The NIA Chambers of Horrors (first published November 08, 2008) By Mathew K Jallow The night dragged on so slowly, Samba thought daylight was never going to come. It was dark outside, and in the bedroom next to the kitchen, he could hear the soft snoring of his little son, Demba. It was music to his ears; as if Hotcha Baldeh was singing his melodious songs of love and betrayal to him. A rain storm had passed barely an hour before Samba returned home to his family, but by the time he entered the rented apartment he shared with his wife and young son in the northern outskirts of Sukuta Sanchaba-Sulay Jobe, his clothes were uncomfortably soaked wet and seemingly glued to his athletic body. Now, as he sat on the new living room love seat, he could hear the dull thuds of the raindrops break the stillness of the night. He looked at his watch impulsively and realized it was still 2 a.m. in the morning. He straightened up in a corner of the seat to listen to his son and wife as he had done the past several nights. They were both fast asleep and oblivious of the storm that had just passed. And as Samba listened, he was suddenly overcome by a sense of guilt. He had not slipped into bed with his wife, Ndungu, and their son, for so long, he felt like a bad husband and father. And now, his rare, but the apparent withdrawal was beginning to weigh heavily on his conscience. He sat pondering and reflecting on the events of the day that had just elapsed, and in the distance, barely audible to the naked ear, he could hear the faint mowing of a bull from the direction of Yuna, a small Fula village nestled among the woods south of Sukuta. Slowly but surely, Friday morning crept in lazily, and as the crowing of the cocks began to pierce the dawn darkness, Ndungu got out of bed early as she always did. For the fifth straight day, she noticed that her husband was not in bed with the family. She could not understand why, and she wanted an answer; today. But, the more she thought about it, the more her anxiety consumed her thoughts and sapped her fragile strength. She got out of bed and walked measurably towards the living room in that gracefully and majestic gait that characterize the rare beauty of her fellow Fulbe tribeswomen. Ndungu placed her hand gently on her husband’s hand and called out his name in a whisper. Samba! Samba! Will you wake up? In a slow motion, Samba opened his right eye first, then the left. He blinked rapidly and raised his left arm to shield his eyes from the piercing light of the encroaching daybreak. “Go inside and sleep with Demba, while I prepare breakfast for you,” Ndungu said softly. “I will prepare nyeeri with sour milk from your favorite cow; the one your father bought from Sare Gubu,” she added. Samba’s older sister had brought them the sour milk the previous afternoon, but she returned home without waiting to see her beloved brother. Samba got up without saying a thing, but he did not go to bed, instead, he went to the bathroom to brush his teeth and take a shower. He came out, dried his body and walked into the bedroom where his son was fast asleep. He kissed him on his cheek and walked out again. He had only managed three hours of sleep, and he felt his body could not take the physical stress any longer. As Samba and Ndungu were having breakfast together that morning, Samba held the nyeergel above the breakfast calabash and called out his wife’s name in a muted voice. “Ndungu”, he called in a depressed tone she had never heard before, “I have a very important thing to tell you, and you will not like it.” “What is it,” she responded with an eagerness she could hardly contain. Did they fire you from your job? She asked. “No”, he said, “It is far worst than that.” “Do you remember my friend, Sang Pierre Gomez,” he asked her. “He has been in detention at the Old Atlantic Hotel for the past five days.” As Samba narrated the tragic story of Sang Pierre’s fate to his wife, tears of sadness and helplessness flowed down both their faces. Yahya Jammeh’s ruthless NIA boys had just picked up Sang Pierre from his house late evening the previous week, and since then, they have been torturing him every single night in their dungeons of death. They had a long chain wrapped around Sang Pierre’s waist, which was tethered to the bolt protruding from the concrete floor. When Samba first laid his eyes on his old high school friend, he could not believe what he saw right before his eyes. He began to sob so uncontrollably, that he had to hide in the bathroom until his tears dried up. He knew that to express sympathy for his old friend so openly, was almost a death wish, and he would not take any chances. He had a beautiful, loving wife and a handsome baby boy to bring up, but in his mind, he was conflicted and torn apart between self-preservation for his family and the injustices that were being done to his friend. In the end, Samba vowed to expose to the whole world what was happening to his friend regardless of the dangers