Editorial .
We have failed them; our own Wretched of The Earth
By Mathew K Jallow, Associate Editor
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The setting sun cast its reddish glow across the white-washed perimeter fence, where the shadow of the tall crimson east wall struggles to stretch out across the highway. The aura of serenity and somberness that surrounds the place was at once strange and awe-striking; mysterious and frightening. Darkness was setting in slowly over the imposing metal gate that faces the surging sea where the River Gambia empties into the mighty Atlantic. And across the Sere-kunda highway, beneath a canopy of lush green brush, a female agamidae lizard scampered hurriedly into the underbrush, pursued closely by a much larger yellow headed male lizard in much need of reptilian affection. And, barely visible in the growing darkness, an eerie sign festooned the imposing rustic metal gate, which had long ago begun to corrode of age. The menacing sign on the gate said it all, and then some; Mile 2 Prison. Today, the name Mile 2 Prison conjures up images of brutality unheard of elsewhere on the African continent; images of torture, of physical emaciation, and of extra-judicial executions. Mile 2 is a place where death and dying have become routine; where visible hopelessness and despair have reduced a once vibrant people to despondency and apathy. To the scores of Gambians who remain locked up in Mile 2, it is as if time has stopped. For, behind those impenetrateable concrete walls, a population is pathetically marooned; whose reality is confined to what their feeble and tormented minds can dream up; dreams that are as realistic as chasing of ghosts; or perhaps better still, chasing witches through the whispering hills of Sare Hella. But maybe, just maybe; time has not stopped, after-all. Maybe theirs is a world of illusions, and of make-belief far removed from our world; the real world. Whatever it is; however much we try to bring their predicament to life, give meaning to the senseless world that entombs them, draw attention to their helplessness, and scream misery from the mountain top, one thing is certain; Mile 2 Prison is a curse, and an aberration to our consciences; cruel and debasing, a sore wound, which has found it’s rightful place in our unwritten history; to remain etched into our collective memories for the rest of time.
Mile 2 Prison is a colonial-era institution, but the genesis of its world-wide notoriety is a new phenomenon; the creation of Yahya Jammeh’s military regime. Only a little over one decade ago, Mile 2 did not strike fear in the hearts of Gambians. Today, by a cruel irony, the prison complex has come alive for all the wrong reasons. For around the clock every day, tens of thousands of commuters and hundreds of vehicles ply the Banjul and Serekunda highway, completely oblivious of the suffering behind the tall oppressive walls of Mile 2 Prison; the unbearable tortures prisoners are subjected to; the unfathomable cruelty that the prison has become synonymous with, and the hundreds of prisoners who have given up on life, because no one can help them; no one can save them from the stranglehold of a madman whose regime has brought disrepute to a once peaceful nation. The Gambia is a changed country, for it has turned into a place where its people, once vibrant and hopeful, can no longer think for themselves or pursue their dreams; free, secure and un-afraid. And more than any other institution, Mile 2 Prison represents the inveterate canker of a regime whose era came and went so long ago, and whose hysteria and panache for the dramatic, lies smoldering in the graves of those cruel men who gave us an era we will never forget; Idi Amin, Sekou Toure, Mobutu Sese and “Emperor” Bukassa. But as these murderous dictators of a long gone era rot in their graves, and the living of their kind face a hostile world, to account for the murders and the wealth they plundered, The Gambia of all countries, is resurrecting to life, the evil and cruelty of a time long gone, a time of trauma and martyrdom, boldly represented in murals and tombstones carved in the blood of those who sacrificed their lives that others may have freedom: Gdansk; Prague; Birmingham, AL; Soweto; and Teinemang Square; names with faces, and names with no faces; all whose spirits speaks to us in our waking moments, and in our dreams. Yet Gambians have failed to live up to the causes for which they gave up their lives; the awakening they banqueted to us, the exemplary lives by which they lived and died, and the freedoms inherited in their dying. For, over Mile 2 Prison, the troubled ghost of Jallow Union floats in perpetual agony; the mortified soul of Steve Biko paralyzed by disbelief; and the eloquent spirit of Stokely Carmichael roams in restless frustration. But, even as their bodies are turned into the salt of the earth, they remind us of the freedom we own, but which was taken away from us, not by accident, but by calculation. And in their ghostliness, they demand us to take back that lost freedom; the freedom which they championed, until they drew their last dying breaths.
The mid-morning around Mile 2 Prison area plays out much like nature's theatre in all its awesomeness. To the east, where the mighty Atlantic Ocean hugs The Gambia River in a million-year embrace, the gentle, lazy waves flap incessantly against the serene coastline, slowly eating the beach away to create small fragile sand cliffs. And in the distance, across the grayish sea, Barra slave fort, in its medieval allure, is clearly visible, below where a swarm of sea gulls, in a hunger driven determination, dive ceaselessly into the warm waters, to pluck out unsuspecting fish from beneath the rippling waves. To the west of Mile 2, wide expanses of swampland teeming with marine life, stretch westward towards Bakau, Talinding, far away Mandinari and southward as far as the eye can see. But neither the demure of the nearby Palm Grove Hotel, nor the unpretentious solemnity that surrounds Wadner Beach can exorcise Mile 2 Prison of its visible deadliness. And in a strange way, there was uniqueness about Mile 2 that mirrored the image of Dachau, of Auschwitz, Tainanmen Square, and of Treblinka. For inside its tall fortified walls, lurks an uneasy quite behind the seeming innocent look; a captivating manifestation of its unforgiving cruelty. And everywhere one looks, the invisible scars of Mile 2 saturate the cool ocean air, to exemplify one more place where dreams go to perish. And as the darkness engulfs Mile 2 prison, a melancholic solitude slowly shroud the prison in a hateful poetic glory, but inside the prison proper, a thousand eye balls, as bright as the stars, stare listless into the nothingness. In the far corner of the prison yard, an emaciated human body, with skeletal bones visible from the distance, stared at the concrete wall, giggled, and muttered barely audible gibber to himself. In this oppressive environment, Mile 2 Prison has turned, not into a place where people go to atone for their wrongs against society, but a place where they go to die. In the minds eye, they are visible, mere shadows of their former selves; the hungry; the sick; the hardened skins; the listless look on their faces; the skeletal frames of their bodies; the big, bright sunken eyes; the blue flies swarming their bedazzled faces, and the frightening looks that have spelt death a million times in Treblinka, in Auschwitz and other God-forsaken places of darkness. Many have died here in Mile 2 Prison, more in one decade under Yahya Jammeh's dictatorship, than the entire history of the prison; a hundred by the last count, and still they continue to die; of hunger, of sickness, of torture. And, there are the executed whose gravesites remain unknown, unmarked, and out of sight. They were our friends too, our brothers, sisters, neighbors, family and fellow Gambians. But we seem not to care, and we have turned our backs on them. And so they suffer in silence, as time and the world passes them by. Our own "wretched of the earth," defeated and stalked by death. They are Gambia's forgotten; left to their own devices, in despair and without hope; not knowing if they will ever live to see another day; yet in their hearts they keep praying to an unknown diety for one more day. Just one more day!
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