Opinion | Moving Things

By Amadou Manjang 

I love arranging and rearranging things in our house but my roommate doesn’t. We have two different views, ideas and taste on how the house should look like. My roommate, literary fancy fix and static arrangement because he doesn’t want to waste time thinking where the spoon, book or pen is. Our house is a tiny square box ahboring two individuals, different in everything except their love for books and they took pleasure in placing books on the edge of the bed. The only thing they have in common. 

I sporadically like moving the bed from the right to left today, and tomorrow from right to left. I did the same with book shelves, cupboards, tables and chairs. Moving the books creates hurly-burly, even for myself. I fancy my roommate's philosophy of no need to think to find everyday needed things like a spoon or book. Many times I can’t even remember where I place a teaspoon or the lighter and I would spend valuable time trying to locate it. Anytime my roommate enters the house, of course, he will laugh and say you have moved things again and soon you will re-move them again. He has tried to accommodate my behaviour until he could no longer. One day, just out of the blue he asked me not to move things belonging to him and since we share everything from bed, book shelves and studying table, I don’t even know what belongs to him or to me, or what I should move or re-move. I consoled myself by only moving books belonging to me. Rather I just re-arrange them in the same place in the shelves or on the table. 

I don’t know how I came to love this madness of moving things but I take pleasure in it. Little adjustment here and there gives a new look or shape to our room, even though, the facts remain. This makes the pleasure short-lived. Being dissatisfied with the house- size, shape and location there isn’t much I could do about that but arranging and rearranging help me to muse my senses that something has been done at least. 

Now, being dissatisfied and disgruntled with Gambian politics and governance, I wish this country is like our square box house, I will just move things and people from here to there; arrange and rearrange, or adjust and re-adjust this or that then have a cuppa and a romantic novel in July morning with feeling that at least something has been done.

 

But it is not easy like deh. Politics is a necessity of life. Your action and inaction on the political stair are regrettable regardless of your pace. I have peculiar political experience in the interplay of politics in community and politics in the classroom. I think many so-called professors made mistakes in theorising and conceptualising politics with its wholesale importation and repackage of real life experience. Gambian politics is strange. Wait. Ain’t coming to talk or buying that ‘tribal politics’ reasons bullshit. I am interested in material reasoning, that Marx and Hegel stuff. The Gambia is a bloody capitalist state, if you doubt this, ask the Minister of Trade. The capitalist machine operates in three layers: at the top are the cooperates looting the country's merger resources, beneath them the government in cohort with big business exploiting the masses and then you poor exploiting the poor at the bottom. And the party is just getting started as we private key institutions and sectors as well as digitalise the economic or incorporate it into the cloud economy. 

Being a student of politics in the Gambia comes with a fatuity because everyone thinks you want to be a president or some damn politician with the skin of a bush pig and a mouth where the mad dog defecates. People always ask me to remember them once I’m elected into the State House, assuming the leadership of foreign currency minefield. The more you try to explain that not every political science student is a potential politician, the more you try to explain this, the more they see the politician in you- the cunning tactics. 

It is more blizzard when an intellectual situation finds you. I remember having a fearless argument with a professor who thought I was studying political science to learn how to vote. In the last electoral circle, I voted for three different parties for the Presidential, Parliament and Mayoral elections. I didn’t follow any cohesive political ideology or show any good political support because I voted for both social democrats and liberals. Disoriented. What do they say about voting? Vote for the worse among the worst. That’s what I did and the worst is that all my candidates lost except for the mayor. The worst wins. I abstained from voting during the local council election like many Gambian and our professor was furious and the only question he asked; why are you learning politics? That’s for another day because the professor was right upset following our response. Although, my absent is no solutions but it mused my disorientation. My mother can’t even recognise numbers but she has been voting for three decades. I aren’t saying knowing where to put the marble means you are politically aware. She knew there wasn’t much food or money in the house and someone had to give way to someone else. But it is funny how we go about that with our so-called Noah with his Arch, Moses with his staff and Mandela with his grace. We moved from the frying pan into the fire as we watched the arch sinks, river foams and grace turned to grief. 

Barrow has a gust. After admitting he has zero no clue in running a government but then he stand for an election and won with a landslide victory. We can’t pretend that everything is normal here and keep voting. Any sober Gambian would have been disoriented with politics and some of us, like the so-called intellectuals, are becoming political apathy because with all the political parties, there are only two ideological camps: social democracy and liberals: desperate elite and party animals. Party not in the sense of politics or enjoyment and fun. During rallies, we just listen to allegation, attack and counter-attack, blasphemy, hate speech and songs. We eat benachin and disperse. No issues or policies. When you are listening, just suit yourself in your corner.

Once I attended the meeting of the President Barrow political rally at Buffer Zone, I wasn’t his sympathizer but a reporter. I was expecting to hear his programs and policies but rather he lashes Big Ben with his watery mouth saying political stuff that contradicts all logic and reasonably. Then the crowd, the mob, praise singers singing and dancing for the idiots. Although, I think political correctness is madness but we need that madness here to spray sanity in the country. The lies of the government are severe and claims sometimes contradict all intellectual rationality and logic in political philosophy. President thinks everything and everyone in the country belongs to him. They even say the people, the poor masses, the people are the government. We aren’t any government. We only have a sovereign power vested in our votes and voices always hijacked by them.

I like romanticizing anarchism in such a situation and I think demonstrations and protests are a good start. But then I won’t demonstrate or protest on the lonely road of Sting Corner or Bond Road under the watchful eyes of mangroves and stupid factory walls. It is either Westfield or no demonstration. Even so, the demonstrations are not serious business. It is always a quick match past, giss lenma showcase parade with few chants and photo taking session that ended on social media post. The protest was successful. The interplay between my pessimistic feeling of real life politics and optimism feeling drive from reading textbook politics will one day help me to move things.

About the Author

The author is a young journalist, and a political science student at UTG

Publisher’s Note

Views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the publisher. Want to be a contributing author? Please email opmail220@gmail.com