he might put himself in. Samba had been working with the NIA for barely six months with the encouragement and the help of his old friend Sang Pierre. He was first posted at the border village of Sare Ngai on the north shore of The Gambia River in Fulladou. His bosses at the NIA figured that as a Fula, he would not invite suspicion to himself. His first task in Sare Ngai was to blend in and be as inconspicuous as possible. After six months, his performance was rated exceptional, and he was promoted and reassigned to the Banjul headquarters of the NIA. He was still new in his Sanchaba Sulay Jobe neighborhood, and he had not found the time yet to meet and get to know his neighbors. Every time he made plans to familiarize himself with the neighborhood, a job related emergency came in the way. Samba and his wife first met his friend Sang Pierre when the two were boys, and still attending high school. They became fast friends and in the summer of ’92, Samba invited Sang to come with him to his village of Sare Gainako in the Niamina West District. Sang, a native of Brufut, had never seen so many cattle and drank so much milk in his life. He and Samba often walked through a dense forest to visit Ndungu in her village of Sare Ilo just three miles north of Dankunku. When Samba and his then girlfriend, Ndungu, would argue about which of their villages was the best place to live, Sang would often jokingly take the side of Ndungu. He was so drawn to the beauty of the girls in Ndungu’s village that he would tell Samba to go home to Gainako and leave him behind. Now, those good old times were far behind them and both Samba and his wife were faced with the reality of their lives now, and the events they had no control over. Sang’s condition weighed so heavily on Samba’s mind that he was dysfunctional in many ways, but he was able to push himself and conceal the emotional pain that was tearing him apart. Every day while at work at the NIA’s Old Atlantic Hotel office headquarters, Samba would sneak inside Sang Pierre’s holding cell pretending to interrogate him, and Sang would recount the story of how and why he was arrested and what they have been doing to him. Samba would take detailed notes and hide them in his underwear before he left the cell. But, one Monday morning two weeks after Sang was arrested and placed in detention at the NIA headquarters, Samba came to work with a special message from Sang’s wife Marie Sylva. She had just delivered a healthy baby girl; good news for Sang Pierre, which Samba hoped would make him a proud husband and father and give him a reason to raise his broken spirits. That morning when Samba opened Sang’s cell door, he discovered to his chagrin, that Sang had been removed to an undisclosed location that night. Samba’s co-workers at the NIA had no idea when he was removed from his cell or where he was taken to, but rumors were flying around the office that the Boys of Kanilai, an outfit trained as Yahya Jammeh’s assassins, took him away around midnight. That morning, the drama unfolding at the NIA head office, was for the first time creating a clear and unmistakable division between Jammeh’s ruthless supporters and those who exercised caution and some dint of humaneness. Samba and his friends feared the worst, while hoping for the best for his co-worker Sang. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the news of Sang’s disappearance had hit the headline of all the on-line newspapers. “An NIA Agent Abducted and Feared Dead,” cried The Gambia Echo’s headline. “Kanilai Murderers At It Again”, cried another headline. Senior NIA Agent Sang Pierre Gomez Disappears Mysteriously, another on-line paper echoed. By mid-morning, the news of Sang’s disappearance had spread like wildfire in Greater Banjul area as concerned citizens printed and circulated the online newspaper clips from one person to another. Everyone was talking about yet another mysterious disappearance; from market women, in tailors’ shops, around the offices, on the streets and everywhere two or more people sat and discussed. The mood in the street was somber, and there was visible melancholy and a resignation to the fate that had engulfed an entire population. In his mind, Samba now began to realize that death was stalking him and every one of his co-workers at the NIA. No one was safe from the brutality that had taken root under of the evil regime of Yahya Jammeh, and as long as they worked there, there was no place for them to run and no place to hide. The curtains had dropped on Samba and his co-workers and everyone there was vulnerable, but they did their best to put up a façade that masked their true emotions. That evening as Samba and Ndungu were having a dinner of maffe bohye and peanut soup, they heard a knock on the door. Samba rose up to open the door and there was a surprise visitor standing outside. It was his boss Karamo Jaiteh an old friend of his uncle who now lives in the U.S. His boss had an assignment for him