Engineering Poverty, Ignorance and Corruption in The Gambia

What is not debatable at all is truth. The truth that even the culpable will certainly acknowledge.

The Gambian environment breeds three major threatening characteristics; poverty, ignorance and hyper corruption that is now unfortunately rooted into the hearts and minds of her people. Unfortunate as it is, the majority of the victims of this very problem cut across all sectors starting from the political leaders to the least privileged person in the village of Badari, URR.

It is fairer to say Gambians nowadays than ever before are much more aware and less fortunate than their ancestors. This proclamation follows the lines of history that our ancestors were united, courageous and selfless in protecting their society from decadence. Unity cannot be compromised for anything. Courage is the best step in any direction and altruism promotes solidarity. However, this great features of our former society are no more or at least very passive if at all they exist. The Gambia that promotes and cultivate poverty, ignorance and corruption only foresee a highly disintegrated society. Urbanization, chasing for uncertain white color jobs abandoning the most certain ancestral and "ancestorial" farm jobs, the influx of institutionalized poverty that obstruct opportunities for the majority, the decline of her labor force due to international migration influenced by geopolitics that escalates the death toll of young Gambians , and the brain drain that increase the ignorance of her people, are all obvious characteristics of a cracking society.

When we talk about poverty in The Gambia, you need not look up the skies to spot it out. More than70 percent of the population are bitterly poor adjusting themselves to what the winds might bring. When a people cannot realize their goals because of instituted poverty, even the most courageous tend to decline in hope. Gambians might still hope for a better society but there are more bad omens then the opposite which of course cannot allow them to live in perfect tranquility. What is ominous in a society cannot be based on my personal definition, however, poverty is not that good for any society and no sign manifest that Gambians are better-off with poverty. Looking closely at the most driving force of our domestic survival, lies heavily on the shoulders of teachers, nurses and the security sector (soldiers, firemen, police etc) who counts as the majority of  the active working force. What is most astonishing of these great force does not lie in the significance of their services but what they gain in return. The aim of this piece of analysis is not to say people should not work selflessly for their society( in fact this essay want to say exactly that Gambians needs to work even harder), it want to know what sustains a harder labor force breeding. Must there be healthy salaries and other incentives or must workers continue to breath "empty" air. What this piece aim to argue is that people do not leave by bread alone. Teachers, nurses, polices, soldiers all need more than three meals a day. They want to live a high standard of life which will give them opportunities to seek better education, health care services, habitation and in short better life. These are state services that must not be negotiated to each and every citizen. It is both a private and fundamental right that must not be a leap service. Citizens of The Gambia must now begin to witness another fall of a new era that will take it a sacred duty that no one person is left without basic needs. Important as these sectors might be, what is prevalent is the hyper institutionalized poverty first from the security sector, to the health service, to the ministry of education and finally stretching to the agricultural sector encrypting the final backbone of The Gambian society.

Most white color jobs in The Gambia engulf their services providers as slaves.One does not have to be a teacher or a policeman to know how poor they are living. It is right there in their faces. At the age of 17-18, I entered into the teaching field, crisscrossing almost all the layers and serving at various portfolios during my 7 years services as a devoted teacher gave me a lot of ambivalence  fillings and experiences that I still live with today. Saying teachers live from pocket to mouth is an understatement. A balance exaggeration would be, teachers do not even have pockets to put their monies since they already finished their salaries before it got into their wrinkle and chalky hands. I can remember how indebted most of the teachers used to be before they receive their tokens. Sometimes personal daily meals are in fact a burden. Shopkeepers will tell you that their most hated customers are teachers who hardly pay their bills on time and so are landlords and the counting extend to the fail promises made to their inpatient extended family members calling for their help. Most of the times teachers will solicit loans from each other, senior staff or the headmaster leading to the final crackdown of the school covers as the last resort.It is not uncommon that school budgets are diverted to serve their teachers or school fees use as loans to teachers especially those my colleagues struggling in the rural areas in one shift with zero or low school budget. Some of these conditions are what continue to breed corruption and embezzlement in most schools. This unsuitable atmosphere without a pause of relief misled a lot of teachers to making flimsy excuses for any misbehavior or unprofessionalism. Though we choose to be teachers but do we choose to work under ever oppressing conditions? This is the most prominent question most heads posed to their teachers when asked about certain questions. For the fact that a question of this nature could be asked manifest to me how long it will take before any change is done. When people are not connected to their works of life because of bad working conditions, this is enough excuse to say no. Teachers are the largest working force in The Gambia but probably the last to achieve any success regarding their own upliftment. The larger they are the more disunited they become. Since they cannot for 4 decades claim any substantial change, that is enough to say teachers are poor voiceless cowards in cloudy chalky moods.

