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.
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