that had to be completed before daybreak. It was a risky proposal, but it had to be done. Samba kissed his wife and laid his hand on his son’s head and turned around and followed his boss outside. The two walked side by side in the darkness until they reached a narrow alley where a taxicab awaited them. Mr. Jaiteh a shy person with an intellectual depth and an easy smile, turned to open the back door of the taxicab for Samba and shut the door after he was seated. He jumped in the front passenger seat next to the hooded driver and motioned to him to turn left towards Sukuta village. Samba had no idea where he was going. He tried to make a sense of it, but no matter how hard he tried he could not figure it out. And the mysterious hooded taxi driver; who was he? The taxicab came to a halt on a dirt road half a mile from the main Mandinari-Lamin road. It was still dark and there was not a single star visible in the sky. The three men came out and walked slowly towards a clearing the size of a living room, and briefly stood in the center in a triangular formation. The hooded driver called out Samba’s name just as he withdrew both his hands from his pant pockets, and with the small torchlight he pulled out of his back pocket, he illuminated his face for Samba to see. “Nng Mbaring Habib,” Samba, with eyes wide open, whispered in utter surprise and excitement. Samba had been with the NIA only a week, when Habib left for overseas training with Scotland Yard. But before he left, Habib made sure that he left Samba in the hands of Karamo his only friend at the NIA and a former college mate. He wanted to shield Samba from the corruption and brutality that had become the culture at the NIA. Both Habib and Karamo had spent long periods of time talking to Samba about his Uncle Kali. They were good friends with him during their teenage years at Yundum College, and they felt they owed it to that friendship to shield Samba before he became corrupted by the culture of the system. After Samba finished greeting Habib, Karamo looked at Samba and spoke in a firm and steady voice. “We are here to look for a grave,” Karamo finally told Samba. “We have a body to identify before it decomposes beyond recognition, because we owe it to family of the victim and the people of our country,” Karamo said. Now, both the mystery man and the mystery assignment were no longer a secret, and Samba felt a new lease on life now that he was with both his older mentors. He was ready to do anything they asked him to, and he knew they trusted and could count on him to keep their activities a secret. It was eerily quite on the Lamin side of the backwoods of Mandinari village. The silence of the awesome night was broken only by the piercing shrieks of male crickets trying desperately to attract female mates. It was hard to believe that so much deafening noise could come from such small creatures. Every now and then, one of the three men would swipe their open palms in the void across their face, which sent the frenzied mosquitoes flying wildly away in the air. The presence of mosquitoes once again made Samba wonder, as he so often did years before, while herding cattle back in his native Sare Gainako village. Why were there mosquitoes in the middle of the woods so far away from any human habitation? It puzzled him, yet after all these years, he still had no answer to a question that seemed to baffle him. But today, on a mission deep in the woods, an occasional mosquito running wild at the smell of human blood was the least of the men’s worries. Karamo Jaiteh, wearing night goggles, was trying hard to locate the spot that Malang, a Mandinari resident, identified on the crudely drawn map that Samba was holding on the ground where the three squatted. Habib, the taxi driver was a Jola and a native of Batabut village in the Fonis. Years earlier in the 1970s, Habib and Samba’s uncle, Kali were close friends who established the Yundum College’s most famous anti-government newspaper, The Student Voice. And barely a year after the newspaper began publishing; the two worked to mastermind and instigate the worst rioting in the long history of Yundum College. But now, standing in the darkness with his thought echoing in his mind, Habib, ever the radical and humanist, remembered the mahogany tree Malang told him about a few days ago. He had befriended Malang, his informant, ten years earlier when he led a party of five NIA officers to check on the security preparations being made in advance of former President Jawara’s visit to the village. Once they located the mahogany tree, Malang had told Habib, they would easily find what they were looking for. The three NIA agents were in the woods outside Mandinari as a result of information Malang had given to Habib recently. Earlier in the week as Malang was returning home late one night from Lamin village, he noticed what looked like several torchlights in an area in the woods and wondered what was going on there. The men he saw appeared