Hey Wuri Keep up the good work,
We even want some more facts,please don't hesitate to add some more stuff
get the edge.

Matty.
>From: wuri jallow <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: There is beauty in diversity.
>Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 15:33:42 +0200
>
>Greetings to everybody! I joined the List very recently (in the wake of the
>unfortunate events of April 10th/11th). May I seize the opportunity here on
>the List to extend my deep-felt sympathy to all the parents and relatives
>of those who fell on those two fateful days. Most especially to the
>mothers! Yes, for only a mother knows through experience (pregnancy and
>labour) what it means to bring a child into this world. Above all under
>conditions lacking the soothing and comfort of epidural anaesthesia!
>Feeding that child at the breast and watching her/him grow, with high
>expectations of the great achievements this child will harvest. For that
>child to be shot in a student demonstration is naturally any mother's
>nightmare. To all the Mothers, may you be able to rise up from your (our)
>tragedy to be able to make something positive in the memory of the little
>ones. To Mr.Barrow's wife, hope you will gather strength to keep your
>husband's beautiful memory alive! He has already inspired many.
>I have been following the different shades of thought on the List and I
>must say 'there is beauty in diversity'! We should  continue cultivating
>the accomodating spirit. After the April event it is a fact that a lot of
>people are angry, and who wouldn't be? Nobody in their correct state of
>mind can condone the shooting of school children (in a peaceful
>demonstration or otherwise). It is important to keep in mind that anger as
>a reaction in this event is positive, but there should be room to move
>forward. In Pulaar (Fula) there is a saying, "no matter how angry you are,
>do leave some space where you can get happy, and vice-versa".
>
>In this List it seems that some people are so angry, that their faculties
>of reasoning are almost blurred. And when that happens the possibility of
>getting focused and being objective gets very slim. That anger can get to a
>point whereby there could be a conscious or subconscious strategy to block
>anything that is not in tune with what we want to hear or read. People got
>angry because President Jammeh did not cut his visit short at the G77
>meeting. People got angrier because Jammeh visited the children and the
>families affected to show remorse. People got even more angry because a
>commission of enquiry was set up to look into the events. Would it be
>soothing then if the opposite happened? Did the journalists take it upon
>them to search and interview those parents so that we can at least give
>them the right to vent exactly how they feel.
>
>
>Let us remember that one of the most instrumental dialectical realities
>that brought apartheid down was not only because on the one hand we had
>people who saw it as an evil system, but because of the fact that there
>were others too who were equally in for that system. Who in our age cannot
>remember the likes of Margareth Thatcher and their "no boycott" iron
>stance. Yet, a political leader's wife in the Gambia came out in the heat
>of the April gloom and hailed the former as the symbol of femininity! How
>many children, women and old people lost their lives in Azania as a result
>of Maggie's political affiliation with the Boers? This phenomenon known as
>development by contradiction in basic political thought was what moved
>South Africa forward to what we have today. Let us in our forward movement
>accept the beauty in diversity!
>
>Minister Farakhan in his One Million Man March address pointed out a
>crucial point. He said that when America bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the
>Japanese did not shout, rant or whine. They re-organised and are today
>relocating the most important businesses from Wall Street to Tokyo! People
>have the right to be anti-Jammeh but in the famous words of Fanon; "what
>matters is not to know the world but to change it". That brings me to Mr.
>Katim Touray's 'Framework for Change'. Mr. Touray took his time and energy
>to come up with that draft. He called on everybody to join hands with him
>so that in the end the piece would be a collective product. Mr. Touray as I
>understood never claimed dishing out a masterpiece. Yet instead of making
>the necessary adjustment(s) that people felt should be made, or coming up
>with a better alternative, Katim was crowned 'chief cobbler', because he
>liked Gambian music that happened to be presented on the List by Tombong. A
>metaphor/simile I for one never found fitting. And I am sure a Jawara or a
>Fatty, no matter how much Shakespeare or Chaucer they have chewed would
>never store that in their vocabulary. We all know what a load of cobblers
>represent for the Elizabethans or Chaucerians. I was hoping that we are
>different. Cobblers are professionals. It is important in our day and age
>to weed our vocabulary of such phrases by liberating our minds. Let us stop
>the biopsy of each other's brain cells when it comes to the ability to
>speak and/or write foreign languages!
>
>To Soffie Ceesay: in you I read woman at the zenith of her political
>intellect. Your resolve in the collective spirit distinguishes you as a
>woman of substance. Be rest assured that even those whom you are opposing
>may not like you, but for sure, they do respect you!
>
>Finally, let us remember that firewood or the cooker are important factors
>in cooking, but rice is never cooked from the outside of a pot. Let us
>address the burning issues together with our ordinary people up to the
>village level. Let us not under estimate the intelligence of our people and
>those who are there struggling with them on a daily basis. Let us not
>substitute ourselves for this force. Let us remember that the people who
>invented the legendary words 'Aluta Continua'( The Struggle Continues) Che
>Guevera and Fidel Castro meant serious business in uttering that slogan.
>Let the debate continue respectfully! Have a nice weekend.Sister Jay
>
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