Big Fitna Series - Jammeh's Aids update

The daily observer last week reported that President Jammeh discharged 68 patients from his AIDS treatment program at a ceremony held at State House.   I for one do not believe Jammeh can cure AIDS, and will never be convinced that Jammeh can cure a headache let alone AIDS.   Well to do Gambians must now wake up and help the less fortunate by demystifying Jammeh'S ridiculous claims.  I refuse to believe that Gambians who ought to know better are as morally bankrupt as Dr. Mbowe, a western trained doctor who fully endorses Jammeh's Aids cure campaign. Remember Fadzai Gwaradzimba - the UN representative kicked out of Gambia for imploring Jammeh not to indirectly encourage risky sexual behavior among Gambians with his AIDS cure claim?  Well, seems like she didn't have to wait long enough to see her prophecy come to light. Today, the president’s irresponsible claims has successfully erased all the gains made against Aids in the gambia over the last Decade.  The hard work of health professionals in combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Gambia have now been effectively undermined.  Not only has he disseminated false confidence in his "cure" for AIDS, he has asked Gambians living with AIDS  not to take ART after they enroll in his program.  This is possibly the single most threatening act against Gambian society in our young history. These delusions and disinformation has and will continue to claim 1000's of Gambian lives. The Facts: Between 2001 and 2003, the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the country was halved, and followed by a steady decline of the disease since then. However, since Jammeh’s 2007 announcement claiming that he can cure AIDS, the prevalence of HIV/AIDS HAS trippled. As highlighted in this CIA graph below ,over 18,000 Gambians live with HIV/AIDS TODAY – a 12,000 increase from 2007.   Source:  CIA World Fact-book Gambians must wake up from this slumber and realize that similar to his oil claim promising Gambia's arrival as an advanced country, and touting of his  "vision 20/20" for Gambia, Jammeh'S AIDS cure is nothing but another blatant and reckless abuse of power.  We have no oil, Jammeh cannot cure aids, the Gambian  economy is nowhere near middle income status and Jammeh will not develop the country to be the envy of the rest of the world. One thing he can however do is respect the dignity of Gambians. We've accepted that we are a poor nation and will remain poor during Jammeh's lifetime.  The only thing we must not accept is his systematic destruction of the institutions that are in place to serve as a safety net for the very poor in our country.  For the Gambia Ever True!

Vice President Isatou Njie Saidi Talks to US based Freedom Newspaper

Culled from freedomnewspaper.com

Le Big Fitna Series: For The Gambia Ever True

Oh Jammeh Musa!!! 

This has been a tough couple of days for peace-loving Gambians.  There is no other way to properly justify what happened last week and the Jammeh government was totally wrong to put 9 prisoners to death without exhausting all the legal requirements as stipulated in the land of the law.  

Without reservation, I condemn the sole decision of the President of the republic to execute all inmates on death row by the middle of this month.  Jammeh must be stopped.  

I think we’ve all heard the saying that Gambians are peaceful people and that war is something very alien to us.  This is actually a delusional view of the Gambian disposition when it comes to the  affairs of the nation and politics.  Those who lived to see the war in 1981 will tell you that Gambians are very capable of the same things for which the rebels in Liberia and Sierra Leone are famous.  For now, and despite all the hype to take on Jammeh, he (jammeh) still has total control of the nation and the general feeling for those on the ground remains that surrendering to Jammeh’s will means peace and it’s going to remain that way in the foreseeable future.   However, our only problem is that we are ignoring important lessons from our brothers and sisters in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast; all once peace-loving nations, torn into shreds because of injustice, corruption, and the inability of their citizenry to say enough and demand that their leaders move towards good governance and respect the dignity of their people. 

Gambians must start calling Jammeh and his cronies to book and demand that he show Gambians more compassion and respect.   For the Gambian sycophant refusing to speak out against injustices in the Gambia just because he/she wish to protect the moments of convenience the system provides them, I say carry on.  Yesterday it was Dr. Janneh and countless others currently lodged at mile 2, today it is the people on death row, tomorrow may be you, your father, mother, sister, brother, son or daughter.  In Jammeh's own words, "the world revolves in 3 days - yesterday, today and tomorrow."