to be speaking in subdued voices as if they did not want to be overheard. Instinctively, Malang knew that whatever the men were doing seemed out of place at that time of night. He tiptoed in the darkness and walked closer to where the men bustled with activity, taking care not to stem on dried grass or inadvertently break dried branches and attract attention to himself. When he was close enough to hear their muffled voices, he took cover behind a huge mahogany tree and waited. From time to time, he would cup his left ear eager to catch the sound waves emanating from the men. He could tell they were speaking Jola, a language he learnt since he was a child. This is not unusual as most Mandinkas in Mandinari village could understand Jola, and many spoke the language fluently. But now, as Habib tried to remember everything his informant had told him, the giant mahogany tree that Malang referenced about came to his mind. “Find the mahogany tree first and walk a hundred yards due south and you will find the grave,” Malang had told Habib. “We must locate the mahogany tree first because it will be our point of reference,” Habib whispered. Soon the men shifted their attention from the ground and looked up towards the dark sky. They walked in circles slowly moving away from each other, and just when they were about to exhaust their patience, Karamo hissed for the others to walk towards him. He had found the famous mahogany tree just where Malang said it would be. By the time they found what looked like a grave under a heap of dried foliage, it was getting close to three o’clock in the morning. Karamo motioned to Habib and Samba to feel the earth underneath the foliage. Judging from the relative softness of the ground, they surmised that it was freshly dug. This only heightened their anxiety and confirmed their worst fears that it could only be a human grave as Malang had told Habib. More importantly, they feared it could be Sang Pierre’s last resting place. “Samba, go and get a shovel from the back of the car,” Karamo instructed. The grave was shallow judging from the amount of earth under the pile of leaves. Habib and Karamo looked anxiously on as Samba methodically and surgically removed the top earth, taking care not to damage what could be a body under the freshly dug earth. With the aid of the torchlight Habib had in his hand, they could soon make out what looked like the outline of a body lying face down in the grave. They reached down instinctively and simultaneously to turn the corpse on its back. All three sighed in relief that it was not Sang Pierre as they previously suspected. Samba turned first to Habib and then to Karamo said, “thank God it was him.” He was still holding out hope that somewhere his friend Sang Pierre was still alive. Habib took several pictures of the dead body with a cell phone he brought back from London. Since it was not the body of Sang Pierre as they originally suspected, they knew they were now looking for a missing person. They were now faced with a daunting task of putting a name to the unknown dead body. They did not have long to wait. That morning, a distressed father and his wife from the Dippa Kunda township of Sere Kunda barged into the NIA headquarters and asked to see their missing son. Biran Jobe, an army officer had been with Sang Pierre the evening of the night both were arrested, and he had not been seen since. The parents of Sang and Biran were friends and co-workers since they met at the old Public Works Department, but they both grew up in the same Dippa Kunda neighborhood in the early 1940s. In 1975, Sang Pierre’s father Gaston Gomez bought a piece of property and moved to Brufut a couple of years before his retirement. Now, both Sang and Biran were missing and the lives of their families had been turned upside down. The families were devastated and they found solace and comfort in each other. In Sere-Kunda where the two young men had played football for the Dippa Kunda team, men and women, young and old were restless and everyone seemed helpless and hopeless in the face of these disappearances at the hands of Yahya Jammeh’s regime. Habib sat quietly in his office at the NIA headquarters. His office overlooked the beachfront at the mouth of The River Gambia. In the distant haze, he could barely see the town of Barra on the other side of the narrow channel where the Atlantic Ocean and the River Gambia meet. He got up, locked the door of his office, sat down again, and took five pictures out from his coat pocket. He spread them on his desk and began forensically to examine them. After twenty minutes alone looking at the pictures and humming the mournful song of a Jola banjo player’s exaltation of the heroism of Senegal’s most famous football player, Francois Bukande, he gathered the pictures together, placed them in his desk draw and called Karamo and Samba to his office. “Come to my office if you find time before the end of the workday,” he told both of them. But, before