Mr Sidibeh thanks for your observation. The piece is a bible for your planners in the Gambia. I hope they digest the commentary.I think if there is economic sucess it will provide the people with security and prosperity and it is the opposite in Gambia. I know what is happening in our country is a story, not of progress or development. Things cannot go like that. It is an illussion to imagine that nothing must change, but everything must change.It the fight for democracy and social justice the will is paralyzed. APRC is the biggest mistake for Gambia.

Momodou S Sidibeh <[log in to unmask]> wrote:INTRODUCTION



I came back from Gambia since April, after a three-week stay with my wife and two sons, Sawalo and Sekou, 7 and 9 years of age respectively. I knew I would have to write about my trip on Gambia-l, not only because it would be no story unless I share it with you, but writing helps me organise my experiences into one coherent whole as a prelude to help make sense of what I saw, what I heard and what my own subjective impressions are. I believe that Gambia is best helped if our stories of her condition are as objective as is possible even if our prescriptions for her ailments are biased in favour of political persuasions.



My trip to Gambia was no field study. It was a simple holiday, to see the country, meet family and friends, visit familiar places. I had not been there for a long time, but although I stayed briefly (for less than fifteen hours) four years ago, that does not count.

I travelled only around the kombo area, having been advised against venturing beyond Foni with children. But I met a lot of people. My close encounter with two permanent secretaries, I already mentioned a couple of months ago. But I also met with two ministers, engineers, bankers, managers, businessmen, department heads, teachers, aids information activists, workers, unemployed youth and ordinary people. A few people I deeply regret for not having been able to meet: some members of the Joh family, my brother ex-chief Lamin Darboe of Gunjur, and Ousman Manjang, who I am convinced, is one of Gambia's clearest political minds.

I am grateful to all those who, without forewarning, received me and shared their thoughts with me. All of them left a huge impression on me. But the one person my encounter with whom affected me the most emotionally is a friend some of you know.

We met on Gambia-l, through argument. He is so secure and comfortable in his prose you could feel his gentleness in words. A formidable debater, with a razor-sharp intellect with Gambia's cultural history neatly tucked in his breast pocket. Yet he majored in something else other than history. After completing his studies he simply went home, with the obvious intention of adding his bit to the national development effort. So I sought him out unannounced. He was so surprised moments passed before he figured who I was. And then his stringent countenance melted away, dissolving into a guffaw. Then we shook hands a second time and we burst into each other's sentences, while I instinctively eyed his office. This is a three by two cubicle at the far end of an unlit corridor literally decked and stacked with papers in brown colonial files. The only thing in the office that reminded you of the twenty-first century was his computer, itself a relic of the bronze-age of computing. He stood tall
 and handsome with an afro exploding with strands of grey hair, telltale pointers to seasons of endured frustration and tropical heat. After the normal "jerejeff" and great-to-see-yous, and how I traced him, he thanked me for the software I had sent him through another friend two years ago. Then I asked, "but how are you.?"

" There is nothing happening here? I was just dumped here with a truckload of promises, but nothing, absolutely nothing is working here.I have been in this place for three years, and I can tell you, between me and you Mr.Sidibeh, that everyone lies here..they all tell lies. Nobody cares about what I do, in fact unless I take initiatives I can sit here a whole day without doing a thing.and I have no internet access now, in fact for weeks, I have access to the internet only form 4.30 p.m when I am supposed to go home.the minister and some people were here on several occasions to fix a wireless connection, but it does not work.! Nothing, nothing.dara, dara dohut fii!"

His outpouring was waiting for a trigger, that my question seemed to have provided. Our meeting lasted no more than five minutes. There were people waiting downstairs for me, and I had no appointment. Nevertheless, I felt so guilty, so sad and frustrated at my own helplessness. He epitomised for me the quintessential Gambian intellectual, wanting to give so much but finds himself, perhaps like many others, a prisoner of circumstances beyond his control. After more than two weeks in Gambia, my heart sank for the first time. He is the biggest reason I am writing this story. I hope to post the second and final part in a couple of days. My apologies for the long delay.



