Inspired by one of the songs of the Senegambian superstar, Yousou Ndure, I
would like to share a few tales with you. The reason for wanting to share my
opinion of this particular song with you is because of its relation to many
an incident that sometimes goes un-noticed while very easy to see. Please
allow me to explain a few things for people to understand how these
seemingly unconnected things are actually an integral part of the whole
story. Let’s start with a few definitions first.

BEIYE (GOAT): small, active horned domestic animal; get one’s goat (sl) -
irritate or annoy one; play/act the giddy goat - play the fool/behave in a
foolish and excited way; separate the sheep from the goats – separate the
good from the bad.

Those familiar with West Africa know that goats play a very significant role
in our lives. They are highly resistant to diseases and reproduce very
quickly and very rarely give birth to single babies. We often rear them for
their meat, milk, horns for jujus and hide for our drums.

CHERREH: West African cereal meal usually made from sorghum or corn; very
nice with goat meat.

DAHINNE: A very thick cereal meal that is also very nice when prepared with
goat’s meat. There is a Wollof saying that goes like this: “Dahinne Baku
lenye ko yengalleh”. Meaning you steer Dahinne with a wooden spoon and not
the conventional spoons, as they will break.

In this particular song, Yousou Ndure advises that let the goats go with the
goats or they may go with the “Cherreh” or the “Dahinne”. For all intents
and purposes, we all know that the goat is better off being within other
goats than within the “Cherreh” or “Dahinne”. This reminded me of a joke I
was told a couple of years ago.

THE JOKE
A wealthy domineering father, his hardworking wife, his sons of about ten
and three and their mate lived in a big house. The dad always wanted to talk
about politics to the ten year old kid who would rather not have anything to
do with politics. However, out of respect and fear, he tried to get
interested in his dad’s drivel about politics. He decided to ask his dad,
while having dinner one day, what politics was all about. His dad, who was
very excited by his kid’s interest in politics, explained politics thus:

You see son, I have all the money and everything in this house belongs to
me. So I am “the capitalist”. Your mother here runs the house and she is
therefore “the government”. You see the mate there doing all the dirty work
there? She is “the masses”. And we are all doing this for you, “the people”
and your brother, “the future”. The boy was very confused but pretended to
understand. Unfortunately that night, his younger brother did it in bed and
the whole room was smelly. He went to inform the mum but found her in such a
deep sleep that he could not wake her up and his father was not around. He
decided to go wake the mate. However, the mate’s door was locked and she did
not answer his knocking even though there were some noises coming from
within. He decided to peep through the keyhole to see what was the matter.
To his surprise, he saw his dad and the mate doing it with such passion and
vigor that they did not even hear him knocking the door. Discouraged, he
went back to the smelly room and tried as best as he could to clean up his
younger brother and then went to sleep. The next day he was the last to get
to the breakfast table were everyone else was already having their
breakfast. After saying good morning to them, he told his dad that he really
understood politics now. His father was naturally very excited and asked him
to explain what he understood about politics. He told his dad that politics
is when “the capitalists” SCREW “the masses”, “the government” IGNORES “the
people” and “the future” is FULL OF SHIT.

Now to those who are yet to get my drift, I will like to share my views of
Gambian politics and our concept of it. For over thirty years we had a
government that made absolutely no attempt to free its people from ignorance
but instead built an oligarchy of very corrupt people who were very
insensitive to the plight of the ordinary people. For more than three
decades we had a government that did everything that the colonialists did to
subdue and control our people. For more than three decades we had one of the
most corrupt governments that subdued its citizens like slaves, mystified
the role of our leadership and mesmerized the whole population. They used us
to weep up nationalist sentiments and hypnotized us into believing that
anything other than the status quo was detrimental to the state and our
people. We followed them wherever they went and did everything they wanted
us to do. We were just like zombies. This government consolidated everything
bad that the colonialists did. They created and nurtured various clans that
co-existed in “peace and harmony” and enjoyed all sorts of rights (both
human and animal rights). We had a clan that ruled, a clan that produced
doctors and high ranking officials, a clan that produced lawyers, a clan
that tilled the soil, a clan that sang praises and the rest who comprised
the clan of the hopeless.

The clan that tilled the soil did so honestly and with dedication. Some of
them managed to send some of their kids to school, some of whom became low
paid policemen, teachers, dispensers, health workers, agricultural workers
etc., etc. They also produced some very daring individuals who, while they
could not continue their education due to poverty and lack of opportunity,
had the brains to understand that something was seriously wrong somewhere.
Some of these instead of researching how to improve our subsistence farming
methods or some other worthwhile things figured out how to join what has
become an oligarchy of privileged people. These soon perfected the art of
stealing massive sums of money from our poor folks. Some of them, when found
out were promoted or transferred to more secure positions were they can
plunder our meager resources without the rest of society knowing about it.
This was done in return for them not revealing to the rest of the destitute
Gambians how they became rich over night and gained the respect of the
Mafiosi. This new breed of thieves ganged up together and plundered all the
aid that came into this country. While their kids enjoyed the best education
available here and abroad, led the most flamboyant of lifestyles, the rest
of society looked on with utter disbelieve. While we had the honest griots
telling the stories of our gallant past, the dishonest ones sang the praises
of the Mafiosi. For this, this latter group was rewarded with lots and lots
of money and other privileges. This was the order of the day until one
fateful July day a group of young army officers rudely invited themselves to
the party sending most on their way to exile.

To be continued.

Have a good day, Gassa.



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