the hour elapsed, both Karamo and Samba arrived within minutes of each other. Together the three examined the photographs again. “I think I have seen this face before. It looked vaguely familiar,” Samba said breaking the silence. The body in the pictures was badly mangled and bruises and deep lacerations disfigured the face. The back of his head looked like it had been smashed in with the blow of a metal hammer. Visually, the skull showed signs of multiple fractures. The face and neck of the dead body was covered with a thick slimy liquid that oozed out of the head before it was buried in the shallow grave. Samba was pretty sure he had seen the dead person in the pictures with Sang Pierre a couple of times before. He thought he could get a picture of him from Sang’s wife for comparison. That evening, sitting at Leybato Bar and Restaurant behind the American Ambassador’s resident in Bakau, Karamo looked out to sea watching as fishermen in their canoes flapped and swayed in the perilous Atlantic waves. Mr. Jaiteh had been coming to the bar and restaurant ever since Kali brought him there to relax, drink soda, eat grilled meat and watch the timeless Atlantic waves roll and crash on the sandy beach as they had done for millions of years. The owner of Leybato, Sekou Demba, was a Kali’s friend and before he left for the U.S, the restaurant had been Kali’s favorite place to relax and wind down from the stresses of work. Today, Karamo sat alone in a corner of Leybato contemplating as he waited for Habib and Samba to show up. He was hopeful that they might be able to identify the dead body in the pictures Habib had taken in the woods outside Mandinari. By the time Samba arrived fifteen minutes late, Karamo and Habib were already savoring the cool ocean breeze as they waited for him to bring Biran’s pictures. Samba proceeded to apologize for being late before sitting down on the opposite side of his bosses and mentors. At that moment, Karamo beckoned to the waitress standing behind him and ordered a soda and sandwich for Samba. “Thank you,” Samba said, as he took a bite of the freshly baked corn bread sandwich. He pulled out two standard size pictures from his shirt pocket and placed them on the table. After comparing features of the dead body with the pictures Samba brought, the three determined conclusively that the dead man from the shallow grave was indeed the body of Biran Jobe. Although he too had been missing for nearly three weeks, he had only been dead a couple of days judging from the level of his body’s decomposition. The mystery of the shallow grave in the woods of Mandinari had finally been solved. Habib turned the pictures backwards and with Karamo and Samba watching, he wrote Exhibit 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 on the back of each picture. The morning of the following day, the online newspapers in the U.S, carried some familiar headlines that shocked the nation once again. “Former Nusrat High School Valedictorian and Army Captain Biran Jobe Found Dead,” The Gambia Echo cried out. “Captain Biran Jobe’s Body Found in a Shallow Grave near Mandinari Village,” echoed another newspaper. “Yahya Jammeh’s Thugs Murder Army Captain Jobe,” said another headline. Now, the whole country was reeling again with absolute incredulity. Behind closed door, Secretaries of State, National Assembly members, senior government officers, military and security brass and the mass of the military and security officers and recruits wished they were only living a bad dream. But, this was not a dream. It was reality. The wanton brutality and sheer cruelty unleashed by Yahya Jammeh on the very citizens they swore to protect made the military and security forces begin to take notice and face their worse fears of Yahya Jammeh. The murders, disappearances, tortures, incarceration and the subversion of the justice system, had become the norm and a fact of life. In the space of one week, a senior NIA officer had gone missing and an army captain was found and buried in a shallow grave in the woods outside Mandinari. It was all becoming too much to digest and rationalize in any sensible way. Meanwhile, at the Njoben-Balanghar home in Dippa Kunda, a constant flood of people from all over the sprawling city of Sere Kunda came to pay their condolences to the family of Biran Jobe. In one corner of the family’s living room, Biran Jobe’s father, Ndekem, sat flanked by his wife on the right and Sang Pierre’s father, Gaston Gomez, to his left. After the news of Biran’s demise began to spread like wildfire around Sere Kunda, Sang’s father was the first to arrive at the Njoben-Balanghar home to console his long time friend, Ndekem Jobe. Sang’s sister Elisabeth was a secretary of a Permanent Secretary, and the first thing she did each morning at work was read the online newspapers to get information about what was happening in the country. She knew Biran personally as the friend of her brother Sang, and as soon as she read the