Good one Dr. Baba. 


Sent from Samsung MobileBaba Galleh Jallow <[log in to unmask]> wrote:Things Fall Apart

By Baba Galleh Jallow

Predictably, the honeymoon between the soldiers and the rest of the people in our country was short-lived.  Second Genamin Gyant DaMidget, who had always been rather invisible during the reign of Sir Bodyfat Joker, now woke up every morning not believing that he had become the supreme lord and master of No-Talk Republic. Every night and every morning, he spent hours locked up inside his bathroom, admiring himself in the mirror and doing the chegin and the mbarass dance in celebration of his unbelievable luck. On days when he got so excited that his nose uncontrollably tweaked from side to side, Gyant DaMidget would throw one leg this way, another that way as he jumped up in the air and wiggled his waist in the famous lembal and the chimbirr dance. What? Genamin DaMidget is president of the republic? He repeatedly pinched his nose and slapped himself to make sure that he was not dreaming. This continued for many moons before he was finally convinced that he was indeed head of state and commander in chief of the armed forces. Chairman, he asked to be called, of the newly formed Armed Forces Porovisual Rugged Coven.

But Genamin DaMidget was not the only soldier who got extremely power drunk. Some of his colleagues in the Armed Forces Porovisual Rugged Coven were so power drunk that they habitually swaggered and staggered everywhere shouting “power! yeah power! we got power!” Some of them soon grew notorious on account of their rude tendency to throw their weight around, beating up innocent civilians and abusing young women, men and the elderly – anyone who dared as much as cast a glance in their direction. When they drove around town, all oncoming traffic had to get off the road to let them pass. Drivers who failed to do so were given the beating of their lives. The convoy of soldiers would promptly stop the offending vehicles, drag their occupants out, and beat, punch and kick the hell out of them. Similar treatment was meted to drivers who dared overtake military convoys or even the vehicles of powerful soldiers in Genamin DaMidget’s junta. Some of them particularly enjoyed shooting at the tires of offending vehicles.

In addition to members of the Armed Forces Porovisual Rugged Coven who soon became more equal than everybody else, some junior soldiers conducted a reign of terror in No-Talk Republic. Each soldier soon became a king unto himself. There were frequent reports of soldier brutality against innocent unarmed civilians and a few cases of soldiers shooting or stabbing people to death. Our country soon became a state of fear where soldiers, feeling that they now owned the land, broke the law with impunity and went unpunished for their crimes. The military uniform and the gun became the most feared symbols of power as arrogant soldiers endlessly swaggered and bragged that the country now belonged to them. There were, of course, exceptions to this rule: not all soldiers were brutal and criminal-minded like Gyant DaMidget and some of his cohorts.

Soon, however, serious infighting started among the ranks. Though they tried hard to hide it, reports filtered out about a bitter power struggle within the Armed Forces Porovisual Rugged Coven. Genamin Gyant DaMidget’s authority was being challenged and the Armed Forces Porovisual Rugged Coven had broken up into two rival factions – one pro-Genamin and one anti-Genamin. Before long, it became general public knowledge that trouble was indeed brewing within the ranks of the armed forces. In public, they pretended to be a united front. In private, they were engaged a cat and dog fight to the death.

The trouble erupted into the open one dark night when gunshots started ringing from one of the armed forces camps in the town of Pahaw. Intense shooting continued into the early hours of the morning before dying down. Later that morning, a senior member of the Armed Forces Porovisual Rugged Coven went on national radio to say that a group of treacherous and unpatriotic soldiers had, under cover of darkness, attempted to overthrow the patriotic junta of Second Genamin Gyant DaMidget. He said their ignoble plan had failed and that the Armed Forces Porovisual Rugged Coven was now firmly in control of the situation. The details emerging from the bloody incident revealed that a large number of the soldiers involved in the alleged plot had been killed and buried in mass unmarked graves. Some of them had fled under cover of darkness and a search had been launched for them. That was the last that was heard of the bloody incident. To this day, Second Genamin Gyant DaMidget maintains a stony silence over the incident, refusing to let the families and relatives of the dead know why or how their loved ones were killed or where they were buried. Gyant DaMidget hated hearing anything about the Pahaw incident and would fly into a blue rage and break into tears whenever anyone mentioned the incident.

More trouble was on the way, however. One morning a few months after that bloody incident, an announcer on national radio informed the country that two senior members of the Armed Forces Porovisual Rugged Coven had been arrested. The announcer said the duo had made an attempt to kill His Poxillency the Oxygen, Second Genamin Gyant DaMidget, Chairman of the Armed Forces Porovisual Rugged Coven. Several months later, the two were arraigned before a kangaroo court, found guilty of treason and sentenced to long prison terms. One of them died in jail a few months later under mysterious circumstances. Gyant DaMidget claimed he had died of high blood pressure but that could never be verified and his death, like the Pahaw incident, remains shrouded in mystery. The second soldier languished in jail for many, many years and promptly fled the country as soon as he was released. He now lives in a distant white man’s country.

Interestingly, the arrest and detention of one of the powerful soldiers elicited an audible sigh of relief from many people in No-Talk Republic. This particular soldier was accused of extreme arrogance and unmitigated brutality against innocent civilians. Unconfirmed reports – which have become the norm because of Gyant DaMidget’s hatred of straight and open talk - had it that less than a week before his arrest, this soldier had insulted a group of religious elders over a dispute involving a prayer house in a remote part of No-talk Republic. He was reported to have publicly called the elders kaffirs and asked them to go dumb their holy books in the river because they were mere hypocrites. Legend has it that one of the elders had then said to him, “you insult us, but go, you will soon see.” This story gained widespread currency in No-Talk Republic for many years to come.

So it was that within just a few months of the coup that drove Sir Biggerface Bodyfat Joker and his Alhajis and Honorables out of power, our country had been renamed No-Talk Republic and the formerly united soldiers were engaged in a bitter struggle for power. As the people watched helplessly, Second Genamin Gyant DaMidget aka Mbarass, systematically purged the Armed Forces Porovisual Rugged Coven of all his potential rivals until eventually, he was left alone holding the bucket of power. He now clutched strange objects which he wanted us to believe had supernatural powers. He also took to wearing funny hats and large oversized boubous in order to hide the smallness and emptiness he felt inside and claimed that they were symbolic of his special status on the ladder of universal humanity.   

 

 

 

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