By Mathew K. Jallow, Associate Editor

 

Ahead, the blue Atlantic waters stretched away and rippled westwards as far as the eye could see. In the distance, below the horizon, Kololi fishermen in three rickety canoes bounced up and down the ocean swells as if dancing to a Spanish rumba. To my left and right, stood several skeletons of unfinished construction of the hotel and casino that was never meant to be. As my eyes wandered northwards beyond the unkempt graveyard of incomplete hotel construction buildings, troops of nervous red mangrove monkeys were visibly feeding and eyeing me warily from their safe sanctuary amidst the tree top canopy. The monkeys jumped from tree to tree and from branch to branch where the leaves swayed lazily in the cool ocean breeze. And all around, the unbearable heat was almost visible in the haze of the distant mirages. Even the ground beneath my feet was hot, and the once lush grass, which provided food for the wandering cattle, had turned brown, burnt by the merciless April sun, and months of rainless sweltering heat. Over there they call it the dry season, but I prefer calling it the drought period. And that is exactly what it is.

The expansive spread of unfinished hotel structures once mirrored a dream and a vision as large as the ego of the man who at some point in time had everything the world could offer and then some. Today, the venerable Sierra Leonean millionaire, Bailo Ba Barry, is no more, and his hotel and casino dream may have gone down with him to his grave. Gone too are the troops of monkeys that once graced the dwindling stretch of bush around his hotel property. But for a time and for some moments, the monkeys provided much unsolicited attraction to tourists and locals who came there to be amused and to witness the wildlife habitat disappear right before their eyes. On the beach front amidst the sand dunes perched between the casino on the left and the hotel complex on the right, Solomon’s Hut, against all odds, still managed to eke out a living cooking tasty African seafood and meaty Jollof dishes for European tourists who dared to brave the young mobsters and the occasional mugger prowling the serene white sandy beaches.

 

At the far end of the country nearly four hundred miles away, Koina could not be more different from Kololi village. The lush green forest around the village was still largely un-spoilt, and the monkeys and beasts there had a feeding ground many Kombo area animals could only wish for. At the popular village well five hundred yards from the main bantaba, children drank and playfully threw the muddy water on each other as they ran and circled the shady mango tree. Barely three miles into the imposing forest nearby, there is an imaginary line that divides The Gambia and the Senegal.  Fortunately, though, out there, the politics of national identity has little or no meaning whatsoever, as villagers from the surrounding districts calculatedly walk across the imaginary border just as their ancestors had done through the ages.

By every Gambian standard of measure, Koina is a relatively large village, showcasing a fair number of large concrete houses spread evenly around the settlement, and dwarfing that symbol of poverty, the mud huts, which are home to the majority of its residents. But, Koina has something else going for it, for it is Alhagi Amara Touray country. Even a chance meeting with this soft spoken, indomitable and fascinating man is enough to show why his influence and reach have spread beyond the pristine woodlands that surround his secluded village. Alhagi Amara Touray’s warmth and generosity have touched the lives of many and his life’s philosophy of hard work, caring and sharing, have spread like a gospel whose message is dying to be heard. While Koina is the very last village on The Gambia’s easternmost border with Senegal, it is no different from any other village in the country. In the afternoon, the outskirts of the village are dotted with cattle feeding on dry grass, where rampaging sheep and goats forage under the cool brushes, and the protective hens nervously look upwards for the vicious sharp-eyed hawks and eagles seemingly floating above head looking to make a meal of newly hatched chicks.

 

            This narrative is only a small snapshot of two very different places, and two different communities hundreds of miles apart, but which today share the unfortunate misery of an unprecedented social and economic degeneration. In Basse, the blank stares on the faces of the people betray the agony of losing their common voice, a voice in which the inhabitants there loudly and proudly expressed themselves since the days of the late doyen of Fulladou East politics, Michael Baldeh. Today, Basse is only a shell of its former self, for the more things have changed there; the more they have remained the same. To the many unrecognizable faces, it looked like I came from another place and another time, and the agony of being so removed from a place I once knew so well haunted me. There were a multitude of unfamiliar faces with sunken cheeks and wrinkled leathery arms. Just yesterday they were all younger, full of life and motivated by the promises of tomorrow. But, time it seems has blunted their optimism.

