Tribute to Comrade Sillah
By Tone Cisse. 20th February 2006


Here is my tribute.... a poem:

Tribute to Comrade

Bright heat and shaft of blinding sunlight

Strikes from a new sheet of corrugated roofing

Midday Banjul heat

Friday

I turn off Otto Road into New Perseverance

Through a dusty compound, under lines of drying washing, multicoloured like 
an exhibition of art against the shade less sky

The air heavy with the sweet smell of ‘sasa’ or maybe ‘lobito’ (1)

A small room in a line of ‘boys’ quarters’

Inside Ebou, Comrade Sillah

Shirtless and sweating

Pencil working on a sketchpad,

Holds forth on dialectical materialism and Pan-africanism

As, ignored, the muezzin calls the faithful to Friday prayer…

Comrade Sillah is gone

An ‘elder brother’ lost

No more heated polemical debates

No more inspired visionary paintings providing realistic windows on the 
prevailing social conditions

In shock at the news I remember

Raging debates on Marxism,

The application of theory to practice,

The role of the intelligencia,

Peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie,

Comrade,

Sitting behind a chessboard,

Astride a sewage gully thick with green crust,

Holding forth on the intricacies of the revolution in Iran, armed struggle 
in South Africa, snowy wastes of past Bolshevik struggles, the Kronstadt, 
the Paris Commune, and Amilcar Cabral (3)

Mixed in with the ‘Doumma’ of a slammed down checkmate.

Giants of history and political action brought to life verbatim in the 
afternoon and Attaya of a Banjul ‘vous’, (4)

Debates staged with others also now gone…E.O.Njie, Jallow Union…

Comrade,

Aficionado of jazz and ‘soupa kandia’, (5)

His small bachelor room piled high with books, paintings flowing ashtrays

Became our seminar room, our corrugated iron university

A giant of the intellect, theoretician, historian, philosopher and educator

Communist, Marxist, Pan Africanist…Artist

Artist,

Nobel prize nominee for the work called ‘Pater Nostra’

A deep social realism…as sharp with irony and accuracy as his polemical 
tongue in a heated debate.

Comrade,

My mentor, my teacher,

It is only now with his passing that it starts to dawn on me how great an 
influence he was,

I see it in my own drawings, the power of pen and ink,

the techniques of batik, and the maths in sign writing…

the long afternoons of writing ‘No Unauthorised Personnel’ by the dozen for 
a contract thanks to the US Embassy…

*(but wait…did we ever get paid for that?)

‘Sama rakk bul yabatey’ (6) I can hear Comrade’s comment…

Comrade Ebou Sillah

Flawed hero who taught us humanity

And educated a generation

You will always be with us

Rest in peace

Tony Cisse

February 2006

Notes

(1) Sasa Lobito – strong varieties of marijuana

(2) 1921 rebellion of Russian sailors against the Bolsheviks

(3) leader of the national independence struggle in Guinea Bissau

(4) Gambian expression - ‘Vous’ short for ‘rendezvous’ or informal club

(5) Gambian dish made with palm oil

(6) ‘Don’t be rude younger brother’

Tony Cisse

Visit my websites,

http://groups.msn.com/TonyCisse - personal site with links to areasof 
interest

http://groups.msn.com/GuuySipiProject - website of my project in Senegal 
offering small goup programmes combining a fusion of cultural exploration, 
personal development, self-awareness, and coaching.

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