But bad Gambian thinkers? Extreme hardship, roof-through consumer prices, and unbearably high cost of living. The cheapest bag of rice we could find in The Gambia, as of yesterday, April 13^th 2021 was D1,300; the yellow 20-liter oil at D1,500; a bag of sugar at D1,500; a bag of onion at D600 respectively. And these are from sellers that are friends or “kiliyaan,” meaning a (seller’s special and regular customer with preferential treatment).

Humans aren’t donkeys. But even donkeys have good thinkers among them. Please watch a herd of them safely maneuver their way through traffic. Squirrels calculate the effort they need to put in bringing home nuts and grains for their young ones. They risk their lives to solve their “squirrel” problems. And that is, simply to kick hunger away!

As I type these, my eyes moisten because my six-year-old daughter and my 13-month-old little boy exuberantly interrupted my typing, entering where I was seated with a keyboard. Why? Because a little bird that has been nesting on our porch has just hatched her young ones.

They always watched this mother bird brilliantly take care of business for her coming offspring. They told me how they saw the bird feeding worms to the fresh babies. I didn’t want my kids and their mother to see tears in my eyes as I watched a creature with a small brain understand how to feed herself and her young.

Is it mere happenstance that I would be writing about Gambians unnecessarily going hungry and then my little ones came to grab me just to show me how a bird was taking care of food, hunger, or survival? In fact, Allaah has given more to Gambians than that little bird and her family.

And what exactly Has Allaah Given to Gambians to Survive very Easily?

Rice, oil, sugar, onion, fish, beef, lamb, everything, including snow or ice-free beautiful weather naturally conducive for any kind of agriculture year-round. He has bestowed everything on us, including D150,000 (one hundred and fifty-thousand Dalasis) our president is claiming a day for just fish money.

Now, D150,000 a month is D4.5 million. The president’s salary a month is D250,000—that’s D4,750,000.00 (almost 4.8 million a month. Dr. Samateh and other professionals’ so-called expert allowance also takes a huge toll on our coffers. How about the travel expenses and per-diems, especially for meetings that never benefit the poor masses?

If you really want to know why the little bird is able to feed herself and her new family, please this is the very reason: she puts her energy and effort where they are needed and necessary. And she never needs D150,000.00 daily fish money or venal per-diems.

We spend 85% of our national income on theft and whatever helps it—bloated salary, allowances, and other corrupt benefits for the executives while our river banks are calling us to invest in just three tractors. How many tractors are in the president’s daily fish money alone?

1. Buy just three tractors for now. Buy combined harvesters.
2. Sign a deal with a Chinese company or any other affordable rice bag and label manufacturer to supply us with empty bags with labels “Gambian Rice.”
3. We can irrigate River Gambia if Egyptians were able to irrigate the Nile thousands of years ago.
4. Employ hundreds of youths to work on our agricultural fields.
5. Ban all rice importation or levy extremely heavy taxes on them.
6. Create many fields for cattle, goat, and sheep rearing. Pay our youths at least D10,000 a month to work on all farms.
7. See that bag of onion at D600 each? These youths can produce it year-round. Do the same for tomatoes, carrots, pineapples, bananas, etc. Harvest and supply the Gambian markets.
8. The cattle can be dairy cows to stop the importation of Peak or Omela. Raise chicken farms! Holland or Denmark have only few months of agriculture. The rest is ice and gloomy weather that can easily kill livestock or other crops.
9. Harvest our groundnut and press it for oil. I have done this myself in the Brikama area in the 90s. Please we can even get sugar canes and the right machinery if we think like the little bird at the beginning of this piece.
10. Ban all per-diem and cut foreign travels. Reduce that 85% of our expenditure or budget on corrupt gov’t officials. You can do all the above.