-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
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Sent: Sat, Nov 28, 2009 2:01 pm
Subject: The Story Of Mam Biram Cont'd



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          Mam Biram was carrying a heavy burden; a burden that he had
willingly accepted to shoulder out of his own volition. He had asked
that no one feel sorry for him. This was his destiny and the life that
he had chosen to live. He was conscious of the fact that you could only
live once, and he wanted to live that life in dignity and self respect.
A proud sovereign citizen.

          Mam Biram wanted to give as much of himself as possible, 
before
either sickness or old age took control of his body, to the service of
his country and  humankind in general. He wanted to help carve the
destiny of a sovereign republic, The Gambia, a small country in the
west coast of Africa. Hailed proudly as the smiling coast, the country
is surrounded by Senegal and opened its mouth to the Atlantic Ocean.

        It all started over two decades and a half ago, when Mam Biram
visited the Gambia as a graduate student. He was introduced to a small
group of intellectuals, and together they began the long and arduous
struggle to transform the nature of Gambian society. It took almost
thirty years of his life.

       Mam Biram left the Gambia when he was sixteen years old. He had
not completed his high school. While he was at the Saint Augustine’s
high school, he met and befriended an American Peace Corp who promised
to take him to America. His friend took him to the US when he was going
home after finishing his assignment. He enrolled Mam Biram in a private
high school run by Jesuit priests somewhere in the suburbs of South
Carolina. This was in the late sixties; a period in which the ashes of
racism, and the embers of discrimination were deeply ingrained in the
American social medium.

       This also was the time, when the dialectical process of
decolonization swept across Africa, and the fires of Pan-Africanism
illuminated a revolutionary path that awakened the conscience, and
ignited the passion of young people across the continent. Mam Biram
grew up in this epoch of revolutionary struggle, and at a young age had
read most of the books written by Kwame Nkrumah and other notable
pan-africanist. He was also deeply ingrained in marxist ideology.

      By the time he enrolled in high school in the US, Mam Biram was
well oriented in the politics of resistance exemplified by the likes of
Nkrumah, Lumumba and Amilcar Cabral. Surrounded by an environment
anathematic to his proud upbringing, he cultivated a stubborn attitude
of defiance and self respect that defined his well crafted personality.
He became a towering force of reason and substance always capable to
influence and shape the public discourse.

       When Mam Biram completed his high school, he proceeded to obtain
a bachelors and a master’s degree, at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
   He started a doctoral program, but abandoned the pursuit when he
visited the Gambia. He met a mellow and conscientious high school
science teacher, who had been organizing student plays and musicals, to
generate funds to help other needy students. They shared the same
values and ideals and formed a very strong bond. Mam Biram took up an
appointment with the government as a civil servant, and together with
few other like minded intellectuals in the country, the Democratic
Organization For Democracy and Development was born.

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