the size of a living room, and briefly stood in the center in a triangular formation. The hooded driver called out Samba’s name just as he withdrew both his hands from his pant pockets, and with the small torchlight he pulled out of his back pocket, he illuminated his face for Samba to see. “Ng Mbaring Habib,” Samba, with eyes wide open, whispered in utter surprise and excitement. Samba had been with the NIA only a week, when Habib left for overseas training with Scotland Yard. But before he left, Habib made sure that he left Samba in the hands of Karamo his only friend at the NIA and a former college mate. He wanted to shield Samba from the corruption and brutality that had become the culture at the NIA. Both Habib and Karamo had spent long periods of time talking to Samba about his Uncle Kali. They were good friends with him during their teenage years at Yundum College, and they felt they owed it to that friendship to shield Samba before he became corrupted by the culture of the system. After Samba finished greeting Habib, Karamo looked at Samba and spoke in a firm and steady voice. “We are here to look for a grave,” Karamo finally told Samba. “We have a body to identify before it decomposes beyond recognition, because we owe it to family of the victim and the people of our country,” Karamo said. Now, both the mystery man and the mystery assignment were no longer a secret, and Samba felt a new lease on life now that he was with both his older mentors. He was ready to do anything they asked him to, and he knew they trusted and could count on him to keep their activities a secret.

        It was eerily quite on the Lamin side of the backwoods of Mandinari village. The silence of the awesome night was broken only by the piercing shrieks of male crickets trying desperately to attract female mates. It was hard to believe that so much deafening noise could come from such small creatures. Every now and then, one of the three men would swipe their open palms in the void across their face, which sent the frenzied mosquitoes flying wildly away in the air. The presence of mosquitoes once again made Samba wonder, as he so often did years before, while herding cattle back in his native Sare Gainako village. Why were there mosquitoes in the middle of the woods so far away from any human habitation? It puzzled him, yet after all these years, he still had no answer to a question that seemed to baffle him. But today, on a mission deep in the woods, an occasional mosquito running wild at the smell of human blood was the least of the men’s worries. Karamo Jaiteh, wearing night goggles, was trying hard to locate the spot that Malang, a Mandinari resident, identified on the crudely drawn map that Samba was holding on the ground where the three squatted. Habib, the  the taxi driver was a Jola and a native of Batabut village in the Fonis. Years earlier in the 1970s, Habib and Samba’s uncle, Kali were close friends who established the Yundum College’s most famous anti-government newspaper, The Student Voice. And barely a year after the newspaper began publishing; the two worked to mastermind and instigate the worst rioting in the long history of Yundum College.

       But now, standing in the darkness with his thought echoing in his mind, Habib, ever the radical and humanist, remembered the mahogany tree Malang told him about a few days ago. He had befriended Malang, his informant, ten years earlier when he led a party of five NIA officers to check on the security preparations being made in advance of former President Jawara’s visit to the village. Once they located the mahogany tree, Malang had told Habib, they would easily find what they were looking for. The three NIA agents were in the woods outside Mandinari as a result of information Malang had given to Habib recently. Earlier in the week as Malang was returning home late one night from Lamin village, he noticed what looked like several torch-lights in an area in the woods and wondered what was going on there. The men he saw appeared to be speaking in subdued voices as if they did not want to be overheard. Instinctively, Malang knew that whatever the men were doing seemed out of place at that time of night. He tip-toed in the darkness and walked closer to where the men bustled with activity, taking care not to stem on dried grass or inadvertently break dried branches and attract attention to himself. When he was close enough to hear their muffled voices, he took cover behind a huge mahogany tree and waited. From time to time, he would cup his left ear eager to catch the sound waves emanating from the men. He could tell they were speaking Jola, a language he learnt since he was a child. This is not unusual as most Mandinkas in Mandinari village could understand Jola, and many spoke the language fluently. But now, as Habib tried to remember everything his informant had told him, the giant mahogany tree that Malang referenced about came to his mind. “Find the mahogany tree first and walk hundred yards due south and you will find the grave,” Malang had told Habib. “We must locate the mahogany tree first because it will be our point of reference,” Habib whispered. Soon the men shifted their attention from the ground and looked up towards the dark sky. They walked in circles slowly moving away from each other, and just when they were about to exhaust their patience, Karamo hissed for the others to walk towards him. He had found the famous mahogany tree just where Malang said it would be.

