Ous:

With all due respect to you and everyone else, Kujabi made a simple judgement mistake by looking too much into Omar Hatab's biting satire.  To be frank, Baba's pieces are, in my opinion, the result of an amazing capacity to analyze some of our cultural ways plus a bitingly witty, humorous and sometimes sarcastic perspective to scribe these observations.

For example, his description of Afang Kanteh's (?) pre-wrestling ritual had me in stitches because I laughed so hard.  I laughed because it was an amazing write-up about the tradition of what we call "Bakou" in Wollof.  It reminded me of the days of Alhagi Mansour Njie on Senegalese TV when "Dubalese" and Co would come in to the stadium covered in the charms and somtimes cottage cheese (Sow) while twisting and writhing to the sound of the drum and serenades of the traditional historians. Of course, Alhagi Mansour would be talking about these wrestlers with every sentence of his ending in "Ndeysan".  The same thing happened in other arenas all over the country.  But no one has ever put it in words and twisted tis social event like Baba.  The same undertones can also be found in the story of Yapat driving his boss in a Pajero. This is why Baba's stories strike such a strong nerve in us self-imposed "exiles".

So, basically, Baba's stories are a powerful satirical view of Gambian society which I believe is healthy and allows us to analyze ourselves and our society better at times.  There should be more of this going o bck home but I understand the Sultan of Kanilai would flip if he saw is caricature in the paper.

Anyway, Kujabi, being the astute person he is, saw the story of Mr. Know All for in this light, realized many of us could fit in this category and thus spoke out.  It was a simple harmless miscalculation on his part but it is definitely human to err.  Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and move on for we have all made mistakes.

But like Sophie's story about the cracked pot earlier, accepting and learning from our imperfections will make us stronger as a society/communiy.  Excessive condemntion is to be reserved for knowing accomplices of the Sultan of Kanilai.

Kujabi you made a simple mistake but this weakness is all too human.  Continue to contribute like you have.  we have bigger fish to fry.

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