Black and white isn't always black and white...

People lie, that's why the word is in existence, and people will keep lying, even under oath.

So, just like "the official story" is sometimes doctored "for the greater good," or at least the (confabulated) claim, people fabricate stories in order to fill gaps in the stories they want to sell.

And just like history is not always the exact story of what happened, not every evidence presented with respect to a thing, or the reputation, conduct or moral standing of another is as black and white.

For what it's worth, don't let any secondary source knowledge make you cynical. Putting on your thinking cap may seem a complex process, but I believe it involves the same brain mechanisms as venturing nonsense. So, think!

Here's who Rohey Lowe is...

First, I'm not campaigning. I don't do that. I'm just a good listener, and listening to Rohey Lowe, here's what I believe: she isn't into your politics of anything goes. She loves her people so much; she just wants to educe ingenuity by inspiring self-reliance, just as she exemplifies.

You know, rather than one frequenting the Quadrangle or BCC to 'tess tess' (scrounge off), like old times, and risk losing one's dignity, she believes that one can thrive for personal success by taking on or starting one's own venture, no matter the size of the startup.

But as inspiring and as evincive of leadership as she was, some of us choose not to take anything out of her wisdom but to ridicule her examples with sarcastic remarks. I just can't get that. I mean, our level of solidarity in stagnation is so scary - too scary and inconducive to progress.

Are they truly corrupt?

Fact is: we all know we (Gambia) had a pathologically envious dictator. We all saw what he did to competition and the things he saw as threats to his grandiose delusions of grandeur.

So, maybe all these bigger heads who are building big houses today cached their wealth and means lest they'd lose everything to the man, hence the rapidity of their investments now that things have changed.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that's the case. I'm just me being objective amid the unceasing innuendo on here. I hate to assume the worst about people I know very little about.

Placing false accusations on people is evil, and me, right now, the things I do in the night that I wouldn't want to cause to see the light, and the sins I commit daily are enough to worry about.

Yaakar (belief/hope)

Olof Njie neh: "yaakar ah takh nit di dem Makka."

Meaning: Muslims going to Mecca to perform hajj is a thing of yaakar (hope) - belief if you like, not because where the pilgrim comes from doesn't have mosques to pray at.

Same yaakar goes for marriage and politics. Men marry the one they believe is The One, hoping that those near perfect qualities they saw in her will not change.

Women on the other hand, knowing that men will always be men, marry, still, hoping that they could change them. Sometimes disappointments occur and the consequences we all know.

And if not for yaakar, how is one able to affirm the competences (knowledge, skills and attitude), not just the qualifications of an untested politician?

So, yaakar is not bad. Only that it becomes baakar (sin) when one fails to learn from the disappointments of an earlier yaakar, like voting for someone who was there and did nothing.

Politics is a fact of life

To start with, not everything I post on here is about me or being directed at anyone. I just share my thoughts, observations and the things I relate to. However, if I inflame nerves or evoke guilt, then the thing’s probably worth some thought.

That having been clarified - perhaps because of my Rastafarian inclination growing up, I never liked "poli-ticks" nor the "poli-tricks." But now, man, I’m convinced that politics is a fact of life.

Serious thing! And if you think conventional politics sucks, try workplace politics, or just pay attention to the uphill struggles therein.

Dread, these backstabbing, malicious-rumour spreading, talentless, clean-cut looking, ego-dripping. qualification-for-competence-confusing professional toadies are worst than mainstream politicians.

And the piece of bad news is: if you aren’t so fortunate or creative enough to do your own thing and be your own boss - I mean, from once you’re called an employee, you cannot avoid it. You can only manage, like everyone else, sadly!

Attitudes...

The wonderful intentions we claim to have for country is one thing. Developing the right attitude to see the great intentions through is everything. But, is that the case round here? Exactly! So even the dogs in the street know that "we need attitudinal change."

In other words, attitudes determine the fruition of an intention, otherwise it will remain as useless as it is: a handbrake on a canoe; certainly cannot prevent the waves from taking possession of the canoe. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, remember?

Activism and criticism...

Criticism is an inevitable part of activism, but criticising from a fixed contrarian disposition rather than true conviction is not activism, not even slacktivism. It's as insincere and as gainless as it's unfortunately fashionable in this "New Gambia."

Let's say these things for a change - we have activists, yes. But we also have supposed activists on here: almost-educated rookies suffering from OCD (obsessive-criticism disorder), and they take their condition for a mark of consciousness, therefore compulsively finding faults with everyone else’s but theirs.

There are also de facto politicians shrouded as activists. By their conduct, activism is no longer an enlightening act; endarkening more like, because their goal is: whatever it takes to weaken the status quo.