However, anyone in and outside of the Gambia that has anything in Gambia that they enjoy should start getting out of their shells and holding government more accountable.   Should anything happen to our beloved Gambia, all the moments of convenience and joy or pleasant attachments to our nation that we enjoy will disappear in thin air.   Your businesses will be gone, money gone, family displaced and loved ones gone.  The easiest route is that we Gambians start asking the APRC government stop being paranoid, stop making enemies, respect the dignity of Gambians and stop making our families destitute by continuing to arrest, jail and exile the breadwinners of our households. 

If not, we are looking at some angry Gambians willing to do anything to undo the travesty of justice that has been bestowed upon them by the APRC government since 1994.  One just has to listen to the callers on freedom radio, read blogs, listprocs/forums and other online newspapers to realize that Gambians are angry. We are now changing the discourse from regime change through the ballot box to Jammeh must go at any cost.   I take them seriously and I think we all ought to take them seriously.  The reason I say this is because, when clowns like Charles Taylor were making noise, Doe and his cronies were calling them empty barrels, cowards in exile, dogs etc.  When Taylor was ready,  and with the support of the morally bankrupt CIA,  it took only about 100 soldiers fighting on his side to cause havoc in Liberia.  Liberians today are still reeling from the effects of war and Liberians will tell you that they wish they had another chance to stand up to Doe to avoid the likes of Charles Taylor.  Same can be said for our cousins in Sierra Leone and many countries surrounding us, who have left fear and government repression get the best of them.  This cycle of abuse and impunity if left unchallenged will only lead to a total destruction of our nation.

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My message to every Gambian is that we ask Yahya Jammeh to unclench his fist and let Gambians and friends of Gambia help him develop the country.  Ask Yahya Jammeh to start sprinting towards good governance.  Tell Yahya Jammeh that he is not doing any favors to Gambia by building schools, roads and farms; it is a job he was hired to do and for which he is being well compensated for.  If anything, it is no surprise that he loves Gambia more than everyone else.  Gambia has made him a millionaire, because of Gambia he lives in a Mansion, because of Gambia he owns a plane, because of Gambia he sleeps in 5 star hotels, because of Gambia he can afford to make 30 people millionaires in one sitting.  Because of Gambia he rides in $500,000 cars while Gambians receive handouts from the west after a bad farming season.   Give the same opportunity and the comfort that comes with being a president to any Gambian and they will love Gambia more than any other Gambian and Yahya Jammeh is no exception. 

The Gambia, with 70% living in abject poverty, has done more for Yahya Jammeh than Yahya Jammeh can possibly ever do for Gambia.  Stop the rule of fear and give 70% of Gambians living in abject poverty a chance to have Gambia do more for them.  

I am 100% Gambian, I used to be quite about government repression against my people, but I am quite no more.

For The Gambia Ever True.

"The Gay Presido"

My friend once made a joke that the only people dying to get married these days are homosexuals.  I guess her point was that marriage in this part of the world is no longer sacred.  In fact, we have half of all our marriages ending in divorce.   I am a heterosexual African male from a society with widely different societal norms, and my country leans more to the extreme religious side of this gay issue.  My countrymen  are yet to even have open discussion about accepting homosexuality in our communities, talk-less of allowing them to get married.   My president even once threatened to cut off the heads of homosexuals and gave them 48 hours to leave the country.  Mind you, the gays and lesbians Dr. President was referring to are our own Gambian brothers and Sisters, some of whom have never been outside of the Gambia.  However, last month,  my fair President had a sudden change of heart.  His view on homosexuality evolved and he no longer wanted homosexuals killed or exiled; a compromise was reached and homosexuals in Gambia were guests at his five star hotel at the mile two prisons just outside the capital.  In simpler terms, homosexuals or suspected homosexuals were rounded up from a local bar by Gambian authorities and sent straight to jail.  Their fate now lies with the morally bankrupt imported Nigerian judges who run the judicial system in Gambia. 

