Jainaba Bah/Sister Jay,
Am i surprised that it was you all along behind the pseudonym of Hasatou
frigging Barry??!! Please. You underestimate me alot. Right from the very
posting you sent attacking me, i had a hunch right then that it was you. In
fact i told a friend during the weekend that it was only my fear of sinning
against Allah that i had not dragged your name into my earlier response
without evidence. One can understand the great lengths you will go to
pathetically play Tammy Wynette; standing by your man at all costs. But did
you have to resort to being the lowest of the low and acting in such an
utterly abominable manner to make your point about Sarjo Jallow? I'm now
beginning to believe what i was told last year about you, Sarjo and your son
Wuri Jallow. Rest assured that i will not be dragged into your putrid little
world of vitriolic purgation and most certainly when all is said and done, i
hope you can live and face tomorrow, with your head held high. Your agenda is
very clear: you are in this to foolishly attempt to blackmail and or
intimidate me into silence. Just like you failed with Jabou, when you
assaulted her with your unpleasant tirades, you have already failed with me -
miserably.
If you had not been a woman without a shred of decency, you would have talked
to either Kaba or Mukhtarr about me before assuming inter alia that i have
nothing on you. Or even Iffra, Jagne and most of your Farafenni folks who
frequent Jagne Kunda in Tobacco Road, Banjul. You would have known that i
don't need second or third party information about your family to play tit
for tat. Perhaps, your own brother, Mr Ousman Bojang - when he is not
consumed by his anti- Jawara hysteria - will let you on that. For your
information, i chanced upon your father in his shop teaching the Quran as
well as trying to make an honest and decent living as smal-scale trader, when
i visited Farafenni sometime in 1997. I remembered greeting him and being
introduced to him. Very quiet, soft-spoken and had the demeanour of respect;
a typical elder of the community and moral bedrock of an African family. Just
as my own old man is. Do you honestly think i will drag their lot into this?
It's not as if i don't have skeletons to drag out of the closet. What will be
the point? What public office has that old man ever occupied in the Gambia?
Dare we even speculate that he doesn't he even bother voting or checking with
politics and politicians. More to the point, save Sarjo, which other member
of your family has occupied high public office in the Gambia to warrant
anyone to drag them into what is a public affair and has nothing to do with
them?
The only member of your family that is a fair game perhaps - apart from Sarjo
- is your mother; whom Kaba informed me is up to her neck in APRC politics as
Yai Compin for the North Bank region and most importantly, Farafenni. I
subsequently heard she was rewarded by Jammeh for her efforts last year when
she was included amongst the batch the gov't paid for to do their Hajj in
Mecca. But has she done any wrong? I'm not aware of her former, if any,
political stance that is at a dissonance with her politics of today; and will
always be at a loss to justify criticising her for her politics. Like me and
else, she's entitled to her politics. She's entitled to her support of the
APRC regime as i am entitled to be critical of them. So that leaves you and
me. Really, this is between the two of us.
When you left the List last year amidst a furore caused by your ignorance of
the word "hubby", i heard through the grapevine that you re-subscribed again
under a pen name - presumably under the current one you are using. Someone
once told me that you were overheard saying that when all is said and done
you will always have your revenge on Hamjatta. Well, you've started the
revenge at the most appropriate time. In fact the timing couldn't have been
better. I have two weeks left on this List and why not settle literary scores
that have not been all settled. It is clear that what continues to madden you
is my criticality of Sarjo; and you figured you can disarm that criticality
by dishing the dirt on my family. You figured wrong. You have no dirt to
dish. Even if you do, you will fail miserably in silencing me. In fact, you
've made it more worth my while to lampoon Sarjo. From now onwards, i will
let Jammeh rest whilst Sarjo takes his blows for him. Watch this space.
I also see you are good at boxing metaphors. All good and appropriate. Well,
given the enormous pressure i'm under from both home and on this List to
ignore your vitriolic attack, i will latch on to a boxing metaphor to explain
this response. This is but a measured response to the first punches you've
thrown thus far. As Colin Hart, the veteran boxing commentator would say,
measured first punches are for gauging the extent to which an opponent is
ready to wager on a fight. Since it's your ferocious and near-religious
defense of Sarjo which has sparked the current engagement, i shall
appropriately latch on to that vine and make my first measured response. Last
year before you left the List, i remembered Mr Dave Manneh questioning how
you could still stand by a man like Sarjo after what he continues to tolerate
from Jammeh, especially given the April Massacres. Your reply then was a
pathetic attempt to parody Hillary Clinton ala i'm not standing by my man,
like Tammy Wynette. But you ain't no Hillary Clinton, and worst, even Tammy
Wynette fares better than you. Hillary Clinton eventually saw right through
the weakness of her man, and appropriately condemned his indefensible
behaviour. Even Tammy Wynette, i gather is said to have declared that she
would not stand by her man in defence of the intolerable or indefensible.
Unlike you, these two don't have a shady past to warrant them to zealously
defend the indefensible.
At the end of the day, if all you could come up with is innuendos,
guilt-by-association tirades and futile character assasinations, i can only
draw two conclusions. One, the fact that you can drag an old man as old as
your own father into your putrid tongue lashing is a pointer to your
uncultured upbringing and a complete disgrace to the Bah/Jallow/Bojang
family; and denigrating their good name and reputation in the community. More
to the point, if you can pour diatribe vehemently on an old man who is a
contemporary of your own father, all it says about you is that you have no
respect for your parents and probably have acted so disrespectfully and
despicably towards them in the past. Second, the fact that you can latch on
to putrid sexual metaphors so comfortably and unabashedly is an indicator to
what one individual wrote to me privately about your disreputable and heady
past when you were younger.
However, you were right about one thing: "golo du bai eg" ... damn right,
Sister Jay. What you should say next time is this: "golo du bai eg mook".
When it comes to Sarjo's betrayal of comrades like Dumo and his disreputable
role in the scheme of APRC politics, i shall remain undeterred, unequivocal
and resolute in my criticality - so long as he is an occupant of a tax-payer
maintained instrument of influence.
Hamjatta Kanteh
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