CLASS STRUGGLE



Whenever I privately muse over the personality of Yahya Jammeh, a particular image rushes to mind. It was a BBC spot on Jan Smuts international airport at Jo'burg. President Jammeh is alone. He rounds a bend in swift steps towards the VIP lounge, and the cameras capture him. His "waramba" is filled with air, fiercely pulling him backwards as he struggles with his stride, like a man late for a scheduled meeting. He wore a cream-coloured sloping kufi with matching babouches. His attire would have been immaculate, had it not been for the ballooning caftan, which pulled up his trouser legs exposing his socks: cheap indoor variants my high school pals called "suffering in the land" - a chorus from a Jimmy Cliff song. For a very brief moment, he reminded me of a famous picture of Ibrahim Babangida at Whitehall: an energetic and elegant exterior providing armour to a calculating and brutal personality, a personality that adapts with clockwork precision to its immediate surroundings.



But this piece will not be about President Jammeh. It will be about present-day Gambia; a Gambia produced by the eleven-year rule of the APRC headed by President Jammeh. Unless you dip him in syrup, it is laborious imagining President Jammeh from the Gambia he has managed to cocktail. At one extreme, the pajero bourgeoisie: monied, groomed, and fatly westernized class of people, most of them dazzling habitues of the Fajara coastline and the SeneGambia Highway stretch. Wading in money, they can afford cook, gardener and launderer, ride luxury cars and shop at Atkins, Maroun's or at St. Mary's Food and Wine. They pay for family holidays and shop and deliver babies in Europe or America, and without a blink pay for a straight line education for their children from kindergarten to university in the west. A class of people who rub shoulders with expatriates, settled Europeans, business tycoons from the Middle East and Asia in Gambia's growing battery of four-star hotels and world-class
 restaurants. Economically, they play in the same division as "monsieur le presidant", but their political presence is occultist: see no evil, hear no evil, and say no evil. They survive by staying stealthily above politics; moving and being moved by little other than their business interests. Amongst these are highly motivated and industrious Gambians, who would invest time and resources into businesses if stability can be ascertained and a reliable and sturdy infrastructure is provided.



At the other extreme is the most disadvantaged amongst the toiling masses. In every village there is always a group of families who even the poor regard as destitute. They survive in the outer rims of the informal sector. Being traditional guests of the alkalo, they are virtually landless and manage to get by through negotiating contractual assignments: farming rice paddies for pay, doing fencing work on vegetable gardens, digging wells and clearing land for the planting season, and cutting and bundling firewood that is marketed along the roadside. As you would guess, because gardening comparatively provides better yields in the kombo area, there is a marked rural migration to the Western division. Fresh settlements are to be found in and around many villages in the kombos. But like all farming communities, prosperity is critically hinged on rainfall. It had rained heavily in the last season (2004) but only for a relatively short period. So ground water levels shrunk and village
 wells dried up. The well beds caked into hardened slices of clay, like remnants of magma, exposing their long hidden contents: old and rusty tin pots, plastic and rubber buckets once used for drawing water, sticks and dead frogs. Initially, this tragedy meant a bonanza for well diggers. But when the water gods refused to replenish the wells villagers became terrified. In the case of my native Kartong, salvation came in the form of stand pipes constructed through project work partly financed by USAID and partly by daughters and sons of the village some of them living overseas. By a quirk of fate the pumps feeding the water tank had broken down, and there were no funds for spare parts. (I was literally taken around to take a look at some of the ailing wells!). In the Gambia of today, bottling and marketing mineral water has become a multi-million dalasi industry. Huge profits are raked in as a result of water shortages caused either by nature or by Nawec's inefficiency!

But this sector of the peasantry generally reflects the loads and dimensions of complicated miseries. Landless and hopeless, it survives from day to day, thanks to the shifting and precarious fortunes of the powerless. It is a hungry class, malnourished, sickly and listless, and frequently kicking at the brink of starvation. Most villagers are aware of its ordeal, and so charities ordained by fortune tellers are often sent to it in the first instance. Occasionally, it is forced to bare the pains of its soul to neighbours for a cup or two or three of rice. On the next rung of the social ladder, the huge class of peasant farmers survive just less miserably. Cash crop production has gradually plummeted as the marketing of groundnuts is no longer guaranteed. On the other hand, the cultivation of traditional food crops, such as sorghum and even "findi", are on the rise. But because returns on these are continuously diminishing as the price of basic commodities become more and more
 unaffordable, hundreds of thousands of peasants survive on starvation diets. Protein consumption is now marginal as fish has become too costly. Red meat is out of mind, and is consumed by commoners only on ceremonious occasions. Most peasant families are subsidised through the dependency networks of the extended family, where people in gainful employment offer helping hands. Yahya Jammeh "maano", 450 (four hundred and fifty) dalasi to a bag is a very welcome choice in the villages, in spite the corruption of its quality by pickings.