        By the time they found what looked like a grave under a heap of dried foliage, it was getting close to three o’clock in the morning. Karamo motioned to Habib and Samba to feel the earth underneath the foliage. Judging from the relative softness of the ground, they surmised that it was freshly dug. This only heightened their anxiety and confirmed their worst fears that it could only be a human grave as Malang had told Habib. More importantly, they feared it could be Sang Pierre’s last resting place. “Samba, go and get a shovel from the back of the car,” Karamo instructed. The grave was shallow judging from the amount of earth under the pile of leaves. Habib and Karamo looked anxiously on as Samba methodically and surgically removed the top earth, taking care not to damage what could be a body under the freshly dug earth. With the aid of the torchlight Habib had in his hand, they could soon make out what looked like the outlines of a body lying face down in the grave. They reached down instinctively and simultaneously to turn the corpse on its back. All three shied in relief that it was not Sang Pierre as they previously suspected. Samba turned first to Habib and then to Karamo said, “thank God it was him.” He was still holding out hope that somewhere his friend Sang Pierre was still alive. Habib took several pictures of the dead body with a cell phone he brought back from London. Since it was not the body of Sang Pierre as they originally suspected, they knew they were now looking for a missing person. They were now faced with a daunting task of putting a name to the unknown dead body. They did not have long to wait. That morning, a distressed father and his wife from the Dippa Kunda township of Sere Kunda barged into the NIA headquarters and asked to see their missing son. Biran Jobe, an army officer had been with Sang Pierre the evening of the night both were arrested, and he had not been seen since. The parents of Sang and Biran were friends and co-workers since they met at the old Public Works Department, but they both grew up in the same Dippa Kunda neighborhood in the early 1940s. In 1975, Sang Pierre’s father Gaston Gomez bought a piece of property and moved to Brufut a couple of years before his retirement. Now, both Sang and Biran were missing and the lives of their families had been turned upside down. The families were devastated and they found solace and comfort in each other. In Sere-Kunda where the two young men had played football for the Dippa Kunda team, men and women, young and old were restless and everyone seemed helpless and hopeless in the face of these disappearances at the hands of Yahya Jammeh’s regime.

         Habib sat quietly in his office at the NIA headquarters. His office overlooked the beachfront at the mouth of The River Gambia. In the distant haze, he could barely see the town of Barra on the other side of the narrow channel where the Atlantic Ocean and the River Gambia meet. He got up, locked the door of his office, sat down again, and took five pictures out from his coat pocket. He spread them on his desk and began forensically to examine them. After twenty minutes alone looking at the pictures and humming the mournful song of a Jola banjo player’s exaltation of the heroism of Senegal’s most famous football player, Francois Bukande, he gathered the pictures together, placed them in his desk draw and called Karamo and Samba to his office. “Come to my office if you find time before the end of the workday,” he told both of them. But, before the hour elapsed, both Karamo and Samba arrived within minutes of each other. Together the three examined the photographs again. “I think I have seen this face before. It looked vaguely familiar,” Samba said breaking the silence. The body in the pictures was badly mangled and bruises and deep lacerations disfigured the face. The back of his head looked like it had been smashed in with the blow of a metal hammer. Visually, the skull showed signs of multiple fractures. The face and neck of the dead body was covered with a thick slimy liquid that oozed out of the head before it was buried in the shallow grave. Samba was pretty sure he had seen the dead person in the pictures with Sang Pierre a couple of times before. He thought he could get a picture of him from Sang’s wife for comparison. That evening, sitting at Leybato Bar and Restaurant behind the American Ambassador’s resident in Bakau, Karamo looked out to sea watching as fishermen in their canoes flapped and swayed in the perilous Atlantic waves. Mr. Jaiteh had been coming to the bar and restaurant ever since Kali brought him there to relax, drink soda, eat grilled meat and watch the timeless Atlantic waves roll and crash on the sandy beach as they had done for millions of years. The owner of Leybato, Sekou Demba, was a Kali’s friend and before he left for the U.S, the restaurant had been Kali’s favorite place to relax and wind down from the stresses of work. Today, Karamo sat alone in a corner of Leybato contemplating as he waited for Habib and Samba to show up. He was hopeful that they might be able to identify the dead body in the pictures Habib had taken in the woods outside Mandinari. By the time Samba arrived fifteen minutes late, Karamo and Habib were already savoring the cool ocean breeze as they waited for him to bring Biran’s pictures. Samba proceeded to apologize for being late before sitting down on the opposite side of his bosses and mentors. At that moment, Karamo beckoned to the waitress standing behind him and ordered a soda and sandwich for Samba. “Thank you,” Samba said, as he took a bite of the freshly baked corn bread sandwich. He pulled out two standard size pictures from his shirt pocket and placed them on the table. After comparing features of the dead body with the pictures Samba brought, the three determined conclusively that the dead man from the shallow grave was indeed the body of Biran Jobe. Although he too had been missing for nearly three weeks, he had only been dead a couple of days judging from the level of his body’s decomposition. The mystery of the shallow grave in the woods of Mandinari had finally been solved. Habib turned the pictures backwards and with Karamo and Samba watching, he wrote Exhibit 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 on the back of each picture.

