The Cabinet Storm, Faraba, Gunjur, Brikama, Taaneneh
(JollofNews) – Crowds scatter and regroup as news of a third fatality reaches villagers in Faraba. Women, on knees, wail around blood, each dismally uncertain of whose womb has lost to brute force. While Julakay’s shills smell billowing smoke from the blazing equipage to gauge feat or defeat, those in Gunjur praise the custodian of fate that theirs wasn’t as gory.
FIRST VILLAGER: (Bending over a fallen victim) What assault to our oxygen! Come, O ye sworn to equity! Irritate your sight with the red of blood–of those that issued from your loins fed from genial dales of denial Faraba.
SECOND VILLAGER: Rise! Faraba, rise! Denial hath registered its trademark and hence stolen three treasures of your morrow.
THIRD VILLAGER: Be swift, stallion-poised yet measured! Faraba is denied her breath, and Gambia her bread. Hurry! For ours is a denial today! Every pebble; every particle of sand this hour bears witness against this regime. For we fondled our hopes that Gambia has decided.
FIRST VILLAGER: Gambia has divided or decided? Alack! Barrow hath divided–his rule derided!
ACT Three, Scene 2
In Taaneneh, near Gunjur, villagers gather to hear from an elderly man. His hair glistens with grey and his back bent. He supports his stature on a wooden staff, a token of his age and termites’ delight.
OLDMAN: (In a catharsis) Bleed not, Taaneneh, fret not nor rave, O forbearance.
For wise and measured are those that even in justified rage still counsel tolerance.
Adieu! O confederates of greed, too cormorant for the weak and those feeble.
Trade in currencies of dexterous deceit to devour our cemetery and its people.
ACT Three Scene 3
At State House, Barrow paces back and forth. First Lady fetches him from video calls from Senegal’s Macky Sall, the Dean of the Diplomatic Corp and the European Union. The President trips, almost falling.
FIRST LADY: We swim not with fins that are concrete. Faraba, Gunjur, and a deluge of agitation galore. But rise a man or stoop a whoring bosom to whoever summons. Please hearken to Faraba, if not Gunjur! Or yet, address the ramshackle that galls thy cabinet–the murders and street crimes that besmirch thy name, the land grabbing, the epileptic economy; for these are but fins of steel thou can’t swim with.
Barrow is quite unsteady. First Lady holds his one arm and puts another around his neck.
BARROW: Soothsayer!
Soothsayer arrives with guards and attendants.
FIRST LADY: Speak, O worthy Soothsayer–of sweet tidings that my liege may recollect himself this hour. The country doth quiz more and seldom rests in calls from polar trumpets. My liege requires answers to questions of the future. Speak! O thou that dines with sages in the rainbow.
SOOTHSAYER: I see Saturn with an unusual ring of baneful prognostication, O thou from Mankamankunda. Be mindful of that which besotted Yahya–its sweet caresses, its accounts of superfluity and travels of gratuity.
BARROW: Do I restructure cabinet or not? Speak! O worthy Soothsayer!
SOOTHSAYER: Thy predecessor would dine with a new cabinet at noon and wake with another the morrow. Gambia’s prosperity hinges not on frequent hiring and firings.
BARROW: What counsels thou?
SOOTHSAYER: Forsake the occult and thrust not thy hope in Marabouts. They only beckon thee to algorithms of the dark.
BARROW: And thou?
SOOTHSAYER: I shun shrines and seldom permit the word ‘sacrifice’ on this tongue.
BARROW: Quiet! (He grabs his own ears) Let these hear not words that travel too fast too far.
SOOTHSAYER: (Gestures with a bow) My lord!
BARROW: Does Fatoumata need to go? Is Ousainou a fitting replacement that guarantees mine and his fair fare?
SOOTHSAYER: Is this country already too heavy on thy shoulders as to structure him well for ascension–a delight to the core of his thoughts?
BARROW: Do I lose much of PPP if O.J is jettisoned?
SOOTHSAYER: Like a Pegasus, be swift in pace if occasioned–yet like a turtle, too wary of hasty steps. O.J has tarried well within reach of three of Gambia’s regimes.
BARROW: Demba Jawo?