In between these two extremes are the working and petit-bourgeois classes, both of them defying rigid social stratification? Class lines are fluid, and in the towns recent housing schemes have only helped to demarcate economic groupings. The upper middle class, populated by department heads, senior managers, experienced professionals, senior civil servants and schooled business operators, live in first-class homes in Kerr Serigne, Brusubi, Fajara, Pipeline, the Kotu layout, the SOS estates and so on. But at theses domains and even in Manjai, Kanifing, and Bakoteh, there are properties owned by petit bourgeois aspirants, overseas-based Gambians - (oops! you and I), junior managers in banks and insurance houses, technical professionals, and NGO executives. There is a growing crop of IT millionaires, educated from China to Finland, who having laboured for private enterprises, opted on their own, became handsomely solvent, invested in properties and made millions. This is the class where
 the nations technocrats belong, well educated, handsome and round, they are constantly on the move. They fly to workshops and short courses overseas for specialisation, represent departments in regional conferences, oil the cogs and wheels of the state machinery and literally hold the keys to the stability of the gambian state apparatus. They make connections in other African countries and have become quite sophisticated politically, the obvious consequence of education and exposure to current affairs. Many are linked to international news networks and the internet. Amongst them high school friendships and "vous" have survived, transforming into organised, rotating Sunday dinners at successive homes. Having struggled through expensive education and career barriers, their hard gained status as respectable technocrats makes them politically volatile. Their engagement in the nation's political life is generally hush-hush, venturing only low-risk and careful complains to trusted
 friends, but would secretly indulge in devouring and discussing acreages by Gambia's growing fleet of ace writers, Cherno Baba Jallow, Sheriff Bojang, and many others. They have rationalised the province of politics into the purview of others, often crass and superficial cranks. They send their children to one of the expensive post secondary private schools majoring in banking, insurance, accounting, and IT-related courses, before leaving for overseas. They have their homes, jobs, jet set wives, and bank loans to pay and everything to loose if the NIA makes a nocturnal visit. No need to point out that they are not unionised.



ORGANISED CHAOS





The working class in Gambia seems to me to be a huge mess. But I must admit that I was able to find out only very little about the extent of worker organisation. Perhaps because of the absence of a political party that unequivocally and without apologies firmly represents the specific interests of workers, worker unionisation remains hopelessly depoliticised. [Just the other day Neneh Macdougal says that workers are partners in development, while the labour union boss Araba Bah fired salvos at multinationals and globalisation]. Has the assault on white collar workers, especially senior civil servants, cowed the unions into meek acquiescence to government diktats? Are worker unions frightened into easy submission to policies that clearly roll back gains made during years of agitation on traditional workers' demands? In spite of frequent lay offs, salaries that remain unpaid for months (like at GPTC), galloping cost of living, huge gaps in salary scales, unpaid allowances, neither the
 workers' nor the teachers' unions seem to muster the courage to confront employers on behalf of their members. Trade unions are historically organs that advance the struggle for economic democracy and social justice; and they influence historical processes in favour of these goals by actively championing the struggle for civil liberties, human and people's rights. But not even after the cold-blooded assassination of Deyda Hydara did we hear the labour union groan about the deplorable state of civil liberties in our country(?). It seems that it has marginalised itself from mainstream Gambian politics and adopted an accommodationist attitude towards the Jammeh tyranny. [Children-size pizza on Kairaba Avenue costs 140 dalasi. An unqualified teacher in region one earns 452 dalasi a month. Yet I have seen teenagers queue for pizza at MacFaddies after calling in an order. A qualified teacher even in regions around Basse do not earn more than two thousand dalasi monthly (including
 allowances). But a three course dinner for four at one of the most fashionable restaurants in the hotel districts by the Senegambia highway could cost more than 1200 dalasi. So incredible are the prevailing class differences]!