While I was trying to digest the homosexual fiasco in my motherland, Obama also hit us with his own version of gay evolution.  President Obama now supports gay marriage.  A jaw dropping announcement from Obama in an election year.  My first reaction was that Obama has gone crazy. But after listening to his reasons for supporting gay marriage and talking to someone who is gay, my views on gay marriage have also evolved.   Don't ask me how, I suppose I am just what Nigerians call "follow follow".  

Unlike Obama however, I still believe marriage is between a man and a woman.  But I also believe that we were all born free and should be allowed to be with the person or even persons with whom we choose to fall in love.  I am OK with gays falling in love with each other and living their lives together as normal world citizens. More importantly, the lesson I learned from this gay marriage issue in the last couple of days is that an honest debate that is worth having requires different viewpoints that are based on facts and rational arguments.   The argument that altering the traditional definition of marriage will weaken the church or African society and that gay people cannot make a child of their own is NEITHER rational NOR factual. 

Don't agree with me?  Stop reading and watch this young man in the youtube video below.

As decent human beings, we can pick up something from Obama's decision; to be tolerant of others, and to treat others using the same respect, dignity, and courtesy with which we expect to be treated.  The world would do well to emulate President Obama’s behavior and try to be less divisive, more humble, and employ decency and humanity in their treatment of others with whose points of view we may disagree with.

We have to now come to terms with the fact that the union of gays have no effect on the marriage of straight people.  Gay people have no power to destroy the already broken institution of marriage.  It is us straight people that are destroying the traditional institution of marriage by constantly abusing it.  

The Changing Face of the Gambian Youth - Le Big Fitna Series Part 2 of 2

Meanwhile, at home, the family as an institution is crumbling down like a house of cards. The father if still alive and at home, not killed by high blood pressure or toiling with some menial job away in Europe, is tired of being quarreled out of the house and marginalized. The whole household depends on the salary of one son or the periodic handouts of the boyfriend or bedmate courting the daughter. Where the family depends on the remittances of an overseas son or daughter, the coming of the monies is often an occasion to big fights within the family. If the mother wins the fight, the family is turned into a sort of a matriarchy in which the reversal of roles turn mother into the head and father into a grudging loser. In the case the father wins, it is likely that a new “mother” will be brought into the household and all hell will eventually break loose. Soon, likelier than not, one of the teenage girls will be impregnated by someone not known for certain by even the girl herself. Panic rocks the family as its honor is tarnished and it searches for a willing father or affordable illegal abortion. Whether the child is aborted or not matters little. Either way, the family’s sense of it honor would have already been tarnished and the girl’s virginity lost. This makes the probability of another teenage and unwanted pregnancy in the family either with the same girl or her sister very high. And it is not this alone that can be sure for disquiet. Official statistics say a little over 3% of the country’s population is going around with HIV or AIDS. Most of the infected do not know and the outdated schooling system provides only little sex education and almost no sex education. The problem is not only that many sexually active young people are so poorly aware of the dangers of the pandemic, but most are indifferent to it. So though the HIV/AIDS percentage is still relatively low, the rate of increase has been said to have accelerated somewhat over the past few years. If this attitude of indifference mixes with the air of emancipation or sexual promiscuity I observed at the beach parties are allowed to blend freely, it is almost certain to lead to a major explosion in the health sector in the course of the life of the teenage generation. So far, the problems outlined in on this piece are yet to appear on the radar of policy makers and there is still to be any comprehensive official youth policy designed to tackle the problems of the youth of the day. And yet the problems of the youth are many, varied and growingly formidable. But before we go any further, let us go back to exploring the landscape on which today’s Gambian youth must traverse.