Teachers might not be the only champions of professional poverty but they are largely the averagely the most educated class of poor people living in The Gambia. There are fewer teachers with their own compounds than any other sector of civil servants. In fact, fewer teachers manifest healthier bodies. Most of them have sad long faces and wrinkled bodies than any other sector of civil servants. Gambian teachers are now passing their debts to their families. This generational transfer of burden should be challenged at all cost and by all means possible first by teachers and then others only secondarily. The voiceless nature of this very important caliber of professionals is really unacceptable in any modern society willing to develop. It is not enough to be proud of being a teacher, it should also complement the societal changes; that change that will see teachers as the most important element of any society. That change that will not allow teachers to not beg for food. What is it that is leading to this unfortunate fiasco of the most important intellectual force?

Police might be accused of their various possessions that do not match their earnings. This might be because of corruption and unregularised working conditions that allow the bribery game flourish in every sector of our society nowadays. The very language of the executive, legislative and judiciary boards has been corrupted heavily from independence to date. What is largely unfair is that our institutions do not represent our interests yet they claim to serve us. Where wrongdoing and evil become misinterpreted for state services, one is obliged to claim a revolution that will not be interpreted as a moral right but a sacred stated duty. One is not dumbfounded anymore when police officers ask for bribes or unfair compensations for the work they are employed to do. It is now a culture that Gambians are promoting collectively. Many youths will want to be police officers instead of teachers because of the chances of corruption that awaits them if they become police officers. Corruption as a culture in the Gambian society is neither new nor weak. All the problems Gambians are struggling with today from the highest political position to the last poor man on his farm in Badari is due to corruption. It is a seed that is planted by a government, watered by the community and harvested by the society. Every Gambian is nearly corrupted. What I do not understand is the interpretation associated with corruption. A poor farmer who marries four wives and produces 12 children is not considered corrupt even if his "religious" action leads to the a lot of dissatisfactions and domestic violence. However, a policeman sweating in the sun all day even without a prove of theft or cheating is conceived to be corrupt simply because he happened to be a police officer. This is the very nature and measure of our own "intelligence", "stupidity" and "ignorance" in defining corruption.  A poor farmer who complains of government subsidies fails to acknowledge his own domestic corruption. We must begin from spotting our own corrupt nature before attempting to define others. I am corrupt and so are others and if we inhabit any serious intention of combating corruption, we must start from our fancy cupboard back home.

Almost every Gambian is corrupted from birth.

To be deeply dealt with in the upcoming articles.    

CAN GAMBIANS SPEAK? NO!

When the mouths, ears, noses, and  eyes of a people become insensitive, their every endeavour belongs to someone somehow complete. When the rhythm of a music is so bad to dance, dancers become singers then  singers tend to win the course.  There  has never been a successful common course without a common rhythm dictating the singing of the general goal. History from the prime stage of humanity has always thought us that we need a concrete representative slogan to make a durable success for the benefits of the whole.

In a community where spiritual common-sense, fate, trust, religion, equality, culture and the pursuit of a common interest fades away, success for that community may be a whole start over.  When a community missed their objectives, their whole revival might include beginning from understanding the genealogy of their mistakes. It is now comprehensible to say every problem has its roots and that to every problem there are either preventable measures or likely concrete solutions.

But in any multi-dimensional crises whose facets stretches to touch every aspect of life, confronting the problem becomes tremendously difficult and assuming an answer or a solution to that “particular” problem proves even much more difficult. What is assumable in “The climate of fear in The Gambia” is that of a small species with a very complex social problems that swamp her to its neck in nakedness. It is fairer to say at this time of our human development, those people who are lacking behind to catch up with the rhythmical progress, might be ignorant, weakling, or to the gravest status of “stupidity”.

