Halake Hits Back At Sheriff Bojang

London Letter: My Dear Uncle, the enigmatic ‘Silent Londoner’, the handsome Prince of Brikama.

Editor,

Firstly, Editor, my thoughts this morning are with my good friend Pap Saine of the POINT and his family. I hope and pray all ends well for him as it did for me last year.

For this piece, Editor, I have decided to use a photo of my younger days – as my Uncle does! (If he won’t use his up-to-date photo as everyone does, why shouldn’t an old man like me give him a photo-challenge? I say to him “sorry Uncle, in my prime none of the pretty girls in Brikama would look at you twice if standing besides me!”)

I want to leave the last words of this exciting debate with my Uncle. Believe me I have enjoyed mixing it with my much younger Uncle but honestly, I promise to leave Uncle alone after this – obviously two rounds with an old man with only one good leg seems too much for him! As you can see from his piece below, Uncle seems to spend too much time with his head buried in the dictionary looking for big words. As the poet of ages gone by said, dear Uncle, “Look not for words but thought, and the words will come flooding in unsought”.

So here is Uncle’s last piece, with my last comments underlined.

“There’s hardly anything in your philippics to warrant my response bar a few points.

Your problem with me started when you sent me some prolix comments about someone you picked a fight with and I told you in no uncertain terms I wasn’t interested in your idiocy. We sparred and exchanged a few choice words.  

Then the writer and literary critic Foday Samateh wrote a piece in allgambian online challenging me to start writing again and you lyingly claimed in your so-called ‘London Letter’ column that there was no Foday Samateh, and that in fact I was Foday Samateh.  

Ordinarily, I would have excused such a faux pas had it not been for your malicious persistence in trying to give me grief since I published my essay, ‘Letter To My Nephew’. Why can’t you just leave me alone? Just disappear and stop causing everybody tinnitus and I will not threaten to dump you on your rump

Or break your last good leg!  (This last good leg is strong enough to kick both of yours from under you – ask my young wife!)                                    

Regarding the few points meriting a response:

1)  I am not threatening you on behalf anybody. My reactions were in response to your uncouth actions.  

2)  Not only are your children Gambians, I consider you to be as Gambian as myself for all the work you did for school children in Kotu and Mandinaring. (In other words Sheriff, I have done for total strangers, including both my Gambian wives and their families – and Kotu Senior School, amongst others, more than you will probably ever do for anyone not related to you. So what makes you think I need approval from you, or Amadou Samba, to be a Gambian?)

3) Between October 15, 2000 and April 13, 2003, I have written 17 essays censuring Bush and his rogue group of neo-cons and rightly labelled them mass murderers, liars, imperialists. And I repeated this to the former US ambassador to Banjul and his deputy in their office in the presence of a senior Gambian staff member. In addition, I have taken part in nine anti-Bush/war/Israeli demonstrations in London. So your claims that I said the president is attempting to run The Gambia as ‘Jammeh Kunda Inc’ while not criticising Bush is bullshit. 

4) Baba Jobe never gave me the job as Editor of The Hansard at the National Assembly. I was recommended to the Speaker, Sheriff Dibba by Pa Sosseh Colley of Bakau Mama Koto through Kemo Ceesay of the GFA. I wrote an application and as was the procedure, all the members of the ‘House Committee’ including the leaders of all the political parties (ONLY Baba Jobe counted – as you know and as I know!!! So HE OK’ed your job!) represented in the National Assembly had to consent to my appointment before it was confirmed.  Again you lie. 

5)  Baba Jobe as a board member of the Observer was one of people who offered me the job as MD (ONLY Baba Jobe counted – as you know and as I know!!! So HE OK’ed your job!).  I never applied or lobbied for it and it came to me as a complete surprise. And I believe they offered it to me because the company was in a state of complete disrepair; millions of dalasis in debt, record poor circulation, low staff morale, nepotism and scores of other problems perpetrated by an inept and perpetually absent managing director. I laid down my conditions, they accepted and I assembled a team and we went to work. I got that job purely because I was the best man for it at that particular point. Period. 

6) Let me remind you lest you do not know that you do not know anything about The Gambia, the cultural ethers, our politics and the primacy of our social interactions. If you have even a clue, you will not be in the position you are right now. Do I need to say more?  

7) On the essay, Rasputin. I don’t know whether you are stupid or just pretending to be. That was in no way a condemnation of Baba Jobe. What I did when they arrested him was rehash the tale of the Russian holy man Rasputin and how, even where he was considered bad, he was needed for the survival of the Romanovs. All I did was draw a parallel with story of Baba Jobe (I rest my case!). Although Baba Jobe was never my friend, (I am friends with one of his friends, Sal) I had always found him very witty and engaging whenever I met him and challenged him on issues. (See my interview with PK Jarju in allgambian). 

And finally, I do not understand why you would have neurosis about me not mentioning Baba Jobe’s name when I talked about the two attempts to firebomb Observer. It’s not a savoury subject to discuss and that was why out of respect for his situation, I did not mention any name.  

You remind me of the bitter old fool in the opening stanza of one of Browning’s poems:       

My first thought was, he lied in every word,      

That hoary cripple, with malicious eye      

Askance to watch the working of his lie… 

You are behaving like an actor who cannot find the exit after the play is over.  Your hubris presaged your fall and you got hang by your own petard. Wallowing in your carousel of serendipity and sorrow why not chill and stop talking about things, places and people you do not understand? In your own words, what part of eff off don’t you get?”.