According to me, since the beginning of the demise of intelligent (political) activism, many are just in the business of finding negative news to peddle, to find something to be offended by, and to use it to annoy others, or to upset the system.

I know. Some messed up shit, really; certainly not the type of activism to take us far; it stagnates instead, because the receiving camp will naturally be pushed on to the defensive, and the resulting tumult a disservice to posterity.

"Live and let live" - what I think...

If ‘live and let live’ is to go by the way some activists blanketly advocate, it should follow that guidance and counseling are useless, and all disciplinarians are oppressive.

Don't get me wrong; it's not because I’m conservative or it's difficult for me to adopt... far from it. I love the freedom. But whether the consequences of the freedom are always as bearable as the philosophy is set to, that’s what I doubt.

If virtue truly lies in the middle, I think there should be a cut-off beyond which, ‘live and let live’ is flagged as ‘rakaaju’ (insolent conduct).

Remember that decisions and choices have consequences. At least I'm my own proof that it’s easier to refrain from making bad choices (deeds, words, or thoughts) than be rescued from the consequences. Let us be sincere in our advocacies.

Vote on party lines if you wish, hai!

Perhaps like war, politics is also deceit and what I’m about to say is probably an opponent’s very last weapon, BUT:

I find it hypocritical for one to have a candidate against another person’s political party, yet seeking to impel that person to vote NOT on party lines but on qualification (that some of us take for competence), conveying the impression that one’s candidate is the one.

Like, ha! You wonder; when the hell did all these disenchanted people became super-league specialists on competency assessment?

See, in a democratic election campaign, parties compete for votes without restraint. The aim is to elect a candidate who will try to carry out your party’s policies, that’s how it works. So, if your numbers aren’t giving you confidence, you’re probably not ready to run with the big dogs. I’d suggest you stay on the porch, meanwhile praying for a miracle. Or just give up and enjoy the ambience.

P.S. - the line of reasoning becomes prudent where a piece of legislation is to be passed for instance, because it’s a different ball game. Then you can ask your legislators to vote not on party lines, but on what the French call ‘raison d'État’ - national interest; literally "reason of State."

Mayoral Nominations... Gambia.

Forget all these desultory “brains” and their elitist fetish on here. To run a city or a municipality, the power to move others to action is your most important skill. So here’s how to have a sense of your capacity as far as that:

If as early as your nomination, your numbers flop like Pape Diouf's Pencha Mi Hall concert, trust me, your election is set to be a flop. It’s perhaps God’s way of telling you that your becoming mayor is already a dead enterprise.

Who to vote for...

Pay attention: mayoral elections aren't casino games. What a candidate is, that's what the mayor becomes; the office doesn't and will not change a candidate overnight. A mayor must be able to lead oneself before leading others.

So, if you vote for a mayoral candidate who knows nothing other than being an employee, position regardless, an employee-mayor is what you'd get: an overpaid clerk with a routine job. And of course, routine cannot beget novelty.

Pay attention: to turn an inherited shitty into a model city, you need someone with a reputation of going against odds, a creator of new beginnings, a self-made, not one constructed by some corporation characterised by excessive red tape and routine.

You need a sculptor, one with the juice to chip away the unwanted "routines" of the shitty council and create a masterpiece, someone with the power of independence like Rohey Lowe evidently is. That’s my take. the call is yours!

Some disrespect is just envy...

Some just want to be where you're, or as good as you're, but they don't have your kinda juice; they shroud their envy with disrespect.

It's the price you pay for being the standard by which rookies measure their worth.

It may be frustrating, I know! 'Wye nyuneh motor bi jeetu lanj deh korrneh. Hol ya deh hatt.' (During the rush hour, hearts are unobliging. So, the ride in front is usually horned at the most).

Ironically, when you get tired of the loud horns and allow them to take the fast lane, most of them wouldn't be able to pass ahead, still.

Airs sells!

I think the only trait that comes off absolutely virtuous in this country is false pretense, airs if you like. So, pretend kindness towards the average Gambian and you'll become a saint.

Y'know: "ndeysan, ku sett hol la. Amut ben problem." But until shit goes south like every con comes to an end, and we discover you were just a smooth operator: "ouch! Ki mor tojj chaa.....!"

Unfortunately, you can be genuinely kind to us, always be there for us but once, and you're declared wicked. Ha! Perhaps I should also become one big-arse representation of all the untrue facts about me.

And you too, if you're sick and tired of being sick and tired of being a victim of the consequences of honesty, you may want to join the club.

Proficiency in English may not be the test, but it's a mark of intelligence.

You can say that the English language is not superior to your language and I'll totally agree. But the argument that it's just a language and not "A" test of intelligence is weak and belittling a key component of the liberal arts.