Our health and livelihood, the quality of our environment, our holy social relationships, our economy, our technology, and our politics are all struggling for survival. Probably we have to bear the brunt that we have a general concern that solicits the participation of all stakeholders in addressing it. However, when a people lose their focus their problems become strange to them. The strangeness of “the climate of fear ” in The Gambia begins from the Gambians failing to act together. Gambians having failed towards a common objective, action, intentionality and spirit to face their enemy of retrogression.

The mighty problem of The Gambia ranges fundamentally from intellectual, moral, and spiritual corruption. This decadence will significantly interrupt the successful history of The Gambia unless a new rule of the playing game is spotted and implemented. When a species live in an environment for a substantial period of time, they have no excuse for not improving that surrounding. They should be able to predict their own future in which they create together. Where this is impossible, survival follows the wimps of the cunning game players where rules narrow into the channel of the evil.

 In a small community  divided by common interest, barely can they make up a remarkable history together. For the first time in our history, we start to ask if we are common people. The stockpiling of problems without a feeble effort of combating them will only prepare us for failure. The cost of this whole madness and staggering behaviour of Gambians is more than a capitalist’s market price. The price which might cost us our whole brave struggle. The incentive we lack is the knowledge of the importance of this whole liberation. The liberation from poverty, diseases, ignorance,  spiritual blindness and the madness of selfishness which together enslave us.

More than half of population are helplessly poor, heavily ignorant, and madly corrupted in spiritual myopia. This narrow-mindedness is becoming an intergenerational disease that Gambians more or less cultivate together.  

There were times in history when a community was carried by the outstanding braveness of a few who stood to do what it takes to create an equitable people. These selfless people are those who sacrifice their personal interests for the general goal. The fruits of which they are not sure to directly eat. They know it does not take all to challenge a whole problem together but a few to address all towards a whole common problem. It might take a little effort of observation to know how many Gambians are lacking professional health care services and safe drinking water while its politicians engage in the continuous struggle of betting national interest into their own covers.

Over the years, the remarkable efforts of strengthening the Gambian intellectual force was noticeable, now what is noticeable if the emptiness of that intellectual wagon. The strike of intellectual altruism is death in The Gambia and now Gambians cannot speak. There are increasing substantial proves that revolution is calling and everyone have to assume a responsibility. However, our corruption power plant is feeding everybody with irresponsibility.

As our divisions in spirituality continue to breed in the foods we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe,  our risk of developing a better community increase. When we continue to ignore our duty towards a common interest, we will certainly fight each other towards our selfish interests.  The infertility of the Gambian soil does not begin with refusing to breed patriotic Gambians but with the denial of food to facilitate any good breeding system. The denial of any ecosystem a favourable  atmosphere means the obstruction of opportunities.

The smog that covers Gambians blind, dumb and feeble is not strange anymore and as a consequence, our well-being is seriously under threat. Inequality, ignorance, poverty, diseases, are obviously the most predominant problems every Gambian would not deny. The less obvious lies behind more than what common knowledge tells us. The knowledge that Gambians cannot speak.

The deterioration of our national interest has been accompanied  by a corresponding force of selfishness that has made it tremendously difficult for Gambians to speak up. The new paradigms of personal against the state, community or national interest had ascertained our failure. There are numerous evidence of social disintegration, influencing the rise of corruption, inducing the rise of violent crimes and accident, increased alcoholism and drug abuse, and the growing figures of children with learning disabilities and behavioural disorders. All these are severe problems no more strange in The Gambia!

Together with all these various social pathologies, we have also been witnessing economic anomalies, that seems to confuse all our economists and politicians.  Rampant inflation, massive  unemployment and a gross maldistribution of income and wealth had become the god we all worship. The resulting dismay now is that Gambians seek help from outside our borders to our ever emerging problems whether economic or political! This is because Gambians cannot speak up!

Faced with these problems of depletion of our energy, bad economy, massive unemployment, severe poverty, life-threatening diseases, rampant corruption, among others, our politicians no longer know where to go first to minimized damage. This is all because Gambians cannot speak!

When everyone choose to stay silent, even a single truthful voice can lead a revolution. Gambians cannot speak and this is their only problem!  