The schooling system in the country tends to turn the youth into a creature that is neither fish nor foul. Having attained rudimentary elementary education from the schools, she/he thinks she/he is above all available menial jobs. There are certain jobs that even his or her own family would not let him or her try. It would be another family dishonor to be seen laboring with other people’s loads in the market; she would not be allowed to become a domestic maid in someone else’s compound. He may not wield the axe to fell wood and sell it at the local market. She may work in what is commonly call Fast Food joints amidst the sounds of loud reggae or hip hop music even if the viability of such enterprises are questionable, but he may not touch the business of the more lucrative business of selling cheap local food in street corner huts or low-class restaurants known as pascions. She may be allowed to sell imitation gold chains, bracelets and earrings but she must not deal in fish, meat, vegetables, and most reviling nettetu paste. What the unemployed Gambian youth is looking for is not work, but employment. S/he hates work because it is either too physically hard or monotonously boring. Neither school nor family has been able to inculcate in him or her the need for self-discipline and hard work. When cornered into a situation where he or she must work, the idea is to do the minimum possible. Allah’s time is the best, and a decent person should not let the pain of thirst drive him or her into drinking dishwater, is one of the popular wisdom of this country.

Another popular saying is that fortune is a bangle worn around the foot of the owner. The more you move the more chances that fate will shuffle out the chances of fortune in your favor. In fact in the Wollof language, the language most commonly spoken in the Greater Banjul Area, fortune, or “Woarr-Sak”, is not one but a two-word phrase meaning roam-create; roam around and create luck. So our imaginary family, with children chronically unemployed and teenage daughters being serially impregnated, the temptation is to let them go out and create their luck.

Nowadays, it does not matter much that looking for such luck may lead them into hands of some pedophilic European tourist. The family would readily marry out either daughter or son to any European man or woman no matter how old if it promises material and financial reward. The only lame condition may be that the European feigns to convert into Islam and assume a Muslim name, if only temporarily or occasionally. Such marriages of convenience are being met with growing acceptance in Gambian society as our value system changes and the worth of children is increasingly being measured in cash. It is this transformation of our outlook and our idea of children that is making life increasingly difficult for them to live.

Source: The Gambianjournal

Ngonzi, Kim and Campo; all at the mercy of Corporate Capital

I had no intention of blogging about the World Bank, but one of my friends asked me for an opinion so…. 

I must start by saying that the appointment of Dr. Kim over Ngonzi to head the World Bank should not come as a surprise to anyone that has followed the bank’s selection process over the years. 1600 Penn Ave. nominates an American and that choice is final. Although I must say, Obama has disappointed many with his choice, especially after he promised a transparent selection process - damn politicians!  That however should not take away from the fact that Dr. Kim is a highly reputable health professional who’ve spent most of his career solving problems with a cheaper and more efficient process than most politicians and development experts .   If anything, we should hope that Obama’s choice in Dr. Kim will work for Africa this time around.  I hope Dr. Kim can help the bank effectively focus on health care delivery (that will work for Africans) with the same determination they adopted with their unpopular development initiatives which favor large corporate capital at the expense of poor African farmers. 

However, given the unchangeable nature of the bank's traditions and practices, I personally do not care who becomes head.  We have seen respected economic experts take the helm at the bank promising significant development in Africa but yet underdevelopment and poverty in the continent still persists.  In fact, one can even say that under the guidance of these so called qualified experts, the bank has pushed the African continent deeper into crisis with the conditionalities and adjustment programs attached to their “solution for a better Africa.” 

For Africans feeling the sense of injustice about Dr. Kims appointment, the experience from Kofi Annan, Boutros-Ghali before him and now Fatou Bensouda should teach us a simple lesson that the nationality of the head of these international organizations does not really have much of an impact in the call for the reform of the fundamental policies that will favor the poor African over corporate capital.   There is a clear difference between symbolic, cosmetic and real change and the appointment of someone from the third world as the head of the bank only represents a cosmetic change that will not change the fundamental developmental ideology and operation of the bank.   As Africans, we must also remember that Ngonzi has been a managing Director at the bank and has helped pushed the bank's trade liberalization policies that have had a big hand in food insecurity in Africa by putting the future of poor Africans in the hands of speculators in the futures commodities market.  The deleterious results of the bank's actions in Africa under the leadership of Ngonzi and few others are still evident as their policies have forced Africans to abandoned agriculture that worked for the bretton woods prescribed cash crop solution which has increased dependency on aid base development that has driven Africa to the edge.  