Where they have jobs, workers are poorly paid. Food, housing and transport costs eat into inadequate salaries. The closure, long ago of the PWD and similar government agencies, encouraged private initiative into sectors such as carpentry, welding, fitting, bricklaying, masonry, and other related trades. But it also meant that wages are unregulated, employment insecure, and health insurance of workers left to the caprices of unscrupulous businessmen. Ordinary labourers at construction sites would remain unpaid as unwritten agreements with contractors or masons render them hopelessly powerless to fight for legitimate claims. Where formerly laid-off workers have been unable to raise capital to start enterprises, foreigners (mostly Senegalese) have filled the gap and put up shop. But my impression is that the belief that Gambians are inactive lazybones is a big myth. The volume of commerce that transpires on a daily basis along the road from Westfield Clinic to Tabokoto (or Piccadilly,
 as it is now known in taxi-driver jargon!) in one direction and to Sukuta in another is unprecedented. Canteens housing every conceivable small business are crammed and stuffed one next to the other: instant battery charging, mobile phone repair shops, internet cafés, furniture yards, cobblers, tinsmiths, roadside fitters, retailers of household appliances, covert currency traders, tyre dealers, brick sellers, sneakers and t-shirt hawkers, bicycle repair outfits, fruit stalls, tele centres, mini supermarkets, gambling dens, lottery offices, "tangana" joints, barber shops, bars and restaurants, Nawec bureaus, "afra" cabins, video and dvd rentals, and many, many other businesses. The entire town centre of Serre-Kunda and Dippa Kunda defy mathematical navigation; their original geographies long consumed and buried under the explosive surge of venture commercialism. Business space is produced by confiscating every square meter of footpath, driving pedestrians and customers on to the
 main road. Calling the situation the ultimate organisation of chaos is a misnomer. From 7 a.m to 9 p.m every day, central Serre-Kunda and surroundings bursts into life, producing permanent traffic jams, scores of thousands milling about shops at every conceivable moment, people prostrating themselves in prayer, others squatting around a bowl of food eating lunch, bicycle riders making acrobatic manoeuvres between cars and people, a horse cart drawing a little mountain of vegetable baskets, music blasting from a cd store, a man displaying leprous fingers asking for alms while people almost step on his mat, a procession of visually impaired women humming "sarahh ngirr Yaaala", and a KMDC utility truck sucking up stinking sewage from a suck away tank buried by the entrance to the market, while it spewed suffocating black smoke into the air. But the people are not deterred by the pollution. There is so much dynamism, and even if that could mean little for the economy, people seem to be
 on the move. All day, everyday. What you cannot see, is the government except in the form of ruffled and starving area council man with duty book in hand. There are no formal car parks. Commercial vehicles also feed on the disorganisation and usurp space from convenient junctions, ferrying aching and dehydrated passengers to all possible destinations. It is common to see people suckling at 33 cl plastic bags of ice-cold water, labelled Naan. Ten dalasi a packet. The heat, the dust, the scents, the elbowing and shoving, is a nightmare for holiday makers. But that is all luxury until you attempt to drive from Westfield to Sukuta. It is like going on safari in the midst of town. Millions of pot holes seemingly caused by football size meteors have simply knocked out the roads beyond any form of re-engineering. The buttocks take a severe pounding as cars jerk from one crater to the next. My banker friend, driving a brand new Toyota Avensis crawls so slowly that bicycles overtake us! My
 advice: if you have a history of backache, never drive inside Serre-Kunda. At the old Serre-kunda / Sukuta and DippaKunda /Bundung crossing drivers and pedestrians have reached an automatic understanding of who goes first. It is by far, Gambia's busiest junction! But a road engineer seems to think that Gambia's first traffic lights should be placed at Kairaba Avenue and Senegambia highway junction, where there is traffic but virtually no pedestrians!

But from Westfield towards Fajara, the roads are completely different. Western civilization begins here, supposedly. No riff-raff shops and dusty canteens here. This is Kairaba Avenue where big business and million dalasi companies are located. Telecommunication companies, banks, insurance houses, expensive schools, university campuses, supermarkets, first class restaurants, all in modern fashionable buildings along navigable roads inviting security for foreign investments. A section of the road is in fact closed to taxi traffic during business hours, well, for reasons you can guess!


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