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. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask] if you have problems accessing the web interface and remember to write your full name and e-mail address. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------