        The morning of the following day, the online newspapers in the U.S, carried some familiar headlines that shocked the nation once again. “Former Nusrat High School Valedictorian and Army Captain Biran Jobe Found Dead,” The Gambia Echo cried out. “Captain Biran Jobe’s Body Found in a Shallow Grave near Mandinari Village,” echoed another newspaper. “Yahya Jammeh’s Thugs Murder Army Captain Jobe,” said another headline. Now, the whole country was reeling again with absolute incredulity. Behind closed door, Secretaries of State, National Assembly members, senior government officers, military and security brass and the mass of the military and security officers and recruits wished they were only living a bad dream. But, this was not a dream. It was reality. The wanton brutality and sheer cruelty unleashed by Yahya Jammeh on the very citizens they swore to protect made the military and security forces begin to take notice and face their worse fears of Yahya Jammeh. The murders, disappearances, tortures, incarceration and the subversion of the justice system, had become the norm and a fact of life. In the space of one week, a senior NIA officer had gone missing and an army captain was found and buried in a shallow grave in the woods outside Mandinari. It was all becoming too much to digest and rationalize in any sensible way. Meanwhile, at the Njoben-Balanghar home in Dippa Kunda, a constant flood of people from all over the sprawling city of Sere Kunda came to pay their condolences to the family of Biran Jobe. In one corner of the family’s living room, Biran Jobe’s father, Ndekem, sat flanked by his wife on the right and Sang Pierre’s father, Gaston Gomez, to his left. After the news of Biran’s demise began to spread like wildfire around Sere Kunda, Sang’s father was the first to arrive at the Njoben-Balanghar home to console his long time friend, Ndekem Jobe. Sang’s sister Elisabeth was a secretary of a Permanent Secretary, and the first thing she did each morning at work was read the online newspapers to get information about what was happening in the country. She knew Biran personally as the friend of her brother Sang, and as soon as she read the dumbfounding news of Biran’s untimely fate, she called her father at home in Brufut and told him about it. Within minutes Gaston was on the way to Sere Kunda. His son Sang too was still out there, still missing, and his wife and has cried so much ever since their son went missing three weeks ago, her eyes were swollen red. By mid-morning that day, the Njoben Balanghar home was filled to capacity with people. Everywhere one looked; clusters of mourners talked, gestured and seemed distressed over the murder of yet another citizen in the hands of Yahya Jammeh’s Kanilai thugs. Now everyone was counting on the fact that something had to happen to stop this senseless and bloodthirsty carnage before more mothers lost their beloved sons. The still unresolved disappearance of Sang Pierre and the apparent murder of Biran Jobe had now made the quest to dispose Yahya Jammeh and his regime all the more urgent. Towards the close of the workday that afternoon, Habib, Karamo and Samba were separately about by a senior prison official contact at Mile 2 about Sang Pierre’s presence at the remand wing of the prison. But knowing the living conditions at the notorious prison, this piece of news was of little relief to them. That night Samba took a taxi to Brufut to inform Sang’s family that he was alive in Mile II Prisons. This was the first time in three weeks, that the family heard any news of their son, husband and brother. But for how long Yahya Jammeh and his thugs would let Sang Pierre live, mush less get out of prison, is any body’s guess. Only one thing was certain, the country was in deep, deep trouble, and Habia, Karamo and Samba vouched to do something about it and save their country from political catastrophe.

Editor's Note: In Part III next week, we will reveal why Biran Jobe died and Sang Pierre was arrested and placed on remand at Mile II Prisons.