As my mind’s eye journeyed through the Fulladous, the Niaminas and Jarras, everything there seemed forsaken by the spirits of our ancestors. It is as if God had turned His back on these poor pitiful souls, and this sad wretched land of ours. The images of a jungle road and red gravel dust blowing everywhere was etched in my mind as we maneuvered our way through potholed dirt road where for over three hundred miles, once lay the first class road we were so proud of. In village after village, we saw kids and elders engulfed in a cloud of dust left in the wake of our twice broken down bush van. As we passed little dusty villages, the hardened country folks too looked as though they were waiting for divine deliverance. Paradoxically, the hope that once uplifted their spirits up, now seemed to have left them in despair, but even as they waited and wandered, their softer sides manifested in the shy smiles, which permeated the humid air around them. Not surprisingly, at the Janjangbureh ferry crossing, it seemed time was standing still. Nothing there seems to have changed. The old ferryboats on both banks of the river just waiting for an accident to happen, still ruled the waters. Janjangbureh too it seems, was slowly losing the will to live.

 

In Bansang, I went in search of my old stumping grounds. The nightclub and the bar and restaurant where my friends James Alkali Gaye, Pierre Badjan and myself spent many free time hours savoring the best Bansang had to offer, were there no more. But if I went looking for nostalgia and sweet memories of yesterday, what I got was echoes of the music of Jaliba Kuyateh as “ku wo ku be sabo le noma” rang in my head over and over again. As if not to be outdone, Youssou Ndure’s émigré precipitously entered my thoughts too, and for an instance I was reliving that past I so yearn for, but a past forever gone. But there was no need for Jaliba and Youssou to compete for my attention, for in many ways my life still revolves around my experiences of the 70s and 80s; the music, the politics, and the social life. In short, I am still old school and very proud of it. Before I left Bansang daande mayo, I had to see an old friend Wuye at his street corner store, and sure enough the sacred ground where a group of us habitually sat, drank Attaya and chatted the hours away was empty too. I do not where Wuye and the rest went to, but I do know that one of the groups, Singateh who left the police to join the NIA, is wasting away in one of Yahya Jammeh’s prisons. But now, as the sun began to cast a long shadow over the town of Bansang, Niami-na, my Niami-na was beckoning. A divine force there was calling me to go.

 

The first place I visited in Niami-na is the small school and the abandoned chapel where it all began for me. Standing at the edge of Sare Gainako village facing Sambang, I could see large trees spread throughout the farmland, each of which has a story to tell: my story. This village that once prided itself of its large herds of cattle has today lost its bragging rights. Diseases and hunger have systematically disseminated the cattle herd that my grandfather Gainako Jallow bequeathed to his five sons. But I remember persistently bragging about our herd to the other boys from the surrounding villages and any adult who would listen to me. Still much has remained unchanged in Sare Gainako too. The dirt baked on the hands and bodies of the young boys accentuated by the grease left by spilt milk, the running noses and their salty grime which I saw the children suck into their mouths, the overpowering smell of cattle manure on their small frames, and the open sores oozing blood which invited an army of blue fly to a feeding frenzy. I had seen all this before. This is where I came from. It was my life too. But Niamina is also something else. It epitomizes The Gambia at its worst. Families divided and fractured by politics. Brother against brother, son against cousin, father against son; the divisive politics of Yahya Jammeh’s Banjul has found its way into our rural communities near and far. But more than that, the people there are leaving. The pull of the Kombos is irresistible, and its magnetism compelling.

