“One of them is here to address your braggadaciousness!”

Our ways once crossed at the Barra-Banjul crossing point in January of 2018. I was coming from Badibou. We were both waiting for the ferry at the terminal to board with our vehicles. The distance between us was just five meters, at the ferry ramp as we stood waiting. You had a skullcap on, a flowing dark orange Waramba and glasses. I, on the other hand, was wearing a baseball hat pulled to the side, a T-shirt, jeans and sandals.

Our eyes locked intensively for a few seconds. I assumed the intensity of contempt for each other was felt by you too. You don’t need to remember this moment no do I care. The two facial expressions though is what I would like to first share with you and what they convey.

You see, you are a sturdily build guy with lots of muscle and of below average height. I am an average lanky fellow, well built….just your typical second shooting-guard  basketball player. One of the best in The Gambia dare I say. Yes, I have even played for the national basketball team. So, you are not the only one who has “served” the country.

Your stare into my eyes was rude and uncultured. We just don’t stare into strangers’ eyes for a prolonged period. Your stare was an aggressive behavior which I returned in kind. I recognized your face only from seeing you on the television back in the days when you were the minister for youth and sports. A job you terribly stink at.

I returned your stare very confidently with blood pumping fast in my veins. What I was at least trying to tele-pathetically convey was my honest dislike and hate of the chameleon character you have exhibited in your relation with your employees – Gambians. I tighten my small lips together into a visible shaking zip and dilated my pupils so hard that they hurt.

Your stare was to question me on how dared I, to challenged you almighty Faye, even fleetingly.

My message was to welcome you to try me, and I would break your bones into fragments. I was ready to knock the hell out of you, choke your belly empty, on behalf of all the gallant daughters and sons your master Yaya Jammeh cold-bloodedly murdered whilst you supported and spinelessly cheered him on.

You are a typical Gambian cum African bourgeois. You know what that entails? It means so long you, your family and immediately friends have their bread buttered and your “benachin” wet enough, everyone else should _suck it up and look to the future_ where God is waiting to feed them with milk and honey. What a dastard mentality in a society you and your ilk have driven to chronic poverty, misery and hunger. It’s of course no surprise that you are back to your best self-propping a clueless, inept and dangerously corrupt president in the person of Adama Barrow. It’s also no surprise that you and your ilk have no faith in Allah as you claim. For if you lot do, you won’t be playing sycophant fiddles to earn your bread. Yes, it’s about earning your bread and not serving the country and it’s people, for whom you have no iota of respect.

The victims and their families who stood up to Jammeh and his goons are today held in high regard more than you. Some of them will eventually have monuments built to their memory. They have made the ultimate sacrifice whilst you cower to fill your belly and pocket.

When Coach Pa-Samba Jow asked you on how you could reconcile your present views with being a singer and drummer for Yaya Jammeh, your arrogant response left even some of the most tolerant Gambians baffled and insulted. Not every Gambian has made “mistakes”, “mistakes” you alluded we should ignore as if you are not ethically complicit in the murder, torture, maiming and disappearance of hundreds, if not thousands of Gambians. Your right to preach to us has been forfeited by your greed for position and power.

The same mistakes, which your actions were not, are being perpetrated even this very day. The lying, stealing and living lives of privilege at our expense continues unabated. Shamelessly!

Let me inform you at no costs that Gambians will finish the uncompleted job of taking their country back from tyrants and unrepentantly callous men like you. Your likes are the ones we see appear at the TRRC trying to cover big lies with even daringly bigger lies. They are exposed and shamed. Today, they have come down to earth to realize they are mere mortals who have abused borrowed power and have to live the consequences of their cowardly actions. History is often, very often a fair judge as Halifa Sallah has warned many like you before.

But you lot never heed until it’s too late. It won’t be different in January 2021 too, and going forward. Until we have a government in place that leads with conscience and an unshakable faith to serve, opposites of the good daughters and sons of the land will utilize every opportunity to lie, still, cheat and collectively insult us.

The choice though, is ours to make.

Lamin Fatty is a graduate student at the Hamburg University of excellence, Germany. And he is a PDOIS Europe branch member.