Red Black Nonsense - An August Medley

A lazy Economy

Our economy is not designed to fail, and I will not be the little boy that cries wolf. However, how scary is it when businesses feel a need to close-shop “en masse”? In any other country, it might end up being an opportunity for new business ventures to start. In The Gambia however, with a lazy gene embedded within us, how will that ever happen? We have a monotonous business culture where one man’s success in a certain business venture does not inspire innovation but rather inspires a show of “copy cats”. It is like an assembly line at a production plant, mass producing the same product for the masses; different package, same product...sometimes even worse; same package, worse product!

We do not take risks and it has a lot to do with the culture we have. Anything out of the ordinary is frowned upon. Just as the religious zealots will scream hell at a semi-nude model, yet build a religious sanctuary with ill gotten wealth, we frown on innovation with raised eyebrows and a long hmmm and celebrate lazy business. If Abdou got an Audi Q7, we immediately assume he got it through the wealth acquired by his media company and even without the drive to have a successful business but rather to simply drive a Q7 we take a loan that immediately finances a similar business and yes...an Audi Q7. How naively dumb could a human being be to bury himself in the sand. Your parents should have smacked you twice when you were born...or given you away for adoption! My mother slapped me once for altering my 5^th grade report card (I had looked low upon a 5^th position in a class of at least 30 and had opted for the rather glossy 1^st place) and she didn’t care that a friend of mine had done it too. Maybe just maybe we should be slapping all these copies that end up giving Xerox a bad name. True...we definitely do not need to reinvent the wheel. Certain industries need more players just to make everything more affordable. We need more people giving us import options for basic commodities and consumables; more people selling property (hoping it makes property more affordable); more people investing in entertainment. However how many people will import a hundred cars and park them for years on our highways with no consideration for depreciation? We believe in lazy business...if it involves being static then it’s good business! No?

We must always encourage foreign players in this game of business but we should not allow our economy to depend on it. Many Gambian businesses claim that Gambian people do not support Gambian businesses and yet they’re too busy trying to watch other Gambian businesses fail. There is a rather broad highway between competitiveness and pure evil! Baiye len xeexante bi...leekante bi dara jarukor

Save me oh “Lawd”!

I look at the business situation in the country and I cringe. Do we not learn from others? Do we not learn from our past? We complain today about the system of education in The Gambia and how far standards have dropped with our young ones but we forget the root of the problem. The root of the problem was a civil war in Sierra Leone. No the rebels did not cross borders...the teachers did. There was a huge influx of quality Sierra Leonean teachers in our schools driven out by war and violence. Churches couldn’t house their congregations anymore and so they had to build bigger and better structures. There was even a waiting list for teachers hoping to get employed. People that used to have better jobs in the land that used to “flow with milk and honey” were more than ready to take up the job of teaching as a temporary fix as they waited on things to calm down. Schools got bigger...intakes got larger and the standards were simply amazing.

Did we for once imagine that the war in Sierra Leone would never end? Wai yena soxorr wai..Have you not heard, “everything that has a beginning must have an end”. The war ended and they went back. Those that had the means left for the United States and Canada even before the war ended. The schools remained big, intakes continued to be high and teachers were no longer in high supply. We sold a myth to parents and they bought it! You know...the lazy gene again. How many of us check on the progress of our children in school? We know our children well enough to know that some of them need a 24 hours a day supervision at all times. Some of them need “nanny cams” even when they walk in the streets. How many young men do you know who drop out of school because “they’re tired” and their parents don’t even know about it until it’s too late? What’s more important than checking on our children? Had we been checking on them we would have been able to differentiate the schools from the “money making fallacies” and we would have known that Mr. Koroma who is supposed to be his class teacher does not even know your son’s name nor does anyone in the class remember his face...and yes...the field trip you paid for last month...you guessed right... NON EXISTENT!

