Winston Churchill taught us a wise dictum in one of his great speeches that is:"Pessimists see a challenge in every opportunity whereas optimists see an opportunity in every challenge" This is how the various googles of many visionaries do either see blurred or clear images. Clarity cannot be "darkened" by partiality it must be "cleansed" by impartiality if truth is to bear useful fruits. Save us O God! in a world where pretension is riding on the back of reality. Are we sanctioned by sanity or sacntioned by insanity? Wisdom is not lame where minds are used for rightful purposes. No one can blame society because society is nothing but a mirror. We see ourselves in this giant reflector every time but we always brake it when our wishes are not granted! Thats one of the side effects of subjective feelings. Man and woman have always been in this circus of pretension through the tunnels of time. In a very simple way lets explain this way....We cannot realise how our hair was brushed without seeing ourselves before this huge mirror. In view of these reflections,which are sending strong waves from our ocean of ideas, I will not do justice to our current dialogue on line by staying mute. Michael Scales made mention of the word totalitarian. This was a good reminder from Mr Scales. I was tickled by his literary stanzas thus remembered what a teacher used to tell us in class that is,"totalitarianism is a serious disease" a fatal "disease" for that matter. This is why we had people with myopic thoughts through out history using or misusing the word patriotism. This "unfortunate" word has been chopped and frozen so many times by over zealous or so-called reformists. Such pseudo-cultural revolutionaries are synonymous to the endangered species our learned scholar mentioned the other day. This makes me want to write a long letter to Africa starting with this.... "Hello Africa! Culture does not only mean drums and lyircs. It has more branches on the huge trees of geneologies and memories of time. Culture is like an orchard. It has different fruit bearing trees within the same place. These trees bear fruits during different seasons..." Does that mean any tree is useless in the orchard? I will leave the essence in thinking to answer that question.

Through out history the chariots of moving time have always been pulled by brains. Force causes or provokes but it never resolves anything. Force is the opposite of stability.Where development is steady there is no need for force or forceful means to maintain any statusquo. This is why Mahatma Ghandi used the essence in thinking to silence the canons of governing colonialists who thought that,might was right. Might can never be right,it only causes plight simple as that. This is why a wise African philosopher said..."No one can ever cover glowing charcoal with cotton" It may take time but the charcoal will smoke the cotton as time goes on. This is where dictatorial minds remind people about security all the time. The reality check here is not who is subversive or not. The reality check is who understands or not. This is why one of my school teachers,sarcastically said he would choose to become a stone if he were to come back to earth for a second time(laugh) He said being a stone means he would not know what good governance and the like mean or anything pertaining to feelings etc. This he said will allow me to be left alone by all worries. Can we then imagine what knowlegde does to someone after he or she is awoken? This is why prophets or the men and women of God fear Him more than those being thought what is hidden in His great Kingdom.Certainly knowledge is power but knowledge with action is what I will call power not knowlegde without action. All prophets knew what was revealed,however,no prophet kept on sleeping when asked to spread the message. They acted after knowing.

Our take on the current regime's whims and caprices is not based on anything else, it is simply based on what knowledge gave us in motion. Life itself is a movie. Aren't we all actors? Why do producers call those on the theater actors and actresses? Because they act! for goodness sake! Actions speak louder than words. Words are indeed the torches we use to shine the dark paths of culture. After shining the torches do movers stay put? They walk tiowards a destination.This is why culture should not be left under the mercy of wild hounds who aren't the real rice but the husk! This is why culture cannot be thrown into the zoo of merciless drunken dancers claiming to represent Africanism. After all is the name Africa itself from an etimological background that can trace its roots in any of our so many dialogues? I have seen the name of Burkina Faso changed by Thomas Sankara from Upper Volta. I have seen Lagos the capital substituted with Abuja. All these names have sounds that mean something in our thinking,however we still cannot understand where the name Africa itself is coming from? Where will start? Where will we end? Is Africa a victim? Or has Africa been victimized for a hidden reason? All these are unsavoury questions within our midst. Does that mean anyone who talks about Africa loves Africa? Most of our pseudo revolutionary leaders use Africa as a bargaining chip! The issue in Africa today is not about revisiting the past and getting angry. The issue is about cleaning the house first! Tell me which African country is a colony today? Tell me if the USA was not colonized like we were? Tell me more please. We are deviating from the path that leads to the oven. How can we ever buy bread then? This is where I concur with Koto Sidia Jatta of PDOIS. He is the only person I heard talk about teaching our kids Gambian languages by using self made phonetics. This is not new in Burkina Faso because Tijan Ann former radio "guru" in Senegal went there to do his "perfectionnement linguistique" in Haal Poulaar. Burkina under Thomas taught our people how to read and write Poulaar,Mossi,Bambara so on and so forth. This is what I call a revolutionary. China stayed with its alphabet all these past 5000 years of their civilisation. Today where is China? Far ahead! Does that mean China does not recognize English Language? Not at all. This is what I call action-oriented revolutionaries.

There is really a big gap between popularity and performance. There is also a big gap between performance and the repeated sound of the consonant "Y" in YOU are the "Peresiden Sah". The idea of frowning at little men and little women brought Caesar down to his knees when he was stabbed. The same idea brought other great men on the throne. Frowning is the opposite of crowning. He who frowns at little men and women today may witness them being crowned tomorrow. Corronation is symbolic but no one can eat it. It is a question of taste and results. Why do we still honour the achievements of certain kingdoms because they helped free their brethren from the evil claws of domination during an era of wars and savagery. This is why democracy is left to thrive in these countries while remembering the good that the lineage did for them at the same time.

So all this comes from the essence in thinking. The era of kingdoms is gone it is only the era of remembrance that is keeping the feeling now. This is why those of us who are starting now cannot be kings! They are supposed to me talkers and servers period. If a talker and a server turns to become a killer and a dagger then lets sit and think about how everything came to start! I cannot escape the blames of history when that starts for sure I cannot. Well neither can some of our scholars escape these razor-blames also. We must understand that knowledge with action gave Halifa Sallah and Sidia the guts they have been using from 1986 to now. These are my heroes in The Gambia! Everything about knowlegde breeds fruits for the future generations.

This is why I cannot dance to the tune being produced by our drums of thundering blunders. This is why knowlegde does not recognize blind adherance to fallacy.

I have really been inspired by our current intellectual discourse on line. This further spreads the arms of freedom of speech. Growth is so sweet.

Essa Bokarr Sey.