According to me, being able to get your point across in Lingala, Swedish, English, Tukulorr, or any other language, in a clear and effective manner may not be 'THE' test of intelligence, but it certainly is 'A' mark of intelligence, especially a foreign language.

Did you notice how my use of the definite grammatical article "the" and the indefinite article "a" in the above paragraph made all the difference? C'mon yen tamit, that degree of comfort and familiarity with the command gotta amount to something.

Results over specious promises...

Gift of eloquence is attractive. But deceptively plausible speeches intended to generate liking will get us nothing but outbursts of dancing, clapping and drumming: Africa's number one progress deterrent.

So, granted, it's a laugh for a minute. But I'd rather a politician that'd come to the Uni and say: "I have see your tables and kairs. I know they are honchongkolong. Something must be do for you," if he's gonna get it done that is.

Tell me this isn't true...

The Gambia: where emotions are confused with logic, where certification of academic achievement is the only standard by which the use and development of the intellect, reasoning, and exposure are measured. So every degree holder is an automatic intellectual, and differently educated folks would rather be seen and not heard, because they'd be asked: with what authority do you speak?

Sad... the creams of the national crop that the common man naturally trusts to bring forth change have no track record of commitment to anything but impertinent debates and rash censures; so uninspiring, so skeptical of the integrity, sincerity, and motives of every change agent, except their preferences, and so jadedly distrustful and mocking of every national enterprise that they feel left out of.

The Gambia: where the (supposed) intellectual élite is as entitled and as cynical as they come - seers of a dystopia in the making, unless perhaps we issue a charter conferring all rights, privileges and our national destiny on them on a silver platter, which becomes chaotic, because starting small to grow big isn't their thing.

They believe their "qualifications" are tickets to instant opulence. So a certified engineer for instance wants a big paper-pushing job, big car, perdiem-scoring trips abroad, etc. Well, what do you expect of an engineer who cannot even engineer a 'furrno kerign' let alone create jobs. His "capacity-building" endeavour wasn't for that capacity, but an all-in bet for some big position promised thereof.

This is why the top brass of the civil service is bloated with inessential suits, because anyone who finishes a course of study wants a promotion, and so a position is invented. For instance, a ministry of forty can have a minister, two PSs, three DPSs, four directors (including a director of budget, and a director of planning, all in the business of planning), three deputy directors, a pool of principal, senior, and deputy assistant secretaries, etc.

Now, use the example above and do the math: that's like twenty-ten coaches coaching fifteen (actual) players in the field. No wonder the players are confused, the coaches wrangling, and we think we are winning? Mtcheew!

Gambia politico, adeeyamo siyaata!

They say those who take pleasure in finding faults, soon will invent elaborate faults to find, when they’re unsupplied with faults that is. If you think this is not true, you are certainly not paying attention to the (Gambian) politics on socialmedia.

As a result, you see imbeciles coming online just to make fun of morons, like pots calling kettles black, pseudo-intellectuals powerless without ad hominem arguments. If that’s how politics works, you can count me out, because I’m out.

[drops mic]

Manner of death is not cause of death...

I am not a pathologist and certainly not pretending to be one. But I needn't be one to know the difference between manner of death and cause of death. So, when cause of death on a death certificate reads: Sudden Cardiac Arrest, me? I take it to be the manner of death.

You need no autopsy. Just find out about the departed's character and you'll more than likely learn that the person used to give too many fucks, even in situations where no fucks deserve to be given. So here's a personal awakening that I found healthful and I thought I should share:

In this crocodile age, the moment you realise that you cannot make everyone happy even if you were to throw freebies on a daily basis, and that not everyone can like you, the sooner you'll run out of fucks to give, and that's a good thing, because by God, it will liven you up. So try this: give less fucks and take no shit; it may boost your life expectancy.

The "New Gambia" and the split...

Now there's the Gambia as it is lived in reality, and there's ‘online Gambia' - being the Gambia we see through ego-tinted glasses. I mean the Gambia that's hell-bent on goading its coalition to collision, because it has a thing for pathetic debates.

Like ‘online Gambia', well-informed people of ‘real-life Gambia' also criticise. They just don't do it for the heck of it. Theirs is frank, with intent to guide or lead in shaping the country's political, cultural and economic destiny. You wouldn't know their inclinations because they're mostly objective. No ulterior motives, no Machiavellian manoeuvres, and no dibi-dibi dealings.

Don't get me wrong, the online Gambian is equally brilliant, if not for disapproving hearts, blurred visions, and fogged up judgments. They too want to keep the government honest, but with ways as hopeless as knitted condoms - y'know, twenty-ten civil society groups doing the same darn thing. No wonder most of them corrode before initiation.