 

BREACH OF CONTRACT (WHETHER OR NOT IS IT EFFICIENT?)

INTRODUCTION

This essay aims to give law and economic analysis involved in a breach of contract. That is how to think like an economist within a law framework as a guidance in approaching legal issues such as a breach of contract might entail. It is important to note that this essay will present not only verbal explanations but also that of mathematical figures to address the legal and economic rules under discussion here.

In this essay, I will further endeavour to see whether the efficiency and equity principles are applied in a breach of contract or not, or whether they are use in the “best” way. The aim of this essay as mentioned above is to convey the spirit of law and economic approaches and the advantages or understandings gains without much technical approaches.

The analysis will focus on our class discussion with Prof.Guido Calabresi, Prof.Daniel Markovits, Prof. Ugo Mattei, and Margherita Baldarelli and countable citations to closely give a real but practical and not only theoretical and speculative economics breakdown to giving legal problems we continue to face today.

I will define certain terms my way to suit this essay and to carry out my arguments but of course not betraying the mainstream. I will also analyse using the Ronald H. Coase’s theory of 1960. That is to what extent is efficiency link to zero transaction cost or if in fact there exist a zero transaction cost. .

CONTRACT LAW AND ITS BREACH

One more area of law that can be debated within a Coasian framework of bargaining among individuals is contract law. Unlike in normal nuisance law, in a contract law, parties negotiate with each other ahead of any disagreement arise. Adopting a framework first suggested by Guido Calabresi and A. Douglas Melamed, the solution of a nuisance dispute may be viewed as involving two steps. First, an entitlement must be chosen, that is to say, a determination must be made regarding who is entitled to prevail. The injurer can be entitled to the rights to engage in an activity that causes harm, or the victim can be handed the right to be free from harm. Then a decision must be made on how to protect the entitlement. One such a decision could be to handle the owner of the entitlement an injunction. If the victim holds the entitlement, protecting it by injunction means that he can prohibits the injurer from causing harm. Thus, the injurer can cause damage(s) only when he “buys off” the victim. Similarly, when the injurer holds the entitlement, protecting it by injunction means that the victim must buy off the injurer if he wants damages reduced. An alternative method of protecting entitlements is to give the holder of the entitlement and amount of money for damages that some governmental authorities such as the court determines. If the victim has the entitlement, he owes the right to be compensated but he cannot stop the injurer from causing harm because the injurer could under injunction remedy. Correspondingly, if the injurer holds the guarantee or entitlement defending it by a damage remedy means that the injurer could only stop or reduce his harms when the victims compensate him. Whether this second entitlement is efficient or not or whether it is in the interest of the majority is something controversial and courts have being deciding in favour of such.

Another area of importance and that interests us more here is the breach in contract. Here again we can use the Coasian framework of bargaining among a small number of individuals. What one may ask is since parties here could discuss before-hand to resolve probable disputes, is it necessary to have general legal rules governing disputes? After all, contract rules are desirable because it will be unlawfully expensive where possible to decide and construct a contract that provides for every conceivable contingency. And because this is rarely done, it makes contract issues not only complicated but also inefficient and to the advantage of one party. According to Schwartz, Alan, and Markovits, “The Myth of Efficient Breach” (2010), Faculty Scholarship Series, there is no breach of contract that is efficient both to the breach decision and to the reliance decision. There is usually information asymmetry and thus efficiency and equity in doubt. Most of the times, contingencies that are thought to be unlikely or that do not affect the parties’ cost and benefits are very much, it is not worth going to the trouble to specify in advance what to do if the contingency should occur.

Contract law is viewed to be filling this space or gap in contract, attempting to produce what the parties would have agreed to should they decide to costly plan for the event before its occurrence. Moreover, since the parties will decide to include contract conditions that maximize their joint benefits off their joint costs, both parties can thereby be made better off. This approach according to scholars like Guido Calarbresi, Daniel Markovicts and Mattei, is equivalent to designing contract laws according to the efficiency principle.