dumbfounding news of Biran’s untimely fate, she called her father at home in Brufut and told him about it. Within minutes Gaston was on the way to Sere Kunda. His son Sang too was still out there, still missing, and his wife and has cried so much ever since their son went missing three weeks ago, her eyes were swollen red. By mid-morning that day, the Njoben Balanghar home was filled to capacity with people. Everywhere one looked; clusters of mourners talked, gestured and seemed distressed over the murder of yet another citizen in the hands of Yahya Jammeh’s Kanilai thugs. Now everyone was counting on the fact that something had to happen to stop this senseless and bloodthirsty carnage before more mothers lost their beloved sons. The still unresolved disappearance of Sang Pierre and the apparent murder of Biran Jobe had now made the quest to dispose Yahya Jammeh and his regime all the more urgent. Towards the close of the workday that afternoon, Habib, Karamo and Samba were separately about by a senior prison official contact at Mile 2 about Sang Pierre’s presence at the remand wing of the prison. But knowing the living conditions at the notorious prison, this piece of news was of little relief to them. That night Samba took a taxi to Brufut to inform Sang’s family that he was alive in Mile II Prisons. This was the first time in three weeks, that the family heard any news of their son, husband and brother. But for how long Yahya Jammeh and his thugs would let Sang Pierre live, much less get out of prison, is any body’s guess. Only one thing was certain, the country was in deep, deep trouble, and Habia, Karamo and Samba vouched to do something about it and save their country from political catastrophe. Four weeks after the discovery of the body of Biran Jobe in a shallow grave in the woods outside Mandinari village, the anger and bitterness that swept the country was beginning to subside. But, for a segment of the military and security forces, Biran Jobe’s demise and the Sang Pierre saga were Deja Vous all over again. Disillusionment with the military and the other security services were widespread, despite the façade of normalcy that was being presented by the regime. And as in all previous cases, citizens and non-citizens were being arrested and detained, disappearances from the face of the earth were routine and citizens were being tortured and executed by the regime’s military firing squads or by Jammeh’s trained civilian assassins. The case of Sgt Dumbuya a few months earlier, murdered in cold blood and in broad daylight at the Banjul Albert Market, as he fled from Yahya Jammeh’s State House Guards, was one of the most callous and brazen acts of state terror. And now, the murder of Biran Jobe and Sang Pierre’s disappearance opened up old wounds among members of the military and security forces. Jammeh’s murderous loyalists had until now projected their limitless and brutal power through murders, tortures, and abductions, intimidations and disappearances of innocent citizens. But, today, his sadist group of trained assassins was increasingly at odds with the majority military and security personnel as these forces built up the courage to oppose the ongoing cruel carnage being perpetrated by Jammeh’s regime. The increasing restlessness in the military and security forces was beginning to concern the regime, yet by his threats and intimidation, Yahya Jammeh gave the appearance that he was firmly in control. The instances of military and other security forces summoning up the courage by refusing to carry out Jammeh’s orders regardless of the danger this posed on them were widespread. Both Biran and Sang Pierre were arrested for refusing to lure Sgt. Dumbuya to Siffoe village in order to execute him. The stand-off between Jammeh’s loyalists and military and security forces, who were concerned about the ruthlessness of the regime and the direction The Gambia was headed, therefore, marked a new chapter in the regime’s storied history. The battle lines between the Jammeh loyalists and the majority of our armed forces were being drawn. The day of reckoning was at hand. For once, in the history of our military and security forces, they were putting the interest of Gambians ahead of Yahya Jammeh’s selfish interest. The petty, clueless dictator was on notice. His days were numbered, and Habib, Karamo and Samba would have it no other way. Habib sat at the protruding root of a giant baobab tree and sipped on a cool lemonade drink on the beach in the outskirts of Barra Town. He looked north towards the open sea where The River Gambia emptied into the vastness of the receptive mighty blue Atlantic Ocean. To the west, below the deep blue sky, a lonely patch of gray cloud shaped like a bearded human head, hung motionless directly above the State House in Banjul. Behind, in the dense canopy of a cluster of large mango trees situated near the old decrepit slave castle, parrots chattered and fought for choice spot to rest and take