Now you have allowed our society to see children that can’t even spell their names! I see them all over facebook and yes they are told that as long as people understand what they’re saying...it’s perfectly fine. I say it isn’t! But these children understand each other perfectly and it is not even the sms lingo. I have seen people write a full paragraph with not a single grammatically correct English sentence and yet there’s a whole population of friends that can understand enough to comment on the post. I have seen students of the university, of G.T.T.I and of The College unable to construct a single sentence in English. I am saying it just as I’ve seen it. Is it the University’s fault? Is it the fault of our higher level institutions? That is not for me to say. I will however say that this “crisis in the offing” is not beyond redemption. We cannot create a nation which is shouldered by 10 people. We cannot afford it. We must educate our young ones and force them to understand the value of an education. Mediocrity must be expelled from this nation! Let’s never celebrate ignorance... dega dega daww na yaram...am?

Operation Clear the Signs

No this operation is not government authorized or endorsed but how I would love for it to be. First stop should be Bertil Harding highway. Every single billboard on the highway should be put down as should every sign-post or banner (well...not all...just those representing businesses *cough*). Some of the billboards and banners are fine but we wouldn’t want to discriminate would we? We bring them all down and do a full revision of the language on these billboards. Sometimes it is almost as if the phrases were written by my 11 year old niece. I know I have spoken about this before but daf ma naxari rek! We need to clean the nation of signs. I keep seeing these images in my head even when I sleep...and then I can’t sleep because they look like monsters and they’re coming to eat me. Then also there are the signs with tense issues and those with words that are spelt as they’re pronounced and wrongly so. I would hate to quote the boards verbatim for I have been advised to not “step on any toes” until after the Ramadan.

However, just as I have decided to exercise restraint in the month of Ramadan, I plead with these billboard, poster and banner designers to please show their generosity by saving me from my nightmares. There are many people that are as observant as I am and you have forced us all to live a life of sleepless nights. If you will not make an effort to do it right, I shall pray to the almighty to strike your billboards down with August lightning! This is not a joke! I have been haunted for too long!

Driver dimbale nju si poto-poto yi

Ey driver! Ey driver! Dimbale nju si poto-poto yi! We know what August is like in The Gambia; hot, humid, storms, dry pockets, and yes...poto-poto. Okay, for those that are not familiar with the term, please wear white and walk very close to a moving vehicle just after rainfall. If you never took a painting class, well you just might be someone’s canvas. Sometimes you wonder if people are blind or if they do it for the fun of it. They have a broad road of tar to drive on but just when you’re smiling your thoughts away on your way to visit a friend (usually of the opposite sex) they choose the poto-poto ditch closest to you and spray some fresh mud on you. Now you have to choose to either go back home or force it through. Insane right? Well it hasn’t happened to me yet this year but I know it will. There has never been a year in The Gambia when I haven’t been sprayed by a moving vehicle. The next time it happens however, I will not be a gentleman!

Okay this essay shouldn’t be about me. I simply wished to drive a point home. It rains and our roads turn slippery so that alone should be a reason to drive carefully. However some arrogant fool with his windows up is looking for the opportunity to spoil a young man’s date. The worse thing is that there is no apology. The best you’ll get is a honk and a wave with a head bowed to signify an apology! Well, an apology means nothing if you won’t offer me a change of clothes. Baiye len sen xel si tali bi!

What’s Wolof for Beef

There’s no better place to watch the growth of our young people than on the internet, especially on facebook. A culture of debating and discussion which was further amplified by the Balafong forum has seen exponential growth over the last 12 months. A flurry of groups have emerged, all pioneered by Gambians and there is this hunger for discussion and expression which is very promising. It is for this reason and nothing else that I made mention of my hope that government and businesses open up the doors of criticism and popular opinion because the bottling up of emotions is something no one should wish for. This generation of young people will always find a medium to speak their minds. It is inevitable and this energy should be harnessed to effect positive change.

However, some emotions do need bottling!! I spoke about the development of the music industry here and how much progress has been made. However weeks after the last beef (for you older folks, beef is a slang for a xuloo) I was surprised to notice that facebook was still hosting a number of emasculated idiots using abusive words and thoughtless profanity against a person or a set of people! Walk before you start running people. How a person can be allowed to spew hate on a medium which is supposed to bring people together is unimaginable. Try screaming bomb in JFK (airport) and see what happens. Zuckerberg should definitely add a “virtual slap” to our list of options next to “like” and “comment”. I just hope I don’t get slapped first! Ah well...”how for do”...I guess it’s true what they say; “It takes but one fool to lose the battle”....

T.G.B.A.