Hi All,
It is with a heavy and troubled heart that I post this tribute on behalf of
all comrades who have known and worked with Adama Faburay for so many years.
Sincerely,
Momodou S  Sidibeh
**
**
*In Memory Of Comrade Adama Faburay*



    Comrade Adama Faburay was a breccia of goodness and generosity
throughout his life; personal qualities that remained inviolable despite the
aggressive cancer that snatched him away on Thursday July 24th.  Like a huge
hole sliced in the sky, Comrade Adama's transition precipitated a gaping
emptiness, a landscape without geography; an emptiness that gulps our
collective sorrow and evokes a miserable and incessant brooding about life,
about death, about the mission to liberate and about the struggle that will
outlast us all, his mourning comrades.

    Adama was a complete soul, uncomplicated and without frills. Ready to
forgive, desperately eager for reconciliation and blessed with a face
sculpted with a permanent smile; a smile that cracks open graphite hearts
and dissolves the iciest of stares. A smile that wanes only by the awesome
power of a roar that raises from his innermost depths, shaking the earth he
treads.

    Born to Falanding Faburay and Mba Awa Jabby in 1950, Adama hailed from
Dippa Kunda, where as a teenager in the late sixties, he scooped up emotive
energies from the urban youth rebellions supporting the anti-colonial
struggles throughout the continent, and the contagious fervour of the Black
Power movements waging militant campaigns for freedom and racial equality in
the United States. Kwame Touré a.k.a Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale,
Malcolm X, Steve Biko, Thomas Sankara all were amongst his cluster of
revolutionary icons.

Inside Dippa Kunda Adama, alias Adia was very early a cherished household
name, an energetic youth leader for whom all doors stood open. He actively
ran a youth club, the Beb Katas, with friends such as Saul Senghore, Tijan
Sohna, Sheriff Ebrima Conteh, Fabakary Keita and others; while managing a
soccer team of young teenagers like Matar Jaiteh, Ebou Keita, Momodou Camara
(alias Barry), Pa Ousman Jaiteh, Bass Drammeh (who was Adama's super goalie)
and many other prospective stars from Dippa Kunda. Adia was even then, a
tireless organiser who proudly sported a Guevara beret.

      By the time he left home, trekking the desert via Niger into Libya,
colonel Gaddafi's Green Book revolution was already in vogue. Once as a
survival strategy in Libya he had adopted the pseudonym of Peter, a story
for which he suffered jokes at the hands of a few sisters, now all of them
puffy-browed and red-eyed from litres of tears poured at his funeral.




   Adama coasted to Sweden in 1977, at the tail end of that country's
industrialisation and construction boom with an economy eagerly absorbing
guest workers mostly from southern Europe. He got trained as a mechanic but
subsequently worked as a bus driver/instructor for SL (Stor Stockholms
Lokaltrafik). He eagerly deployed his energies raising his family and all of
his free time doing political and cultural work both in MOJA-G (Movement for
Justice in Africa – Gambia) and the Organisation of Gambians in Sweden. This
latter association, which became the envy of other immigrant groups in
Sweden, owed its immense popularity to the selfless work of people like
Adama Faburay.

    Adama's social skills and generosity of spirit immediately made the
Faburay residence a nexus of political activity while he lived in Rinkeby, a
famous suburb of north-west Stockholm. Endless meetings in preparation for a
series of demonstrations against the Senegalese occupation of Gambia
following the 1981 rebellion were all organised there. Adama was host to
dozens of Gambians: political refugees, hustlers en route to other European
metropolis, true and fake revolutionaries, limitlessly bored
residents-in-waiting, and a long line of visitors from the old Dippa Kunda
fraternities. There was always food to be shared in Adia's house amidst
fiery debates about everything, often lasting into the wee hours.

    Comrade Faburay made his political mark by canvassing opinion against
the fiercely unambitious dictatorship of erstwhile PPP governments and by
defending and promoting the right of Gambians to organise themselves
autonomously for political and social progress. Together with others he
helped champion the causes of the poor and oppressed, and in promoting
international solidarity by collaborating with other exiled political groups
in Sweden.

Comrade Faburay heeded MOJA-G's call to work towards establishing a truly
democratic state that would be incapable of liberating itself from the
popular masses, thus recognising the crucial need to build strong,
responsive and representative mass organisations. He assumed a leading role
in the Bantaba Cultural Group which performed in most of Scandinavia in the
mid eighties, while penning bits of poetry during his more reflective moods.

      Gambians in Stockholm lost a true brother; an incredibly open and
amicable companion to everyone - the incessant refrain of mournful voices at
his internment on July 29th.

     To his colleagues at Söder Bus Depot his departure means the end of a
wonderfully memorable and congenial partnership; tearful colleagues who bade
him farewell with wreaths of roses.

     To his friends and comrades his absence spells an endlessly severe
personal loss of an unpretentious and plain-speaking fighter.

     To his family, Adama's passing spawns the painful absence of a dearly
loving husband, and a caring and dutiful father. We salute Mrs. Mampol
Janneh Jobe for standing by her adopted brother through thick and thin.

    We praise and honour Adama's widow Jabou Faal Faburay for her complete
devotion to Adama and all his struggles. We address our deepest condolences
to her and all the four children.

Long Live The Memory of Adama Faburay.

* *

*For the Struggle,*

*Adama Faburay's Comrades*

(August 2008)

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