SOOTHSAYER: Small he seems, yet bigger. Thou dare not offend the fourth estate. If he dons again those robes of honest journalism, his installments shall assume a fresh assault on thy enterprises and too many skipped by sell-out scribes.
BARROW: Thinketh thou I make a good president?
SOOTHSAYER: Thou art dangerously embattled, yet afloat. Taaneneh still cries while Golden Lead mounts a fresh manoever on Gunjur and Sanyang. For Brikama, O mighty Brikama–it is the cradle of every government’s trouble. Think of Jawara and the water rampage. Remember Jammeh and Ebrima Barry whose name is inscribed on April 10thof two millennia after Christ.
Enter ghosts of three young men that frighten Barrow
BARROW: O Faraba! Retire! I did it not! Let Barrow sleep now!
Enter another ghost. It is of a small child
FIRST LADY: My husband is febrile, worthy Soothsayer.
BARROW: Behold! What lights snarl at mine composure, what intruding meteors?
(He turns towards door and sees all four ghosts not flinching. He runs to the window as if trying to scale over. Upon every turn of his head, a burning light confronts him)
SOOTHSAYER: Thou appears weak and too spent!
BARROW: Thou canst say I did it! I knew not much English, let alone the correct sense of the word ‘sacrifice’. It was glib and a slip of tongue! If anything, I’ll sacrifice my entire cabinet. Prithee retire! O combustible scarecrows!
FIRST LADY: The forces of the unseen rattle my husband. He quakes with a fit to warrant a physician. He is too abstracted to benefit from thy counsel this hour. Guards!
(Attendants and guards rush in to hold the president on his feet as a doctor arrives)
Act Three, Scene 4
Comedians in Dakar put on big screens vignettes of Barrow trying to scale a State House window in fear. Newspaper accounts report that while on a video call with Macky Sall, Barrow forgot to turn of his phone as curious Senegalese counterparts watch what unfolded next.
COMEDIAN: Hahahahahahahahaha! Gambie am na porrblem!!!
To be continued, insha Allaah!
“That these thoughts might inspire many a reader. And from thenceforth might rise those to change Africa. If not, Gambia. Or if not, one of its muddy streets.” Gambiano
Written by Ebrima Papa Colley
Poetring on tears and death ?
Yes…and why do you think writers write–whether prose, poetry, or drama?
Yes, Nafi. And on what themes were most works written and why?
Ebrima Kollley, I think your poem is irresponsible and degrading, we the people of Faraba are still mourning our dead, people like you are making fun of that. Look for another joke or thought whatever you might call. I bet you will not make a joke if one of this victims were your own blood relatives. Chill out!!!!
Fabara,
Or Did you want to say Faraba? Also, please tell me what looks or sounds like a “joke” about the Faraba incident in this piece? The problem with a lot of us Gambians is we lack the basic knowledge of literature. Every film you see, including films about Islam, Christianity, or Judaism are written and directed by writers and directors–sometimes “based on a true story.” I’m sure you’ve seen that on your screen many times.
Of course you’ll label this a “joke” and the next day watch “The Message” about the Prophet and Islam and assume that one isn’t literature. One last thing, please this isn’t a poem. It’s drama!
At long last, At long last! Gambiano resurfaces to continue the soothsayer series. Will we be privileged to see this script turn into a play, a play that might condition us to reflect on our existence from the angle of a literary work that generates both a palpitating fear of what’s to come next and a transfixing serenity that defies logic.
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Your work has taken me into an ecstatic realm of awareness more than all the tragic plays of Sophocles that I have so far read.
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Thank you EBrima (Gambiano) for massaging some balsamic literature into my bones, my muscles and my day. Please do not stop.
Mwalimu,
Thank you. I like the English you write. Most of you write far better than I ever could. Indeed, turning the series into a complete play has always been more than a mere contemplation. But time has been very uncharitable. Maybe some day, it will be done. Also, Gambia’s readership seems to have a limited number that appreciates archaic English. Perhaps that will change. Again, thank you.
Great literary work that must continue.
Quite refreshing!
Andy,
Thank you. It will continue, insha Allaah.
@Gambiano: let’s assume the play will be for an American or a European audience. In my mind, then it will be legitimate to have it in English or any other Indo-Germanic language. If on the other hand it’s for a Sen-Kambi-Ya (the name is deliberate) audience, it undoubtedly has to be in our languages, I believe.
