BARROW: In striking denial of fairness, without  genial fare, we service our ego and wont at the regrettable expense of our economy. Lo! And poverty correction! In broad-daylight, and not any path to Gambia’s delight, we station our cheat! In a rude triumvirate of Hamat, Isatou, and the meaningful me sitting atop a fecundity, we most ungratefully kick away the ladder Gambia gave us to climb earlier. And with these, let that farmer whose toil this year met the rains’ unfavorable gesture perish with his soul’s wounds. Let that child with gushing viscera, in dire need of medical treatment rot in her mother’s woes—for those foreign preceptors of Third World governance will still accord me colorful evaluation. Let that flood victim swim in his family’s agony to wade between soaked linen and scarce, but dampened staples. To stay for posterity, it will—this government of the rarest happenstance!

VICE PRESIDENT: Say it loud! Quote the constitution ere its thought fades!

HAMAT: And inject into Gambia’s carotids the guarantee it avails!

BARROW: (Delighted) Five unabridged years! Five solid rains! A thousand, eight-hundred and twenty-five days!

HAMAT: Add more!

VICE PRESIDENT: And five dusty dry seasons that color Gambians from bright to soiled. Preach! For it shan’t be three, but five of continued poverty and extreme fund-diversion. And when our storage is bloated with the ill-gotten, our children shall pick where we left. Ours shall be a trajectory of bequeathing a milked Gambia—a bilked people!

(Enter Soothsayer and Three Years Jotna Crew)

HAMAT: Great Soothsayer! All hail thee! Saturn averts the evil eye from thy sanctified territory!

VICE PRESIDENT: Our marabouts preserve thee, mighty Soothsayer!

BARROW: But with whom doth thou maketh thy entry? They resemble my heartache! This present company thou goads fills me with finicky considerations.

SOOTHSAYER: All hail Barrow as hailed Jammeh!

BARROW: Do not stab us with a taboo this hour, sententious Soothsayer!

VICE PRESIDENT: We sent for thee to prognosticate about three or five—numbers that have become too algebraic for the President these days.

HAMAT: Even I wasn’t versatile with calculus! Numbers on too feeble carpals could be too difficult to handle.

THREE YEARS JOTNA: There’s no calculus in this! Three means “Saba.” Five means “Luulu!”

BARROW: Really?

THREE YEARS JOTNA: Three also means “Tatti” while five “Joyi.”

BARROW: Really?

THREE YEARS JOTNA: Three is also “Nyetta.” And five “Jurrom!”

BARROW:Really?

THREE YEARS JOTNA: And two plus two is also four.

BARROW: Really?

THREE YEARS JOTNA: And cows don’t fly!

HAMAT: Yes they do!

THREE YEARS JOTNA: (turning to VP): Your excellency, thy prefix is a revered one. We commit thee not to any Orwellian lexicon. But this is the simplest of language.

VICE PRESIDENT: I know not much English, tonight.

SOOTHSAYER: And the constitution?

THREE YEARS JOTNA: It shoves into none’s throat three or five in count or lease. In fact, it readily harvests for any sitting president a simple resignation by volition. Barrow’s was a witnessed promise of three. The nation was sold such loud alarum.

HAMAT: But we have projects to finish!

THREE YEARS JOTNA: Which government never hath projects to complete? Thou knoweth fully well yours isn’t projects to finish! That’s not what thou marketed to multitudes in 2016. Thou came politically indigent. And thou begged our trust and fervent cheer.  The removal of Jammeh by our ballot was our part of the bargain that is now troubled. And thou shall sit for three years and call fresh elections in the popular understanding then. Many voted thy lot to the present with the keenest response to this commercial! Governments come to fulfill promises, especially those as sacred as thine. Alack! Thy gang arrived to soil them and rend the nation asunder!

BARROW: Humbug! Sharp-tongue kids that charge at the very core of my sleep.

HAMAT (Together with VP): Arrest them!

(Enter Dou Sanno and Lamin Cham with a fleet of new bicycles)

DOU SANNO: Here! Another buoy to keep the Barrow Youth Movement afloat. According to my head, governance is all about plundering resources. It’s a get-rich-or die-hard-trying matrix.

LAMIN CHAM: More or less!

SOOTHSAYER: To prognosticate this hour is to offend.

HAMAT: Say no more!

VICE PRESIDENT: No more!

BARROW: (With difficulty breathing) I need mine herbals! Or the physicist’s pump! [Dou Sanno and Cham rush to hand him a bicycle pump]

THREE YEARS JOTNA: Not that one, fool! He needs a bronchodilator! It will open his airways and ease his breathing!

DOU SANNO: Who’re you calling fool? The president just said “pump” and we brought one!

SOOTHSAYER: Asthma pump! Not bicycle pump! Once again, the kids win! To prognosticate this hour is to eternally offend.

BARROW: (Angered) Then offend.

SOOTHSAYER: To prognosticate this hour is to gnaw at the bosoms of my interlocutors, O Adamant Adama! Behold! The night hooter hoots in the dark. But the valiant whitehead hawk tears the skies in silence, only to descend when peremptory. The snake catcher catches both snake and venom to heal the bitten. With pipes and timbrel, troubled leaders that are sworn socialites seek to burry their woes in the farrago of sound. Thou may hoot about water cannons—all in the dark. But like Jammeh, thine snake catcher shall arrest both thee and that which thou hoot about.

BARROW: (harangued) I catch no snakes and hoot no nucturnal calls.

SOOTHSAYER: Think of what I announce. Think of Gambia’s problems. Picture that soldier that enlisted to proudly wear Gambia’s badge. Thou rendered him beggar in his own home and put his guest on a pedestal. Vision that market woman now widowed—thou ceremoniously sentenced her to abject poverty when the fountain of her fish supply is seized and licensed to Senegal and China. Fathom that returnee, mercilessly emaciated after serving in Europe’s camps. It wasn’t thine predecessor that ushered his deportation. I speak the same of the American sentbacks that hide their faces at the airport at the foot of the jet they shall forget not. I don’t think thou understand thy present, let alone thy future. Here is a glimpse of thy present—you’ve been helping Jammeh smile a lot. Mark! O thou that issued from the serenity of Mankamang Kunda! And thy future is much predictable than  Jammeh’s—O king of special interests.

To be continued Insha Allaah!

“That these thoughts might inspire many a reader. And from thenceforth might rise those to change Africa. If not, Gambia. Or if not, one of its muddy streets.” Ebrima Papa Colley (Gambiano)

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