In this perspective, there could be three forms of remedies in case a contract went breached. First, expectation damages, awards the breach-against party (the victim) an amount of money that would have put him in the same condition had the contract been complicated. Much of this statement still wait to be true however many laws regards it correct and apt. The second remedy in a breach of contract could be the reliance damages. Here an amount of money is awarded to the breach-against party in a position he would have been in had he never entered into a contract initially. This is not evidential at least for time would have been better utilized in another contract were such was avoidable. Were a contract failed, the first energy got unsatisfied on the side of the breach-against and more is gain on the contrary. Last but not least is restitution damages. This system awards the breach-against an amount of money corresponding to any benefits that he has conferred upon the breaching party.

The similar and sample analysis used by Alan Schwartz and Daniel Markovits in their “Myth of Efficient Breach” owes me a rooting here. Suppose a seller, A, can produce a good called widget for $150 and that this good called widget is usually unavailable, and for this reason a buyer, B1, who values the widget at $200, enters into a contract with A for a future delivery of the widget, and that the contract price is paid in advance in order to use the widget, B1 must take an expenditure of $10 prior to delivery (for example, where he might to modify his warehouse slightly to store the widget), this will be here referred to as reliance expenditure or reliance investment to borrow still the terms use by the above authors. They claimed that where this contracted is not completed, this expenditure is assumed to have no value.

Moreover, before this delivery occurs, there is still chance that some other buyer, B2, may also want the widget. Here the value B2 attaches to the widget is not known at the time A and B1 enter into their contract. For simplicity, let’s assume that B2’s will be either $0, $180 or $250, and that he will offer this amount for it. Thus, after A and B1 have entered into their contract, there is chance that B2 will offer more for the widget than B1 did, certainly if B2’s value is $250. Both A and B1 are aware of these possibilities.

In conclusion, I will assume that the parties here are risk natural that is they care only about value of a risky situation- that is the magnitude of a potential loss or gain multiplied by the probability of the loss or gain occurring. For example, the expected gain in a situation involving a 50 per cent gain chance of winning $10,000 is $5000. A risk-neutral person would, by definition be uninterested between this situation and any other one with the same expected gain such as a situation involving a 25 per cent chance of winning $20, 000, or one involving a certinity of winning $5000. It will be important here that before we conclude how breach of contract remedies fill the gaps in incompletely specified contracts, it is essential that we examine carefully the contract between A and B1 where everything is specified in advance.

Certainly, the explanations above transparently illustrated a simple but fundamental principle of/in economics analysis of contract law. Thus a fully specified contract is efficient.

THE DOUBLE-CHALLENGE THAT GRADUALLY KILL THE BODIES & SPIRIT OF A PEOPLE

It is easier said than done.

More than a half of the world population live in poverty. Half of that, live in abject poverty struggling to have at least one meal a day. Poverty as a term comes with appealing conditions that seriously deteriorate the status of mankind. This does go beyond only physical catastrophes but also and most importantly the psychological state of man. Man does very little with an empty stomach, however, an empty brain is the worst of all. Since we work to eat and eat to work , the two are not separate entities and must all be safeguarded  strongly for the development of the human body and brain. 

The exclusion of poverty in our society is a hyperactive ambition which most humanist everywhere propagate for because of the depressions it breeds on the majority of our society. This might not be easily achieved but the availability of basic need like food and medicine should not be negotiated. It is an obligation on those shoulders who are inflicting painS into the minds and bodies of billions of people. Those institutions that make laws, implement and sing them, hover over the death bodies and spirits of the majority. Legitimising their evil makes us cultivate eternal poverty and languish in inequality, calling many people to their untimely graves.

When the whole world become silent about evil, even a single truthful mind can be liberating to those minds and bodies enduring the pain they have no hands in.

Poverty as a political adjective is deductive. One has to be poor to know how it feels but one does not need to be reach to know it is nice. Our connotation about poverty has graduated from honesty to corruption. We cannot define and fight poverty well when we live in five-star hotels or fly over the tenements of those people in The Gambia, Brazil and Syria. It will be unfair(as it already is), defining the physical and mental conditions of survivors of your own actions and inaction without allowing them a say.