The two above scenarios are tantalizing prospects, I should say. I might even like to try my hands at translating from and to two or three languages.
NB: I’ll suggest you allow room for criticisms such as those from Nafey and Fabara Banta Langsarro. They are essential cultural cues as to how the masses un/appreciate literary werks. And why that’s the case.
For example, would their reactions be different if the play was written in Jola or Mandinka?
All the best of luck, as you trod on.
Mwalimu,
Candid observations with very cogent suggestions. Yes, Nafi and Fabara’ s reactions might have been different if the play was written in our local languages. It will be very nice of you to try your hands on translating, please.
I’m not sure if you do speak Mandinka, but there are so many literary pieces about Foday Kaba Dumbuya, Mama Jankay Waali, etc that merely lament the history connected to them some of which was tragedy.
Of course, I have to entertain criticism, especially from Nafi and Fabara irrespective of how they premise it. My biggest sorrow, each time I write stems from why most Gambians still struggle with basic knowledge compared to Senegalese, Nigerians, Ghanians, etc? Is it because of Jawara, Jammeh, and now Barrow?
Well I don’t trod the road of making generalized distinctions between Africans based on nationality. Why? Because these nations and countries that exist in our continent are not natural. They are imposed on us by white people,therefore they have no relevance to us, at least as far as my personal cognitive perception of our realities go. For me, there is only Afrikka/Affirika and yembeh Afrikka.
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As far as our appreciation or lack thereof it of literature goes, I suspect there are several factors at play here. Some summountable other less so. First and foremost, previous generations of Afrikkan writers (Sedat Senghore, Chinua Achibe, Sheikh Anta Diop, Ousman Sembéne, Lenry Peters, just to a few) have taken us to the graveyard by exclusively producing literary work in colonial languages. This has led to a situation where the people feel connected to the stories (plot lines) but can’t reproduce any learned narrative.
Second, very little was done to make the consumption of “home knowledge” a priority. That’s why our cultures are slowly but surely dying away. The effect is a lost identity. Will we be able to reverse the damage done? That squarely rests on the shoulders of gate keepers like you and all the talents out there. It will be tremendous if the new generation realizes their responsibility and carry it to the next one.
Yes I speak Mandinka. If I get you right, you mean transforming the oral stories of Mama Jankay Waali and Foday Kaba into written drama and eventually a play. Well let me put it this way: I think our cultures and histories are a very fertile ground for the research, production and archiving of tons and tons of literary work in all genres. The setback is the absence of incentives for such an undertaking. That in itself is a tragedy. Yet we should all do the little we can under these hash circumstances. In The Gambia.
Our government can’t even produce material for the adult literacy classes. Yes, I have a first hand experience.
I might come around to translating first one piece of your series into Mandinka and Wolof first.
Thanks for the permission though.
Mwalimu,
Always a pleasure to read you. It looks like you have a broader lens than I do. Achebe, Diop, Peters, etc came off age in colonial Africa at a time when very few might think like you and I do in 2018.
If I have my way, math, geography, history, literature, physics, geometry, trigonometry, etc will all be instructed in Mandinka, Wollof, Jola, Fula, Serahule, etc.
And yes, our governments can’t cater to even adult literacy sufficiently. Think of the excess travels, per diems, useless workshops, etc. Think how such money could have been utilized otherwise to fund useful programs.
You and I are on the same side of the fence with regards to our languages being accorded the appropriate space in our nation live. Our languages are damn capable of accommodating and transporting knowledge in any field of human endeavor.
So it beats the imagination why we are still saddled with colonial imperial languages. But just knock at the door of bad leadership and you will find your answer. The petit burgeoise in Afirikka is sucking every juice in our collective dry. It serves only their interest for us to continue with English as the official language. And newly, I don’t know if many are paying attention, French is on tract to becoming our second official language. Please my people, raise your voices and fists against a second wave of enslavement. I, in my own little way will be fighting with two instruments:
1) I have finished writing a fifteen point petition to the government of The Gambia and the CRC for the abolition of English as the primary and only official language in The Gambia.
