Commentary
Providing an outlet for the free exercise of carnal pleasure at the expense of mothers, daughters
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By Mathew K. Jallow, Associate Editor.
The times, they are changing. But, for the village of Kanilai, they did change more than a decade and half ago. Situated in the southern forests of The Gambia, the changes in Kanilai are not of the good kind. This unlikely village, where collapsed straw fences and mangled mud walls once complemented windowless mud and grass huts, the times look like an endless nightmare playing out like a horror filled dream. And, in the tree-tops, in and outside of the village, parades of colorful birds, in far fewer numbers, still continue to chirp away as purposely as the classical concerto conductors of yesteryear. And around the village, the ever diminishing forest cover, which has served as a buffer zone between Kanilai and its neighborhood villages, the once untouched virgin land, now represents the tragedy of the disappearing natural sanctuary of our flora and fauna. At a different time, and in a different circumstance, Kanilai village could have indulged in joy and pleasure of a different kind; promoting Gambian culture and other national interests of an economic nature; instead, debauchery, immorality and sin, have turned this unassuming village of reverence into an intemperate place of fornication. Now, like Bonto village, Kanilai has been branded as an unholy place, where many marriages are wrecked, some relationships broken, women raped, school going-age girls impregnated, and babies born to fathers they may never know.
The transformation of Kanilai from its serene innocence to a place of moral abomination, did not take much effort to accomplish. Yet today, the sad village qualifies as the Las Vegas of The Gambia, minus, of course, the opportunities that Vagas has to offer the millions of dream-chasers who swell its crowded streets to patronize the cozy, glitzy night-life that encapsulates the Las Vegas vibe. But, the untold murders and executions, which have also taken place in Kanilai, have easily qualified the village as The Gambia’s village of death. And, for a historical perspective, Kanilai turned down and dirty, only because its native son, Yahya Jammeh, notoriously drunken with power and fatuous ignorance, has transformed his home village into an intermittent open invitation brothel that services the pleasures of those who come there to worship at the alter Jammeh built to his honor. But, Jammeh’s motivations in turning Kanilai into a den of prostitution are purely political. In this role, he plays the pimp to hundreds of females who go there to answer to his coercive invitations. By providing the outlet for his bloated military, police and security officers, as well as the civilian officials and ordinary Gambians, free exercise of carnal pleasure at the expense of our sisters, daughters, mothers, neighbors, aunts, and other females, Yahya Jammeh seeks to cultivate loyalty and support from beneficiaries of his immoral largesse.
This week, barely four weeks after the three-week long sojourn in Kanilai, which saw the migration of the entire civil service and tens of thousands of people to his village, Yahya Jammeh and his entire civil service returned there under the pretence of yet another one of his touted “government retreats”, only four months after a similar one ended there. This infatuation with Kanilai is not without ulterior motives, but for a place where the bones of countless, unknown Gambian victims lie buried in unmarked graves, Kanilai is a place only a sadist would want to go near the decomposed bodies of their victims. But beyond that, Jammeh is increasingly feeling insecure being in Banjul, where an escape from a bloody overthrow is less likely than in Kanilia. To the many upright and decent natives of Kanilai village, Jammeh is like the son they wish was never born, and the bad dream they wake up to in the dead of night. There is no denying the fact Yahya Jammeh has turned into the curse of his place of birth, and that image, and the reality of Kanilai’s debauchery and immorality, will stay with the village for many generations to come, even as more salacious and damning revelations about the murders, gruesome tortures and fornications that really occurs there, come to light. In meantime, the midnight tortures continue, the unmarked graves remain untouched and hidden from public view; fatherless babies continue being made there; gullible wives join Jammeh’s bad idea; spouses abandon wives for a little pleasure; marriages are destroyed; relationships broken; and the tormented village of Kanilai shudder in pain and weep in utter disgust at what it has turned into. It is now a fait accompli that Kanilai village has been turned into a place of abomination where, murder, torture, fornication, debauchery and immorality have become the way of life, all because, Yahya Jammeh, the pagan worshipping devil of a human being, decided to turn his place of birth into one big brothel and the village where many Gambians go to die.
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