Kunta Kinteh, the movie, is probably the only detailed account of the Atlantic Slave Trade (trading in human bodies) that the majority of Gambians could connect to this important historic incident. The Blakk genocide, the first holocaust in living memory.

The silence and the no-show of interest in this topic from the two ministries of education (lower, basic and higher) is deafening. It’s the same on the media landscape and in the public domain for more than half a century. 

The Atlantic Slave Trade and Colonialism are the two major phenomena that have changed the course of our histories and the lives we live today than any other happening in the last one thousand years.

It’s a dead topic in our country and even in our collective memory as a people and a nation. Gambia as a country is a product of those two tragedies visited upon us by Caucasians people from Europe, America and Asia.

How and why is it possible that no mention is made of these painful and humiliating experiences that our forefathers has to endure?

Is it just a discursive blind spot or a deliberate and calculated decision on the part of those in power to blindfold the populace and appease their European and American donors by not upsetting them with reminders of their brutal crimes? Crimes that give them everything they are in possession of today? 

Hardly would you come across literature in the form of books, pictures or film material by any Gambian covering the dynamics of enslavement and subjugation of Blakk people in the last one thousand years—specifically, in the West Afrikkan territory.

Just by talking about these two historic events might incur the wrath of some compatriots whose raw shame and naked sensitivity about the topic of enslavement one might be touching.

The zero discursive space accorded to the histories leading to the forced creation of a country called Gambia breeds a fatal, and if I may add, chronic cycle of ignorance that is slowly but surely killing the necessary sense of identity and self-worth required to build an independent nation of freedoms, liberty and prosperity. 

The consequences of a lack of knowledge and understanding of our past goes further to create creolized mentalities, especially within the youth population, that in turn feeds on our attachment to our beautiful cultures and magnificent traditions.

A prime example is what one Gambian historian by the name *Dembo Fatty* called the Gambian accent. He lamented the British and American slangs that have come to dominate the way Gambians speak the English language. Clearly, we are not good imitators.

We are creators from nature. I personally lament why we, in the first place, are even speaking English in the presence of our own splendidly beautiful languages that are very much capable, perhaps more than any other languages, of containing and transporting human knowledge. 

A nation is like an organism that has various parts and aspects meant to make it function without undue friction. The lungs are the past and the future (a vision). Gambians of diverse backgrounds have had various visions for the future albeit very blurry ones with little success to show.

Memories and events of the past on the other hand, are left to collapse. And no efforts are being made to understand this critical past critically. That’s why a disjointed narrative has not created the Gambian necessary to chart a new course for the new country. 

Yours in the service of The Gambia and Afrikka, I remain. 

*Da One*

Editor’s Note:

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