2) In the year 2019, I will be grandstanding at the border between Gambia and Senegal (with one foot in Gambian territory and the other in Senegalese territory) to demand the unconditional eradication of the border to facilitate the free movement of goods, services and people as it use to obtain before the savages set foot on our land.
I will do this with an entourage of Gambian and Senegalese journalist in tow, for the public to get engaged.
Where I will make this demands, we will also introduce a few symbolic elements of our inallianable ONENESS that should transform our existence as never before:
A) A Sen-Kambi-Ya birth certificate, ID document, passport and voting card. The pages of these documents will not be in English or French. God forbid! They will be in ALL our glorious languages that are spoken in that part of Afrikka.
B) A Sen-Kambi-ya currency that will be marked in a lingua Franca of the two countries.
C) A proposal to the two puppet governments to speed up the integration of the two peoples, who are unjustly separated by a historic catastrophe perpetrated by the beastial white savages. Again, do not expect to read this document in any whitemans language.
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Yours in the service of The Gambia and the Black Nation, I remain.
Hahaha wonderful ideas but in creating our own official languages and in schools Please Let’s completely avoid using the english/French alphabets
Babaaaaaaaaaaaaa,
Good to hear from you again. I hope it’s the same Baba. I was going to say even the 123 you see belonged o the Arabs. Yep, the Arabs invented these figures you’ve been using and they were stolen from them. That’s why some companies and institutions still call them Arabic numerals.
Deep down from my heart Baba, I wish to share something with you. Out of love.
The alphabet system you call French or English belongs neither to the French nor the British. This alphabet system has its roots in Ancient Rome. Some call it the Latin Alphabet. Even though it’s the most common alphabet used in the world, it’s not the only one. The N’Ko Alphabet, developed in the 1940s by Solomana Kanteh is an equally sophisticated system of writing. Writing, don’t forget is just a symbolic constituent that represents human sound systems. So we can even create a hybrid Alphabet or start from null. The possibilities are endless if we commit ourselves to self reliance and the ideals of true pan-Africanism.
I guess your post was well intentioned but it smirks of the disease that Gambiano alluded to above; i.e the African youth has abandoned the quest for knowledge, wisdom and understanding and replaced it with consumption. Consumption of western ideals, cultures and products. But we can turn this phenomenon over to our advantage by enlightening folks about themselves, Africa and the world.
Don’t wait Baba, join the bandwagon. You can do it!
Mwalimu,
If we have more thinkers like you, Africa will rise. English isn’t India’s official language even though the British Empire colonized and pillaged them. But Indians adopted Hindi as their official language even though there’s Gujurati, Tamil, Telugu, etc.
If you type into Google “Just five countries…Gambiano” you’ll see what I wrote about the Senegambia integration years ago. Unfortunately, the same powers we complain about won’t let that happen. They need markets, raw materials, loan borrowers, “continue to get in debt to your neck so we can continue to tell you what to do,” or “keep lining up for visas while we reject most applicants as they keep paying exorbitant application fees to keep us rich.”
Mark my words, the French won’t easily let Senegal gain complete independence. And this is the main stumbling block. We have to understand French policies in Africa. Senegal can’t save it’s foreign reserves anywhere but in French coffers which they can’t withdraw. They can’t tap their natural resources without France giving them permission. And most ridiculously, they have been paying colonial tax to France since you and I weren’t born. Please think of these impediments!
When Guinea’s Saikou Touray protested against the colonial tax, the French attacked him and destroyed much of Guineas infrastructure including schools, libraries, office buildings and fined Guinea, saying the poor nation should pay for colonialism which was a favor. Also, they printed fake bills and injected them into Guinea’s economy to trigger massive inflation.
Any African leader in French West Africa who dare speak like you did above is always considered a threat to French interest and is removed in a coup. Over 90% of all coups in French Africa were staged and sponsored by France, including our beloved Thomas Sankara with beautiful ideas similar to what you wrote. I can go on forever, Brother….
Mwalimu am at Work After closing i will go Close to your to you Comment and later back to you,
Mwalimu am at Work After closing i will go Close to your Comment and later back to you,
I hereby permit myself to repost the link and the plain text of Gambiano‘s article regarding military integration of five West Afrikkan countries. This was posted in 2013, I however believe the content is Very apt for today‘s Gambia and relevant for reflection and introspection on where we were vis-a-vis where we are today.