When same exams or texts are drawn for both the poor and the rich without giving prior consideration to their state of affairs, this is what I call obscurities of our institutions. When mothers are compelled to undergo mosquito bites for survival, and the ministry of health ask them to stay indoors without providing them medicines or basic needs, this is what I sum as dehumanization. When our governments campaign for birth control without providing basic knowledge on sexual and reproductive health, free contraceptives and food for the upkeep of that very slogan, this is what I call blackmailing. When medicines are manufactured at higher prices for the poor to purchase, foods are made for a short duration, education is made expensive for the majority, jobs are created for machines and a few people, weapons are made justifiable against the poor and the week, when lands of the poor are rubbed and waters are given at a market price, this is when women and children are intentionally made to suffer.

Where life-threatening  diseases are abundant and associated to the poor, one is made confused as to whether  all these diseases are natural occurrences. However, any wind behind this very force of human disturbance is not far from capitalism. Any system that enslave the minds and bodies of a people is not only unfitting but highly illegal. When human labour is put at a market price and survival is based upon what one produce and what one produce is determined by a market force, this is when private hands become legitimated against a common good and even the strongest bone of unity that exist among the poor and less privileged are made unsolidified. The poor majority become divided among the very components of the market. Their  worst enemy.

When markets have a private concern against the more appealing concerns of the majority, and they are empowered to operate for that vision by laws made by corrupt politicians who either are the owners or shareholders, illegality is institutionalised and becomes a common hood. Hardly can the poor majority triumph against this strong force when they are ignorant and made divided by those powers. They are institutionally made blind, deaf, and dumb.

The worst enemy of our this century is the market that is empowered against our common good. “Now that democracy is prevalent as a market force, it has disenfranchised many and legitimised its own actions and inactions”. I am saying no to this type of “semboocracy”( A Mandinka word meaning the rule of the most powerful”.

THE ULTIMATE REVOLUTION

Ultimate Revolution 

That revolution at the corner. That changes about to explode itself. That sound you are hearing. That noise you cannot  ignore. That hunger you living until now. That eye which cannot allow you see more than today. That mouth who cannot speak . That intense fear you are pouring out with tears. That brother of yours who is swollen about to bust for the best seasons to come. 

That impeccable institution is the hell for you. That paradise within your willingness to free yourselves from chains of bastardization. That industry which will only eat  you. That brain which does not allow you think. That cannibalised institutions crafted to cultivate your failures. That wind blowing you deaf, blind and dumb making you leave your deem opportunities. 

That land you dream for, could be yours and yours only, however, scout out your future from the very problems today. That fire in you, will eventually born to dust the evil powers. That water you will water the new old land with, will  liberate your children. That sun will not only uselessly dry your flesh. That moon will soon sign under your dictates. That dictation which will be for the common good. That unanimous move of yours is not challengeable. 

That house which denied many. That door that opens for a very few. That connection of false enormity. That feeble empty quarters of them will soon die out. That quick counting of your numbers will include all. That revolution calls for all. That  disunity that will momentarily unite you forever. 

That voice must hear itself. That future is yours to embrace. That sound of Liberty is the life of development for you all. That wish to swim in your own mood is best for you. That prison will no longer habor any life. That gun will soon sound for good. That Supreme Court wihich will count on you and listen to you . That policeman is no police. That hospital which soon say goodbye to her healthy patients. That big school of ignorance will be no more. That revolution which you are making will elevate you. That action is the greatest and strongest for you. That inaction of evil has finally died in you. That new born you now are, that,, now you are liberated. 

That you will say no to slavery, exploitation and dictation. That wish is at your door!!!

THE SELF-INFLICTED FAILURE OF THE GAMBIA

Intellectualism, allows us to research before we argue, argue on substance and experiment on the  possible available and improve the visible. After claiming modernism, revolutions allow us to express our instincts within a society even though others become subjective due to this. Since there was never any successful society that never underwent a revolution, we must analyse well our socializations before any revolution. For many Gambians, instead of seeing The Gambia as a nurturing mother, we tend to see it as a resource that must be exploited without limits.

What is self-inflicted is arguable base on what is understood about a society’s culture. Culture is the lenses of perception, the approach to the reality and the ignorance of a people. When a child is defined incapable or capable, it holds to which culture she comes from. When a family is deemed prestigious, it is not just a matter of endeavour, it has its strong hold in its history. The Gambian society is a self-inflicted complex structure of failure.