And until hearts and tongues on here are brought into line, likings and emotions will forever be confused with reason, and we'd keep dignifying the people we like by finding ways of justifying the things they do, good or bad, whilst going all out to vilify the people we don't like, finding ways of falsifying everything they do, effect on the public regardless.

The man perhaps broke hearts, not laws...

Plastic jokers - take your armchair advice and grow your own party, if that's even feasible that is... because according to the hit song, 'Lawyer Darboe yeh banko talleh' and I cannot disagree.

What other logic could explain yellow's becoming an object of envy, and insults, and blames, and bigotry... and that too? But then criticising his as if the UDP's the ruling party is good omen.

Our local government election...

I don't know about your area; mine, majority of those who turned up during this local government election were ordinary folks... I mean those with less than your (perceived) standard of familiarity with how democracy works.

So I ask, and be honest: who's more apathetic than y'all who take your emotions for philosophy; y'all so-called educated and informed lofty-ego'd yappers on here that felt too cool to vote? Just what I thought. Go grab some civic education yourself.

wait on it...

Perhaps your professors are right: a good college degree is an insurance policy. What they probably don't tell you is that it doesn't spell instant accomplishment, because everything in life is a process, therefore takes time. Even Alkaline knows that; you got to wait on it he said.

So I say if your real job (at the moment) is below your dream job and you're not Steve Jobs, you have heard of the patience of Job in the Bible, and have seen the lord in the outcome… that's the Lord's job.

Don't look at foregrounds without looking at backgrounds. It could make you envious, and your current job may seem an embarrassing use of your degree, thus thinking that those up there (probably without degrees) are as a consequence of their ‘know-who' than know-how, or the ladies by their sexual receptivity.

That kinda thinking is as ungodly and as small-minded a conviction as it is endemic in this country, and I believe it's one reason why many university leavers are resentful for nothing, and why our job market is one hell of a wild beast hunt, with so many self-serving gladiators.

How feeling???

A friend on the phone with another, so consoling if you ask: “[details missing] oh, uh, sorry dear! It shall be well with you. You’re a good person.” But soon as the call ended, feelings got infected: “nyaw, good for you, mtcheew!”

I was like, seriously? But of course I said it: some of us just wish to see others suffer, especially people we envied. Others just want to be required to feel supportive, because compassion presents them as moral people, even when feigned.

I don’t know what that makes us, if the message is: “none of you will believe until you love for your brother what you love for yourself."

Good friends that I know will help you nip your adversity in the bud - prevention is better than cure. The rest who could, but would rather wait till damage is done so they can claim kindness about it are Show-offs.

Mtcheew!

Taking irrelevant issues with their predecessors and Impugning the past for everything - what a good number of bosses in my part of the world are good at - bunch of narcissists, if you ask me.

That’s why most corporations ayard are at the mercy of Babylonian consultants or technical assistants, and why many, soon after that assistance, they relegate from bloom to gloom.

Whilst intelligent civilization is busy growing, they act as if they got no growing to make, because they’re perfect/complete {Insan-i Kamil) - they don’t admit to being wrong, always avoiding accountability, even if it means blaming innocent people, enraged when challenged, love instilling fear and doubt, and stonewalling questions because they make promises they can’t keep.

So classless; they’d smear, slander and vilify anyone and anything to dignify themselves. If you want their friendship, you must be slavish, because having a mind of your own intimidates them, and so they’d subject you to the silent treatment, or triangulate to communicate to you.

Say Nauzubillah from airs like that, because, you gotta give it to them - they’re so gifted in the art of scheming that they can bully you, or oppress you, and still make you look like the perpetrator of your own trial.

Local government elections... not a silver bullet!

Getting your favourite candidate elected as mayor is no silver bullet for our problems. Fixing the Gambia will take collective hard work, hence, attitudinal correction. So, go vote for Nyohorr, Penda, Kenbugul, Mbaring Sitafa or whoever the hell you want to vote for. Get it over with!

You see, I don't know about your economy, but ours on the street (the raba-raba) is stalling because of y'all. Nothing is selling, man! And folks ain't buying not because they don't want to; it's the cash that ain't flowing. We're fiscally choking, and all headways are drowning from too much talking.

Kindness is a privilege...

Being kind is a great moral conduct, but receiving it is a privilege, not a right. Not all who is good to you owes you shit. Some people are just cool. They do stuff because they care, not because they have to, or because they want something in return.

Some of us don't seem to know this. So, we feel so, so entitled. In the end, even the kindest of people are fatigued. We push their spirit of giving to a limit beyond which, they gotta protect their sanity. They wouldn't give a rat's arse anymore... and we say they've changed.