Is it too late to heed? Posterity will tell.
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http://kibaaro.com/just-five-countries/
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UST FIVE COUNTRIES
Reads 3920 times.
Gambia, Senegal, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, & Mauritania
Dear West Africa,
I just seek a conversation with five of your beautiful shores. I hope you’ll let me go ahead, won’t you? Trust it, I’ll neither be derisive, nor vulgar with them. It is but a missive from the bowels of conscience that I thought could be charioted in chaste language. Only that I can’t promise others won’t discern a jeremiad in its literature. I begin from the dales of Futa Djallon to the dunes of Nouakchott. And from the musical swash of Goree island’s waves, to the strips of sylvan Gambia, a son says peace!
Millitary coups and their corollary instability have been Africa’s worst enemy than poverty. In fact, Africa isn’t that dry a clime seared of fecundity irrespective of this almost becoming an axiom in Western media. This article whispers a cue which, if heeded, might solve a malignant conundrum. Unless instability bids us adieu, Africa will remain behind.
Gambia, Senegal, Mauritania, and the two Guineas can chart a military alliance. Strings to that synergy should, and most peremptorily, pronounce a two-term limit for every president. Now, as exigent as a continuous flow of oxygen to a gasping lung, another provision should sculpture in the constitutions of participating countries that any coup in any of the five nations seriously provokes a high voltage military intervention by a coalition army.
Further, any reigning president in any of the above countries that has ruled for over eight years has to step down right now. Gambia and Senegal can start this. But how many Guineans and Mauritanians live in either country? A lot, right? One thing disturbing about man is his apathy to useful cooperation. And as soon as the results of that cooperation by others glitters to accretion, he seeks to savor the ensuing jamboree.
All of you remember what’s called ‘Army Chief of Staff’, especially in The Gambia, right? The military in these five countries will be headed by one chief. Turns will be taken, say, every three years. So, the army chief can come from Senegal for three years and hands over to another from Mauritania, Gambia, Conakry, or Bissau at the end of his term.
Perhaps some of you presuppose, “But why not include other West African countries?” See, man is a very contentious creature. Otherwise, O.A.U [Organization of African Unity] would have unified Africa. I dread begging more nations to the utopia yet. Their iconoclastic propensity would, I’m sure, deign to accept an invitation. So, let’s start with only five. Believe me, brothers and sisters, we’ll become the envy of the sub-region. A name like EWA (Examples of West Africa) may come later for ease of nomenclature. Ask why few selected countries in Asia are called “The Four Tigers”. And one of them has been a financial rivulet for our Gambia.
See, I don’t know about you; but I’ve broken a wont votive of a sabbatical. I’ve remained aloof of Gambia’s writing precinct for over a decade now. The most I’ve done was to throw few stanzas of poetry under readers’ comments. Quite a few times did I add my two cents to a discourse of common bearing at JollofNews, Kibaaro, and Hellogambia. And quite a number of readers, as bellicose as they were, asked me to pick a political stance, reveal my real name, and hurl curses of febrile indignation at villains they supplicate against. To those same folks, I say the same. I’ll not reveal my identity. Why? Because what I write isn’t about me. It’s about an orb seeking honest intellection; an orb which, if accorded proportionate investment of thought and action will turn those donkey drivers in the streets of Serrekunda or Brikama into assets of this age of service economy. Also, I don’t bask in vainglory. I instead dodge the rays of recognition. And I’m not an intellectual. I can barely spell my own name! I was going to write this with the keenest avoidance of the first person narrative technique – but alack!
Back to the orb—those squirrels jumping on boughs lying high or low somewhere in North Carolina can vaunt that a dim-wit army officer can never seize power in the United States. Gosh! How I wished I could change this sentence to “Those leaders in Africa abusing providence and scorning reason can trumpet that a coup d’état can never occur in their nations.” Some African nations enjoyed decades of stability only to witness an ignorant army officer stain that national transcript with a coup. This means not even Senegal or Ghana can say they’re naturally immune to the insanity of few dastardly-situated military officers. Did any of us bother to ask Dadis Camara of Guinea Conakry why he seized power? What about Robert Guey of Ivory Coast, just to recall a few?