in the cool ocean breeze. From a few hundred yards away, Karamo recognized his boss and friend Habib, where he sat under the baobab tree, deep in thought and seemingly oblivious of his surroundings. He tiptoed gently as he came closer behind Habib. He thought to scare him, but it did not work. One of the things Habib learnt from his Scotland Yard training, was the art of vigilance, and without turning around, he sensed the presence of Karamo from the distance. The two sat and exchanged pleasantries before turning to the business of strategizing what they should do in response to Yahya Jammeh’s ruthless and murderous regime. By the time they finished their discussion, the sun was low down the horizon and darkness was creeping in gradually. They parted ways near the entrance of Barra Ferry Terminal. Habib stood on the upper deck of the ferry near the captain’s cabin and watched Karamo disappear behind the mass of people struggling to make their way into the ferryboat. Karamo, whose second wife was a resident of Essau village, climbed on a slab of concrete to catch a brief glimpse of Habib. They waved at each other goodbye just as the ferry’s engine came alive, where the propellers churned the salty waters into a swirling mass of angry foam. Soon, Habib turned his thought to Samba Jallow. They had scheduled a meeting in Banjulding between Samba and Bangali Sumareh a senior prison official at the Mile II Prisons. A little less than three weeks before, it was Bangali who disclosed the transfer of Sang Pierre to the very overcrowded and notoriously filthy Remand Wing of the prison. Samba had prepared a detailed report of Sang Pierre’s ordeal at the hands of the NIA, which both Habib and Karamo had already read with absolute horror. Now, Samba wanted Sang Pierre too to read it behind the prison walls before it would be sent to the online newspapers in the U.S. The report read like the script of a horror movie. It was unprecedented in its brutality and mercilessness, and as Bangali read the report, Samba handed over to him, tears of pain flowed down his face too. He could not believe that a human being could do what Jammeh’s thugs did to Sang Pierre. On the evening Sang Pierre was arrested, he was taken to the notorious torture chambers Yahya Jammeh had mockingly renamed The V.I.P. Lounge. This is where civilians, political prisoners and military and security officers were locked up once they were arrested. It comprised three windowless rooms fitted with sound proof wall paneling designed to absorb the sounds of cries and distress in order to prevent people outside from hearing the echoes of torture and death within the darkened NIA torture chambers. Sang Pierre had been arrested one night six weeks earlier and brought to the NIA. That same night, two dark skinned masked men walked into his detention room around what Sang believed was ten o’clock at night. The time was only a guess. He was not really sure. For all he knew, it could have been midnight or mid-morning. Sang’s watch had been taken away before he was slapped with handcuffs and led down a narrow alley, to an empty room refitted with a heavy steel door. Standing alone in the windowless room fifteen minutes later, Sang became scared for the first time in many years. As an NIA agent, he knew that many civilian, military and security personnel had become physically disabled or lost their lives at the hands of the NIA. He looked up the ceiling and in the middle of the east wall, four thin rectangular cracks barely visible in the darkness, showed where a window once brought in sunlight. Sang looked at the two men, and waited to hear from them what he had done wrong. One of the men stared at him, then turned and spoke in Jola to the other one standing by the bolted door. He came close to where Sang stood in a corner of the room and asked him to turn around. Sang obliged, and the man slapped his wrists with handcuffs. With his left hand still holding the cuffs behind Sang’s back, the man cupped his right hand behind Sang’s head and drove him hard against the wall. He then released his hold, stepped back quickly and let Sang collapsed like jelly on the concrete floor. He lay motionless and barely breathing. His eyes rolled back into his head so that only the white was visible. His nose and mouth bled profusely, and the right side of his cheek was bruised and bleeding too. The masked man stood above him, uttered something in Jola before kicking Sang hard in the face. Using his military issue boots as a weapon, the mysterious man placed his right foot on Sang’s left cheek and lifted himself up from the floor. Sang screamed out in pain once and began to pant rapidly and heavily like a wounded animal. The second masked man reached for a six-foot chain anchored to the concrete floor, held Sang by both his legs and dragged him towards the middle of the room. Together, the two masked men wrapped the chain around Sang’s waist and locked it with a steel padlock. Sang was still