When a culture is morally based rather than materially inclined, hopes for equality could easily be assumed. However, if a people are blind to what they think is the right approach, solutions are highly unreachable and problems become predominant. Morally here, is meant to be what is fair and justifiable within a culture of morally equal people. Assuming that Gambian people are far separated from each other and now in a tense competition against one another is a threat to the culture of a people.  This new culture is not only foreign but also unfair. Competition for any developing society is not that bad, however, it must keep the morals of that society. At this point, we must ask ourselves whether the new culture of competition  which condemned the less privileged majority below the poverty level is evil. One does not need to spend a year of research to find that answer. It is there very transparent. Our society is one where the foreign culture allows the best fruits into the stomach of those who struggle a little and compelled the watering of that plant by those who will not eat the fruits. 

The majority of The Gambians sleep dreaming for a strength to better their future but the next morning institutions decay their morale. Slavery is not a foreign culture to The Gambia.the  transatlantic slave trade has met many Gambians enslaved by their own institutions where one’s family defines his entire life. Though I aimed not to compare transatlantic slavery to that of the already existing local slave culture, what I want to discuss here is, the mentality behind the two. The former was foreign and aimed to improve the challenges of a modern society. That is to be able to produce more than what the market needs at the expense of the majority and in short, that is the main stance of capitalism. Meanwhile, when we turn our moral lenses to our own slavery that was in existence countrywide, and still prevalent in many parts, one is made to know the genesis of our history, our own self-inflicted decadence and why we face what we face today. Though local slave markets were never destined to boost the capitalists market but it was created to help keep the few at the helms of power. Children born to a slave, continue to be slaves for the rest of their lives with a subjective and unequal role to play in the development of the upper class. A master will be a master for the rest of his life and his family enjoys the fruits of their workers who are the slaves. A slave has a special relationship and a role to play among which is never to doubt the master. The master is not under any moral obligation to consult the slave in any decision making even where the life of the slave is at stake. There cannot be any intimate relationship between the slave and the master. The rewards of a slave belong to the master. Materialism was not new even by then. The more slaves a master  has at the farm defines his wealth. These slaves were given food to keep them strong on the farm. Their mental capabilities were subjugated and could never dream to challenge their masters.

Both the former and the later forms of slavery were meant out of the selfish evil desire for competition and the betterment of oneself  against the other. Both were evil exploit many. I can still see local slavery in many forms even if they are not that typical as short. From our political, social and economic spheres, we continue to create institutions that will enslave and exploit the majority.

Antislavery, was a fundamental shift from the old culture to a new legitimated evil dogma of market slavery. Even our social hierarchies are deliberately crafted according to the dictates of the market. The supply of goods and services is a strong economic principle which only a stupid market will fail to observe. Where survival becomes a competition, the strongest is bound by conditions to exploit the weak for their own survival. I am not legitimising this paradigm, in fact, I am critiquing it.

My parlance on The Gambian society here is focused on why we are failing. Our rigor, logic, and coherence are until now cloudy with feeble signs of success. Many times I am forced to doubt my own potentials, which most probably has had its foundations from my own culture. The culture of who the cap fits wears it. The culture that I try to suggest a solution to continues to mimic the failure of unborn people.

Inequality is not only painful but also against nature. Though I am not arguing from a theological point of view, however, any struggle  to dominate nature is evil and only creates more difficulties for the underprivileged majority. Our institutions (in the broadest terms of the word) must not torture other souls, instead, they should be more natural and promote equality or at least uplift the least privileged.

The destructive mechanistic paradigm in The Gambia is one that seek to dominate nature by exploiting the innocent poor and weak to serve the gods of the capitalists markets.

Many Gambians did not know, or, at least, do not know that they know. The most exacerbating forms of is when you do not know that you are in fact being humiliated. Instead of seeing The Gambia as a nurturing mother, we tend to see it as a resource to be exploited without limits!

THE GAMBIA’S EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IS UNFITTING

One of the greatest challenges of our modern era is to build and nurture sustainable communities. That is to say, we must make sure that our social, cultural and physical environments in which we can satisfy our needs and aspirations are not short-term oriented but rather could uplift us to our goals without diminishing the changes of our future generation(Ugo and Capra 2015). However, these goals cannot be achieved where our educational mechanisms  are not in love with nature. Understanding nature is one thing and responding to it another. When we make our curriculums to interact with nature harmoniously, we are at the point of understanding our Eco-sustainability. If children are made to understand  better the  generative and not only the extractive processes of their ecosystem, we are beginning to model up peaceful generations.