When you ask an average African “What will bring peace and stability to their homeland?” They quickly retort, “Democracy, Rule of Law, Human Rights, blah! Blah! blah!” While this is correct, such democracy needs a protection. That protection has remained quite elusive to the bulk of West Africa. This is why I suggest a military alliance. If soldiers in a given African nation know that seizing power invokes a sub-regional wrath as well as a powerful coalition force against them, trust me, they won’t think of overthrowing democratically-elected governments.
Why is stability a leitmotif in this piece? A university business professor engaged me in a discourse at a banquet some time ago. And I’ve never met him before. I was the only black male at the banquet, looking somewhat foreign in the middle of Tea-Party America. After whizzing the usual questions of curiosity at me, it was my turn to quiz him. And my one and only question was, “Why don’t you Americans invest in Africa much?” He responded most succinctly with only a word, “Instability.” That breviloquence, glibly unleashed, goaded my poise to an imposing acquiescence.
Guys, you think AT&T will plant its fiber optics in Abuko or somewhere in Cassamance knowing that a smooth transfer of political power is never guaranteed there? Or will Walmart open a store in Serrekunda with the same thoughts in mind? And for those that don’t know, Walmart throws away food enough to feed the entire Gambia! And because our telecoms companies aren’t among the leviathans yet, a call from USA to Gambia for fifteen minutes costs more than a meal at McDonalds. Those of you thinking that America or England will go solve our African problems for us, keep hallucinating. Our underdevelopment and poverty helps them a lot. They’ll never ask our dictators to quit power as long as we don’t have a lot of oil.
And readers, I do see people bickering without offering practicable solutions to our problems. Talk is very cheap, folks. Let’s not just argue for the heck of it. Add recommendations! I’ve brought forth mine. What are yours? Curse the Dickens out of me if you don’t like the few points I’ve raised. But for oxygen’s sake, do propound your own solutions to some of the problems I mentioned. I hardly have time for a philippic.
Let’s first put in place a guarantor for stability. Next we can work on economy building. A day of chaos undoes twenty-five years of nation building when bullets and bombs drop. Remember, Gambia didn’t register a military coup until 1994. Before this, she was dubbed Africa’s doyen of democracy and stability. When doyens soil what crowned them most, what’s left of myrmidons but anything savage! Mark! O ye men of the land of Kunta Kinteh! Prithee hark!
AUTHOR: Gambiano
Gambiano821@gmail.com
O Mwalimu! O time, the pages of which thou turneth back
To bring forth what younger energy–or poise I seem to lack
In this moment of our Gambia and Africa’s foisting challenges
For I scribble not these in mirth, but with a mind that engages
Our leaders, our rich and poor–, our men and needy women folk
Any with intelligent minds rich and bright as the yellow of a yolk
N.B: I have to thank the energy and passion you portray, Mwalimu in doing all you’re doing. Africa needs folks like you. I pray that we’ll one day wake up and see a different Africa–a beautiful Gambia of peace and prosperity where joy abounds and the multitude revels in intelligent thinking and productive behavior.
O Mwalimu! O time, the pages of which thou turneth back
To bring forth what younger energy–or poise I seem to lack
In this moment of our Gambia and Africa’s foisting challenges
For I scribble not these in mirth, but with a mind that engages
Our leaders, our rich and poor–, our men and needy women folk
Any with intelligent minds rich and bright as the yellow of a yolk
N.B: I have to thank the energy and passion you portray, Mwalimu in doing all you’re doing. Africa needs folks like you. I pray that we’ll one day wake up and see a different Africa–a beautiful Gambia of peace and prosperity where joy abounds and the multitude revels in intelligent thinking and productive behavior.
If words can speak back, yours will tell me to stop reading them for the 30th time. Your mighty pen has left a trail of indelible ink on my mind, dry. I have scoured the net for more from you. Nothing.
Pleasure and longing for the new that never came but the old is always tantalizing.
Ach…….we only desire to make it sweet for our people.
Mwalimu,
And you’re no lesser writer. Trust me, others are reading what you write and we all feel the writer in you. Dr. Lenrie Peters would have been proud of a Gambian like you. I didn’t put much of my writing on the internet. Circumstances back home force me to, sometimes, and that’s why you could see that my themes have mostly been about Gambia.