motionless. One of the men went out and returned with a bottle of water. He poured it on Sang’s face and waited for a reaction. Slowly, Sang regained consciousness again. When he opened his eyes, he could only make out the silhouette of the two men standing above him. They tore Sang’s shirt from his body and left him lying on the cold concrete floor. The man by the door reached out for a thick leather belt hanging on the wall. He stroked Sang hard once on his side with all his might he could muster. Sang grunted, and then cried out loud before wriggling his body on the floor in an effort to ease the pain. The flesh over his ribs was torn in several places where the leather belt left a foot long mark over his ribs. And his body was completely covered in blood. He had nothing to eat all day and he felt weak and susceptible to the beatings he was receiving from his jailers. It was dark and quite, when Sang finally got up, so quite that he could hear his heart beat. The sound of silence was frightening. Despite the excruciating pain he felt each time he touch his sides, he soon managed to fall asleep. The night was eventless. The following morning Sang woke up at the crack of dawn. He was as groggy as a drunken man. He got up and sat down on the floor. He had a long day ahead of him, and he had no idea was going to happen to him that day. The ground shook and trembled, the night birds fled and people of Banjul were awoken to a loud boom. It was a noise they never head before. The time was exactly twelve midnight. A left wing of The State House came crashing down to the ground. There was smoke everywhere. At the far end of the building, several fires were gutting down the old stately and palatial colonial house. There was pandemonium as fire trucks desperately tried to extinguish the fires flaring up all over the adjacent buildings too. The bomb had completely destroyed the State House, and the Quadrangle buildings closest to the ruined State House were ablaze too. Meanwhile, twenty six miles away near Brikama, a burst of steel piercing machine gun fire immobilized the army general’s fortified army truck. When the gunfire stopped, the six occupants of the truck, the army general, his security detail and a few friends, were slumped and lifeless where they sat. There was blood splatters everywhere. Two men in military camouflage with amour piercing AK 47 hanging around their necks, approached the wrecked military vehicle cautiously, pried the front doors open and proceeded to frisk the men for their identities. That morning, bodies of several more military and security officers were found dumped all over town, from Bakau to Brikama. Military contingents were deployed and standing guard in strategic locations around the greater Banjul area. The State House, the symbol of the colonial era, was now a smoldering mass of rubble despite the best efforts of the fire services. And there, beneath the mountain of rubble, a dictator lay lifeless. It was the end of a ruthless era. That morning at sharp seven o’clock in the morning, GRTS lifted the anxiety from the hearts of the population. “There was a change of government over night,” the TV announcer said. The news seemed too good to be true. Before long, hundreds of thousands of Gambians poured out into the streets. Car horns blared ceaselessly and people danced everywhere one looked. Complete strangers hugged each other and tears of joy filled the eyes of everyone. A few people walked around town like zombies. They could not believe that this nightmare had finally ended. At 8 o’clock that morning, people around the country gathered around their television sets to listen to the news. The television cameras beamed on six unfamiliar faces five of whom were in combat ready military camouflage with sawed-off AK 47s slung around their shoulders. It was Habib Badjan, Karamo Jaiteh, Samba Jallow, Bangali Sumareh and Mamour Njie. A few months earlier, it was agreed that one civilian representative of the dissidents in the U.S would be present on the day of the coup. Flanked by Habib and Mamour on the one side and Karamo and Bangali on the other, the only civilian in the group, with Samba standing directly behind him, read a prepared message to the nation. The essence of the message was simple. The complete restoration of democracy, freedom and liberty, right to associate and assemble, the exorcising of corruption from the system once and for all time, the implementation of an aggressive development plan, the criminalization of any form of economic tribalism among many other things. The next day three plane loads of dissident Gambians from all over the U.S and Europe descended on Yundum Airport. It was a new day. The mood was somber. Hope was renewed. Gambians could dare once again to dream again. A new era had begun. The horizon was limitless, and the ceiling infinite.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 22:29:17 +0000
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