Screw GIMPA. Go to MDI....

Gambia -  what the Management Development Institute (MDI) cannot give you at reasonable cost, the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) certainly wouldn't.

Man, not everything beyond borders is perfect. In fact, a true mark of independence is trusting one's own... y'know, holding onto one's own values and journey in order to have control of the process.

Fasting is a shield...

"Occasional religiosity" is what they'd call your sudden grace. Don't mind the trash talk. Change, lasting a month, or approximately so, is better than continuing decadence.

At least each Ramadan is a potential turning point. It's indeed a shield, and perhaps living like it's Ramadan willingly ever after will help sustain the newfound restrain and discipline.

Mtcheew!

The €1.45B pledge by the EU and the scary analysis is evidence that college education doesn't hold monopoly on knowing, nor on wisdom, political or economic intelligence... on bureaucratic excitement and getting enslaved by formalities perhaps.

But of course, nothing new, especially about contemporary academia. I have seen tutors who know all the books but do not know book, like people once thought mentors becoming jerks, and I have seen onetime idiots come round, take initiatives as if the prophesied return of Jesus Christ.

See the formation of the Gambia's 2016 coalition government for instance, where names that were thought unfit to be named in the same sentence with the choicest triumphed, fating the supposed intelligentsia to grief, unceasing anger, and denial, like: where the hell did we go wrong. I say the size of your ego and the arrogance thereof played you.

The Gambia and sports...

Being an ex-athlete myself, watching the Senegalese World Cup team on LOBS TV, like it was done for Gorgui Dieng on TFM, and the wrestlers on 2STV makes me want to be Senegalese.

Theirs is unlike our half-hearted media; they embellish the stories behind these athletes so much you're mesmerised, and that's a good thing.

In the Gambia that Badou Jack comes from, certainly not devoid of athletes, what our media does is invite talentless experts on TV to talk about how "we need to develop grass roots sports."

I say fcuk that! Make the grass tops attractive for a change and see if the grass roots wouldn't be inspired.

Believe in qadar and envy don't add up...

One: you cannot call yourself a good Muslim if you do not believe in qadar (Divine intervention in the affairs of humans, fate, or predestination).

Two: your Islam is deficient if you believe in qadar and all that, yet envious; like painful desirous of the excellence or good fortune of another, maliciously grudging if you like.

And three: if the above are all correct like I think they're, it's more than safe to say that many a contemporary Muslim ayard is in need of some serious soul searching. Fortunately, there cannot be a better time than Ramadan.

Rant...

Of all the things bastardised in this country, the word "competency" takes the cake. But even astounding is it coming from country-derailing almost-educated nitpickers who cannot even roll a joint, let alone manifest knowledge, skill, or attitude in anything they claim certification for.

Do not take luck for diligence...

We are sometimes so forgetful; we take luck or favours for diligence, then we claim supremacy about it, and bully those who aren't as lucky with our timelines, as if standards by which all successes must be measured.

The general implication is that to become somebody, you dare not think outside the box of two:

Get a degree and become an academic supremacist, or travel abroad and come back a "semester." Novelty, nada, because everyone holds the same mindset... I don't.. that's because my being one of us is what I think it is: a geographical accident.