Given Africa's relationship with the twin bretton woods institutions for over 50 years, we must now accept that these 2 institutions simply exist to do the bidding of the great powers.  Ngonzi would have spoken for the people of Africa, but she would have still been at the service of the system and tradition already in place at the bank.  Although some will say a change of guard is a start, I simply disagree as Africa is yet to start pulling its own weight (in the form of funds) within the bank that will force the bank to seek reforms that will favor our people over large multi-national capital.    

Solution:  A complete overhaul and restructuring of the IMF and the World Bank will have to be effected for the Bretton Woods institutions to start reflecting the will of the African populace.  If the WB/IMF really want to help Africa, they should abandon most of their policies that open up African markets to exploitation and also forget their current mission of preserving the current global economic and political system that only favors the G8/G20.   Either that or Africans leaders must now stop disappointing us and start putting all their energies in developing institutions that will allow us to progress enough to see the Bretton woods institutions as second class developmental agencies.  

The Changing Face of The Gambian Youth - Le Big Fitna Series: Part 1 of 2

In this edition of Fitna, I'm posting this article below that was posted on one of the Gambian website some time ago.  Please read on.

Sunday 9th September was the final day of this summer’s weekend beach parties that has now become a regular feature of life in Serekunda and Banjul. For a decade now, every saturday and sunday, the Youth in Banjul, Bakau and Serekunda converge at the Palmarima Beachside to have a good time. The numbers attending these parties have been increasing over the years and on Sunday September 9th,  the event hit a climax, pulling a record crowd of an estimated 50 000 youngsters. To cater for the teeming tens of thousands a whole market for snacks and drinks have been blossoming with total volumes of sale reaching D3 million per weekend. This year’s summer events saw the blending of business with pleasure as the two rival mobile telephony service providers, AFRICEL and COMMIUM, each provided stages and equipment for live shows on the beach. The musical shows which are held outdoors are interspersed with alternating live band appearances and the playing of recorded music that sending the Youth wild and frantic. For many youngsters living around the Greater Banjul Area, the whole summer was a hilarious party on the beach. Every Saturday and Sunday evening, starting from around 5 in the evening, tens of thousands of them could be seen marching through the alleyways of Serekunda or waiting to join commercial vans to converge on the beach and party till after midnight, or at times, when there are no rains, till the early morning of the following day.

Hordes of threatening baton-wielding policemen and soldiers also encamp near the venues supposedly to keep law and order.  In fact, these law enforcement authorities pose the greatest threat to peace of the parties by constantly harassing and occasionally roughing up people. The amazing thing is that there are hardly any incidents worth mentioning as the youth have their fun together, dancing, cheering and clapping. One cannot help admiring the peace-loving nature of the Gambian way of life. Such massive gatherings of young people in other countries would have been inevitably embroiled in fist-fights, stabbing and other knifing incidents if not the clatter of gun shots. While there is some occasional smell of burning marijuana grass here and there, alcohol is rarely seen even though there are number of bars around. The bar owners however are not that happy with the presence of thousands of potential customers as should be expected.  The organizers have not provided toilet facilities so the youth storm the surrounding restaurants, in long lines leading to the toilet rooms of the surrounding bars and restaurants and effectively messing them up for the owners. The owners are also not happy because the youth have very low purchasing power and cannot afford the exorbitant prices in the restaurants. The Youth resort to the ad hoc market of the food and drink hawkers nearby.

Unemployment among the Gambian Youth is officially put at twenty-seven per cent but seventy-two per cent is much closer to reality. But far from the hardships of unemployment, the squalor of homes, roads and shanty towns, they are able to create an enclave of illusory paradise and escapism on the beach. This particular sunday however, the parties come to an abrupt halt because it was the last one before the coming in of the austere and puritanical month of Ramadan. By the time it ends in the middle of October, schools would have been opened and the beach cleared of native Gambian considered as “bumpsters”, in wait for the mass arrival of European tourists.

