Sidebeh, wow!  You really scripted the essence of Dumo.  Yes, I second you
contention that there is none that experienced detention in the Gambia than
Dumo.  I think this is a good window for both those who knew or just heard
of Dumo.  Thanks for your thoughts.

Chi Jaama

Joe Sambou


>From: Momodou S Sidibeh <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: THE "DUMO TRIALl"
>Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 00:55:08 +0100
>
>DEAR Annika and All,
>
>Having to hang on to timetables set by capricious and obviously unconcerned
>judges is a nightmare of its own. To then hang hope on those timetables -
>for one has no other recouse - just for the day to pass without as much as
>the courtesy of a proper adjournment by the judge, is total tragedy, worst
>than the Greek kind. One would have thought that throwing people in jail
>and
>then abandonning them to the caprices of absent-minded judges, as if such a
>hell-hole should be their natural habitat must be just as outrageous to
>everyone. But obviously not.
>
>Even without checking my statistics, I know that there is no other Gambian
>who has been driven through the gates of the Mile 2 prisons as numerously
>as
>Momodou Dumo Sarho on account of his politcal activism. No other Gambian
>has
>ever endured such intense and wicked assault on his psyche for the sheer
>purpose of breaking his spirits; no one in our country has ever experienced
>such persistent waves of physical abuse from the powers that be; and no
>other Gambian family has had to live with the anguish of continuous terror
>of uncertainty about the fate of a rebellious but quintessentially
>progressive spirit; the fate of a son, a brother, and husband whose
>banihsment from Saint Augustine's High since 1973, has been followed by an
>endless crusade to teach, to organise, to support the youth and the poor,
>and to organise, to militate against social decadence, reactionary politics
>and cultural atavism. Dumo's entire life, up to now, has been completely
>usurped by STRUGGLE, in all its concreteness and ambiguity, to such a depth
>and purpose that he has ceased possession of the word itself. You cannot
>imagine Dumo outside the meaning of the word "struggle".
>
>I canntot think of a single village in Gambia that Dumo does not know; no
>Gambian politician whose biography he does not master; no department in the
>Gambian state apparat whose head he does not know. Up to 1982, you could
>not
>tell Dumo the registration number of a private car in Banjul and Sere-Kunda
>whose owner he is ignorant of. Dumo knows Gambia and Gambians inside out.
>He
>knows  hustlers, bums, businessmen, poiticians, fake revolutionaries, the
>intelligentsia, prison warders and jail birds, peasants and dope runners,
>and all shades of red-eyed call-me-comrade radicals. He knows the police
>informers, CID and Special Branch undercover(!) agents, policemen and their
>most fearfully-guarded secrets. Gadding the streets of Sere-Kunda in Dumo's
>company is tiresome business: he stands up for almost everyone and almost
>everyone stands up for him; so you just wait and wait while he exchages
>words with people; in Dumo's company you may reach your destination. But if
>you do you always will be behind schedule. He is the type of person people
>pretend to know well after hearing of him once. His verbal skills are
>unmatched, eclipsing even those of Suslov - Leonid Bhreznev's propaganda
>secretary. Dumo's sophistication in Gambia's cultural milieu is simply
>amazing....
>(In 1995 we met in Gambia. After visiting my wife at Bakau NewTown, he
>talked me into passing by an auntie of his. The old woman lives just behind
>the Police Depot. As soon as the initual ritual of salutations were over,
>the old woman and Dumo plunged into what was for me uncahrted seas. They
>talked about the uncles in London and Leeds, the sisters still at Leman and
>Perseverance streets, the nieces and nephews in different states in the U.S
>and all the major and minor relations weaved together into this complex
>lineage. It went on for hours. I was stupefied and I got hungry. The old
>woman spoke like she never spoke before, enlivened by Dumo's soothing
>evocation of old memories. She spoke of her children, her children's
>children, her siblings and their spouses and offspring. She spoke of
>distant
>cousins and aunts and how these were related to other families. She
>narrated
>the matrilineal links with other families and their geographic origins.
>When
>we finally had to leave, Dumo's aunt could only suppress tears with great
>dificulty. She immensely enjoyed teaching us some oral history and
>practical
>sociology, betraying a deep-seated emotional urge to narrate. In
>restrospect, it was an extraordinary experience for me, one that
>illustrated
>how Africa's "history of ordinary people" simply fades into memory, into
>dissolved biographies, dismembering our modern notions of "knowing where
>one
>comes from"; whole lives, and legends, and narratives imploding into
>colourless "by-the-ways".
>
>While the rest of us have gone on building families and getting on with
>mundane carreers, blunting, corrupting and compromising our instinct to
>struggle, Dumo has remained staunch and unmalleable, breathing energy into
>the very notion of long-term continous struggle; the struggle against
>everything that is backward in our political culture and for everything
>that
>means progress in our society.
>
>Three years ago there was much activity waged in his behalf and that of his
>co-detainees. With time and repeated frustration over his fake trials
>energies sapped in the process, as all of us grew helpless as we agonised
>over his fate. But Dumo is unbreakable; partly because he is not just an
>individual. Dumo has developed into an instituion, commanding the spirited
>energy for a free Gambia. It is precisely his enormous zeal for a life
>charged with meaning, for a better Gambia that must keep the rest of us
>going on to struggle for our own sake and for his immediate release and the
>release of his co-detainees from unjust imprisonment.
>
>FREE DUMO SARHO NOW!!!
>
>Sidibeh
>
>
>From: "Annika Renberg" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2004 7:15 PM
>Subject: The "Dumo trial"
>
>
>For your information:
>Today was the day scheduled for the long awaited ruling in the 3½ year old
>treason case against the remaining detainees Ebrima Barrow, Dumo Sarho and
>Ebrima Yarboe.
>Nothing happened though - Justice Belghore seems to have travelled abroad
>on
>un urgent mission for some (five?) weeks. He did not even have time to set
>a
>new date before he left.
>Annika Renberg
>(Dumo's wife)
>
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