But I’ve written a complete manuscript ready for publication only to be asked by a worldwide conglomerate to relinquish ownership of copyrights, film rights, etc. I told them if I do that, Gambia would lose credit and who knows where that piece would end? They wanted exclusive ownership and offered me some money which I declined. I’d rather die with it than give it up to others who will obliterate the work’s Gambian origin and claim it theirs.
I hope I’ll one day be able to purchase your book in a bookstore. No digital copies. Just pure paper where Gambiano has left traces of his mind. Taking me to places I’ve never been to. Oh! how I would love to retire with such a hardcover to a secluded beach and nourish my imagination with pure literary lust.
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Writing and making Peters proud where he is, is indeed an honor. But I am just a student still learning from generous masters like yourself the art of putting my thoughts into words. I am determined to get better by the day. We are blessed with so many unbelievably beautiful languages and I intend to produce a few works in these languages before my time on earth is done.
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All the best with the manuscript. Do it for Gambia.
Mwalimu,
You write far better than a lot that call themselves professors.
Writing, sometimes could be a gift to some people. You look like one of those.
Of course, a lot of Gambia’s good pens passed through Armitage, Gambia High, st. Augustine’s, Nusrat, etc, it’s common sense that sometimes it’s more of nature and less of nurture. Nevertheless, nurture can be a key contributor. I hope that one day I’ll also retire to a sylvan Gambia with your book in my hands.
I wouldn’t refer to any literary work as Irresponsible but I can surely opine that there is a right place and time for even efforts meant to bring about progress of a people and there environment.
It has never been a surprise to me that people have been shot an killed in the new democratic democratic dispensation of the Gambia as the undertones of many comments and articles persist in vindicating a despotic regime and appeasing that regime’s self incurred odium to short falls in a democratisation process.
Who among the present authorities could have ordered those red-eyed idiots: shoot them if they protest? At least the blame this new administration must bear is; why the whole Gambia police force and army are not restructured after all of us undoubtedly knowing that the two security apparatuses are infested with witnesses and even actors in the murders of innocent citizens by that beast of a ruler? Or, should simply take to our common recess of excuses that the despot has done a lot in the Gambia though he killed many citizens and non citizens alike. When literary arts becomes more a hobby than its glorious good purpose, some brilliant literatures no doubt have in them the potentials to portray a God out of demons.
I hope poets in the country can inspire in enlightening the hearts of citizens of all walks of life in the country, and also, help to inspire knowledge, in agriculture, science and technology. I hope it also inspire the new government in helping making metal, glass and cement producing industries flourisj in order to make the vital infrastructural materials affordable to the actual skilled nation builders.
I have had a wonderful experience many years a ago to have a part time cleaning job in a very important small warehouse. In the small building, I found designers, metal worker and electromechanics who make components for farming machinery. They are not English or French. They were as young as 24 to 35. Now I wonder if some kind of thick rich purposeful poetry did in fact inspired those young men or perhaps their language which obviously to them is also rich.
I plead readers to excuse me for the wrong use of the Almighty English words and do their best to make some sense out of what I’m trying to relay. The worst of the spoken English I’ve heard comes from the English themselves however.
Jack,
Well articulated and noted. Writing is a very significant weapon. I’ve written, in my my Jammeh’s Soothsayer series, how to change Gambia’s economy. You can Google the acts and scenes published by Kairo, Jollof, Freedom, Kibaaro, etc.
As you already know, we use writing to inform and sensitize, not just entertain. When Jammeh was doing it, I came up with the Jammeh Soothsayer series. When Barrow started it, I warned him about a possible Barrow’s Soothsayer series. Now here is it.
A glaring difference is that during Jammeh’s time, the killings were mostly state sponsored. In Barrow’s Gambia, both state forces and criminals are doing the killing. It doesn’t bode well for the current administration. Even business interests are on the side of killers in today’s Gambia. May Allaah help our dear nation.
Gambiano, I read widely igeohese forums here and also other Gambia media online more than I actually comment, so therefore, i read a lot of your artistic works. I am very much enthused by your animations as well. I can’t deny the fact that you are very much talented in broad ways. So please accept the thinness of my ideas for I am not that skillful a writer of English.