One striking thing with this new form of Youth activism is watching the teenage girls prepare for the sunday beach festivities.  Some of these young girls are barely thirteen, but are all dressed in semi-naked tight-fitting outfits that vividly show out the shapes and outlines of both their backs and front, or dangling down jeans that reveal the naked skin of backs.  One would think that the masses of youngsters were out for a party of sex on the beach.  Ever so often, one is tempted to further wonder if their parents were not home to see how their children were dressed when they were leaving for the sunday beach parties. They look excessively emancipated, and yet they come from homes where most of the time, Islamized patriarchy is the order of the day; where women do all domestic work while men are seen chatting, playing cards or drinking green tea; in homes where women are beaten up regularly and most believe that Allah made men superior to women and their lot is for the bed, kitchen and the rearing of children. The contradiction has baffled both Muslim elders and stupefied learned observers.

Vice President Isatou Njie-Saidy once said that to be a youth in the country nowadays is not easy; we could not agree more with the Vice President. Six years after Gambian Youth were given the right to vote and made to believe that the Jammeh regime was wholly and solely theirs, their favorite Gambian leader ordered to shoot down fourteen of them when they dared protested against the brutality of members of the security forces who raped one Gambian youth and killed another. That disillusionment is further strengthened by the fact that jobs were increasingly getting scarce and every employed Gambian was getting more mouths to feed while prices of basic goods were scaling higher and higher everyday. Poverty was getting out of hand and the numbers of school dropouts were multiplying exponentially each year. The plight of the school-system itself was difficult to fathom. While the number of schools have increased substantially and the comfort of the buildings much better than before, the quality of learning has been degenerating frighteningly.  Gambian students have been found to be performing much less than students from other West African Anglophone countries in all the regional exams they share. The few students who perform satisfactorily often soon find out that there is a mismatch between what they have learned and what obtains in the labor market. The Gambian school is without ideas of innovation, flexibility, inspiration and without touch with the realities of life. By the time the Youth leaves or drop out of school, he or she has become so dispirited with learning that it becomes more comfortable to assume intellectual numbness and social detachment and get totally involved with avenues of escape like love, sex, music, football games or the exodus to Europe and North America. A dedicated few go into religious fanaticism, wielding prayer beads and preaching against the temptations of Satan.

Source: The Gambian Journal

Whitney Houston - G.O.A.T

The video above is of Whitney Houston performing the American National Anthem at the super bowl at a time when another Bush just began another war in the Persian Gulf; ignoring the biggest war that threatened and continues to threaten the lives of Americans and destroy their families – drugs.   The irony here is, this talented mega superstar (Whitney) singing the best rendition of the American national anthem ever heard in honor of US troops fighting a war somewhere, ended up succumbing to the most serious war (drugs) the American government pretend to be fighting with far less commitment than the frivolous ones they are stubbornly fighting in the middle east.  Anyway, that’s enough politics for now.

The death of Whitney Houston has left most of us with an uneasy feeling this morning.  Leaving her personal demons out of the conversation, she was the most talented black vocalist I’ve ever heard.   I refuse to get into the Bobby Brown bashing simply because I do not know what really transpired between Whitney and Bobby beyond the scripts that played out in front of my little box.   From the little I saw and read, they seemed to have fed off each other's most destructive instincts. As adults however, we ought to remember that at the end of the day, we are responsible for our own actions.   I am in total disagreement with people suggesting that an alledged crackhead like Booby Brown, who himself was a victim of the larger American drug problem, and needed help and intervention should have known better than corrupting Whitney.   Anything more I add to this Whitney/Bobby drug problem will be totally insensitive to the pain that both Bobby Brown and his daughter are currently feeling.

Talent-wise, Whitney was the American dream.  415 awards (most amongst female artists) and about 170 million records sold, she leaves behind a musical legacy that most can only dream of.   I love her music; She had a voice of an angel.   And even though I’ve not listened to her songs in a while, I did yesterday and it sent chills down my spine. God has a better plan for Whitney and I am sure the Almighty will take better care of her than we did.  Whitney will definitely cement her place as the lead singer in God's choir.

My heartfelt condolences to her family, friends and all those who still love her music.

Rest in peace Whitney Houston.