Good Over Evil!

I remember vividly been told once that a lot of times evil wins but for a short time. A rather astringent but frank statement coming from someone of quite a respectable disposition. It is indeed quite a reassuring acknowledgment, and, I must admit, it means pretty much a lot to me in my present fractured state of mind.
The patient dog, they say, gets the fattest bone. This is however not as simple as just clinching some fat bone here or settling some scores with some foes; it is about the smoldering desire to see truth prevails over falsehood in Gambia.
Life as a whole is characterised by ups and downs, full of trials and tribulations. And as human beings, we are made up of people from all extremes … some are evil, yet there are good ones among us. Many are selfish, but still there are selfless ones among us. There are also charlatans among us who would live their entire despondent lives under the illusory notion that no one is sentient to their loathsome deeds. But the truth is like perfume. It can’t be suppressed. Sooner or later it will surface.
The fact remains that wherever evil prevails, there exist a high degree of chance of distortion of truth. I sense this happening presently at the Daily Observer, just like it has always been the case. Nevertheless, I pride myself for being reasonably sincere in all my duties throughout my life so far, both as a student leader at the University of The Gambia and as a journalist at The Gambia’s biggest and most prominent news paper, the Daily Observer.
However, the thought of having shared time with some of the most unrepentantly devious people in The Gambia leaves me devastatingly distraught, but the thought of having got the chance to work, at the same time, with some of the finest people the country has on offer sharply contrasts with this, serving as a conciliatory feeling for what I largely consider today as a waste of time for the close to two years of service with the Observer Company, where life represents a classic example of life in the rest of the country since the emergence of the July 22nd Revolution. Deception, treachery, envy, betrayal…and all sorts of vices, are the order of the day. The only guarantee of staying long at the Observer is to ensure that one religiously upholds these irreligious attributes. I would never accept such a demeaning temperament … over my dead body.
Consequently, the Daily Observer is one of the must dangerous places to work with in the world. The seemingly inexplicable disappearance of Journalist Chief Ebrima Manneh is a stark manifestation of the precarious nature of life for reporters at the Observer. Like Chief, many of us worked with the Observer with quite genuine intentions, but we ended up realizing that we were working with some of the world’s most perfidious characters. But unlike Chief Manneh, some of us were lucky enough to sense the danger before we were nailed down.
Sometimes I get lost in my thoughts about what is actually responsible for the anomalies that presently abound in The Gambia. Could it be because of the small size of the country that so many people have become praise singing hypocrites, disregarding totally the decadent situation of the country?
Yes, there are so many hypocrites in The Gambia today because so many bad things are happening yet no one dares raise them as concerns. Where are the religious leaders, our supposed respectable elders in society, the opinion leaders, the intellectuals, etc.? Of course, I will have to be mindful against being excessively judgmental or selfishly vindictive, because I am well aware of the implications of not being economical with the truth these days in The Gambia. I quite know that I would not dare discuss the issues I will be raising on this blog if I were still in The Gambia.
While I regret the manner in which I left the country, giving up the modest life I was living, as an independent person, I am grateful to Allah that I found a lost value, and that is an unlimited entitlement to freedom of expression, even though it has to be far, far away from the home I missed so dearly within this short space of time in exile. Be rest assured that I will certainly make the best use of my stay in exile, safely out of reach of predators of the press.
I am also well aware of the fact that in The Gambia when one criticizes the wrong happenings in the country, they are portrayed as being at war with the entire country or its head of state. This has been largely a way of running away from responsibility on the part of the people who commit all these despicable crimes that have transformed this lovely place into some sort of a hellhole... people like Momodou Sanyang and Pa Malick Faye. But my source of courage shall remain my conscience which I shall be guided by at all times in pursuing this course. I love The Gambia just as much as any other genuine born citizen of the country.