 

As we drove through Jarra Soma, I saw familiar sights and unfamiliar people milling around things my eyes could not see. It was like a convention of the wretched and the noble. Among the crowd, torn clothing exposing the scratchy backs of a disheveled subsistence entrepreneurs, but also immaculately dressed African women dignified by their majestic gaits and flawless presence. I thought of Sankwia, and Sey Kunda and Farafenni and wandered how much of what I knew still remained there too; the people, the places and the social life. And Chief Buwa Kinteh ageing gracefully, but full of life’s wisdom, taught him by men of old, so wise in the ways of the world, so gifted in the art and science of tolerance and co-existence, so calculated in the way they lived their lives. The Kiangs like the Jarras are not home to me, but I was almost a favorite son there too as I lived their pain over the years and shared in the happy moments too. I cried with them in Manduar, grieved in Tankular, celebrated Kolior and danced with them in Jiroff. On my way to Brumang Bridge I remember visiting my elder brother in Kiang Karantaba where he worked as an agricultural extension worker. I remember him playing Beatles music over and over again.

 

The Fonis like the Nuimis have always fascinated me, perhaps because I don’t know these places well, but also because I grew up with many students from the Bwiam and Njongon areas and worked with others from the Sibanor circle. And now I keep wandering what they are doing and where they are, some childhood friends from the distance and not so distant past: Jean Colly-Fye, Habibou Badjie, Henry Jammeh, William Kujabi. The Kombos on the other hand, are familiar territory and Gunjur knows it, as does Farabantang, and Pirang and Banjulunding, and Sukuta, and Brufut and….but my favorite place is Brikama. I am attracted to Brikama’s rebellious steak, and the town’s perpetual refusal to take government’s nonsense, and any nonsense. Further north on the way to Banjul, the old poultry farm, turned Yundum College, turned Yundum Military Barracks brings back memories of my formative years. The Yundum College “Students Voice” newspaper Habibou Badjie and myself started and wrote, and the then Director of Education Mr. Jones tried unsuccessfully to have us stop publishing, and the subsequent riot we engineered there, all seem like only yesterday. I was elected by my class to sit on the “Staff and Student Council” that the administration cunningly created to preempt the troubles they saw brewing over the horizon. To think that getting the troublemakers close to him would save his day was a terribly naive miscalculation College Principal Mr. Rendall made. Yundum College is where I got the nickname Mao Tse Tung, and flooded the place with communist literature from China; China Pictorial, Mao’s Red Book, Mao’s caps and badges, you name it and from Cuba I got the Gamma, the communist party newspaper. As for Lamin village or better still Lamin town, I have a love and hate relationship with it; hatred for a terrible injustice I suffered there, and love for all the good times I had often at the home of my friend and former coworker Pierre Badjan. There are memories of living in downtown Lamin with an uncle during my teenage years.

 

The nearer I got to Banjul and Serekunda, the stranger the place seemed to me. Unlike the old dirt road from Koina to Brikama, which took us twenty-four hours travel, I was at least beginning to see paved roads, but the area looked like a war zone. There was the congestion, the chaos, the noise, the sound and smells and the mass of people going everywhere, and many going nowhere in particular. I saw a cyclist hit an agitated pedestrian. At the far end of the market square in central Serekunda, a taxi driver shoved what looked like a few Dalasi bills inside a police officers uniform pocket. Behind me an elderly woman who looked like she lost something in the faces of the mass of people, stepped on a banana peeling and slipped and fell. I tried to gauge the people to identify who Jammeh’s spies and killer were in their midst. Posters of Jammeh’s face were visible everywhere, and soldiers in uniforms marched menacingly in every direction I looked. There was unease calm in the air, and the intimidation was apparent, the fear palpable. I saw the expressionless faces and open mouths uttering words that will make no sound. Around the fruit stands children in tattered clothing picked through the rotten heap of fruits for a meal, and on the street the occasional SUV drove past, not caring, not interested in the plight of the people, and not moved by all the misery in their midst. Words without sounds, eyes wide open but seeing nothing, minds thinking thoughts that they dared not utter. The countryside today is a mere shell of its former self, and suburban is kept alive and bustling by the remittance of Gambia’s exiled sons and daughters. Jammeh’s rule has damaged our country beyond recognition and Yahya Jammeh does apparently not know the proverbs that admonish that “if you are in a hole, do not continue digging”. Now his ship of state is sinking. And no one can save him, but more importantly, he is just too late for salvation. His fate is sealed. Copyright © 2007. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this article or any other article or image, or portions thereof, in any form or context without the expressed permission of The Gambia Echo Newspaper.