What I object to is when folks put a lot of significance to An All Correct English when in reality we have not perfected our very own languages that yourself and many of us believe should be our “languages” of instruction in order to make breakthroughs in science and technology. Haven’t you realised for yourself that not all Britons can write like you? I’m sure you have many a time read horrible English in major newspapers but that’s not to say you don’t make a sense out of them. What I would like to urge you is to inspire others rightfully in their different walks of lives through English or transliterated national languages while we continue to be instructed in schools in English, in learning chemistry, physics, trigonometry, geometry…
Implying that language is a facture behind our underdevelopment in my opinion is evasive, and also indicates our laziness and lack of will power to be upright citizens who may hold or be holding public offices.
May all our prayers for the common good be answered.
Jack,
Aameen! May our prayers for our good be answered. Left to me, our national assembly will deliberate in our local languages–no English. It was colonialism and oppression that forced us to belittle our own. Not just language, but please look at how women bleach their skin. The next time you view a cross section of our women on TV, newspaper, etc, please ask yourself how many are wearing their natural hair. We have a serious disease. It is extremely difficult to fight it. They use Africans to bring down other Africans. They use Africans to brainwash other Africans.
It’s indeed encouraging that you call our tongues “national languages”, Jack. You’ve come far not to adjectify a core element of our identities as local, native, vernacular and all those demeaning connotations. Credit to you for that.
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If you will kindly permit, I’ll tell you how I view the issue of English as the language of power in The Gambia followed by my own traumatic experience with the language in question.
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According to Gambia’s own eminent linguist, Sidia Jatta, more than 70% of The Gambia’s population can’t speak, write or understand English. The level of competence and fluency of the English speaking 30% also varies greatly with a high tendency to use mother tongue sentence structures in both speaking and writing. Am not saying there is anything wrong with that. But it’s missing the mark by leaps and bounds. For that reason, I’m of the opinion that parliament has to enact a law purposefully to mark a clear feasible path that will be inclusive for and to the 70% of our people who are discriminated against by denying them an agency in the management of their taxes and other affairs. Why do I say that? The language in all branches (legislature, judiciary and executive) of government is English. That’s what makes it the language of power. Our very own languages are peripheral to English, French and Arabic in the corridors of power. Interestingly enough, from Dawda, down to Adama, our languages become official during campaign and election cycles, because this is the only time they want the people to understand whatever they are saying and play their ethnic hypocrisies. When this periods are over, the 70% just becomes as unimportant as before. Is that what you call a participatory democracy?
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Let me once more make it clear that I care less about anyone’s competency in any particular language, I only want to be able to communicatively discern the message. Period.
My buttocks have been beaten raw, blue and red because I misspelled or mispronounced one English word or the other. Dirty smelling bones were put around my neck if I dare to speak what the irrational teachers called vernacular. This violence haunts me until today. That’s a crime in itself and the fact that we continue to teach children who have their own splendid mother tongues in English, French and all what not is a moral crime. We should be ashame of that as a people and an “independent nation”.
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Jack asked if language truly matters for us as a people to achieve prosperity and a better standard of living? I assume his insinuation is that hence we have not even gone so far as to standardizing our languages, why don’t we stick out with English, because after all what you do with a tool is much more important than which tool is been used. I agree. But English has been with us for more than a hundred years and we are still down, down below in every world ranking; from sports to economics, to health and everything that comes to your mind. Isn’t that telling?
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Yours in the service of The Gambia and the Black Nation, I remain.
Mwalimu,
Wollaahi you write very impressively. And your ideas are brilliantly generated. You see, good writing isn’t just good diction, but good concept engineering. You have both! I love the Sidia Jatta reference. That’s why some people say, “My body die for you…” instead of I feel sorry for you. It’s what my Literature teacher at Gambia High School used to call “thinking vernacular and speaking English.” But like Jack said, we have to find a way to make our local tongues supreme. Imagine announcing on BBC or CNN one day that the official languages of U.K or USA will be Mandinka, Jola, Wollof, or Fula? It will cause world war 3, 4, or even 5. But like I said, they use Africans to brainwash Africans. No wonder our women hate their own hair, skin, etc. And the next day they complain about racism!
Thank you Gambiano for the kind words. If it’s coming from a refined pen like yours, then after all, I might be making some progress, with the hope of getting better over time.