The Gambia needs a fundamental shift from eating only to producing what to eat. This must be achieved through a better educational mechanism which in this text will be called the systematic approach.  This paradigm shift from consumption to production is what our educational perceptive is blind to. When children are thought agriculture without taking them to fields for real practices, it shows how unserious or unapt our approaches are. If the national stores are equipped from framing and agriculture is made to be understood as a poor man’s profession, the great fiasco of our society salutes us. If agriculture is made optional for students and they have to study it(while benefiting from it) starting  from the middle schools, I assumed a failure in this democratic process in our curriculum.

Priorities must be administered even it means limitation to other freedoms. The GDP is of course first in our national goals  and which largely is agriculturally based but providing food, employment,  and living harmoniously within our environments is second to nothing. If The Gambia is serious about maintain a recognisable flag, children must be made to understand their culture.  A sustainable community is designed in such a manner that its ways of life, businesses, economy, physical structures and technologies are maintainable and that they do not interfere with nature. What is transparent in the curriculum of The Gambia from all spares is the blind vision  of chasing what we do not have by nature nor by our own creation. In a blessed land of less than 2 million people are welcome by what overpopulated societies are striving from. Poverty, diseases, teenage pregnancies, urbanization, pollution, conflict with self and nature are all occurrences emanating from our poor institutions primarily dictated by our curriculum. When a community fails to know itself, it is by will doomed to self-destruction.

What is to be sustained in a sustainable society is not super economic growth, competitive advantage or any other measures used by western economists, but rather the entire web of life in which our long-term survival depends. This common ecosystem approach is what our curriculum should call for and not inducing aspirations for only uncreated white colour jobs which eternally is failing our society. When culture is overlooked and thrown at the dustbin, children learn to grasp what they see. The Gambian culture is not a flamboyant style of life where children are made to understand academic excellence to be the only way out. In fact, our curriculum is structured in such a way that compelled the locals to belittle their own potentials after failing exams most of which are farfetched and does not depict the reality on the ground. Many if not most Gambians are condemned from perusing their academic goals if they cannot score a good grade in Maths and English to be either enrol into the university or college systems without giving due regards to bases of achieving that great goal. Many of those brains unfortunately become the devils workshop. Encouraging potentials in these areas is good, however, it should not pause the majority into hallucination. Our educational  systems should conform to the priorities of our community and involve all. When the curriculum annually failed many people than it does to promote them, then something is wrong somewhere. After all, why academic excellence where jobs are not merit based. Why academic excellence where there are no ready-made jobs? Why promotion of the most privileged against the less privileged? This is the introduction of capitalism into a common society where people are equated depending on where you come from! It does not suit a population of less than 2 million people.

Why this unnecessary goal might find origins from our colonial heritage, it could also be an induction of a private interest against the rest. The betterment of private academic institutions and the negligence of public ones is no difference. Why do one have to be born to a rich parents or academics before you are recognised has it bases to what our curriculum teaches. 

To facilitate this understanding, one will have to look thoroughly into The Gambian educational systems where syllabus are nearly all exam oriented and are under continuous changes to satisfy academic excellence. Rather than looking at what our sustainability is based upon, we are merely focused at stopping the majority for being “less intelligent” or less privileged.  In fact, the culture of education in The Gambia is not Gambian. It will continue to fail us until we understand our common good- that academic excellence is not a necessity.

As a consequence of this approach, academic institutions have a culture of selfish competition that does little good to the general public. Today’s academic approach in The Gambia is a mere contextual interpretation from tutors wearing strange cloths. Why is this unfitting force binding and enforceable? I will assume that, the architects of this very curriculum are outside our borders but remote controlling their benefits.  Even those who made it to this goal of academic excellence are not self-evident since they have a foreign knowledge. They cannot  implement it well and where they are forced to, leads to economic, social and political backwardness. Our laws should begin to be self-evident and promoting not otherwise. While most of the problems  this curriculum is inducing cannot be discussed here, its wrong approach in not uplifting the majority means our total generational fiasco and the promotion of private interests!