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Re: The gay issue

Friday, May 23, 2008

Editor,

Allow me space in you widely read paper, I can understand the sentiments being expressed by many people regarding the gay issue, I know a lot of people areagainst homosexual practices, but I wish to urge caution regarding the language being used addressing such a group. It is indisputable that The Gambia is heavily dependent on tourism and sending the wrong message could have an adverse effect on such a volatile industry. The gay community have a big lobby in the West and for a small country like ours to antagonize them will not achieve any purpose other send the wrong message, hence drive tourism to our competitors such as the up and coming Cape Verde Islands.

We must not pretend that tourism is not an important aspect of our economy. Of course it is and for us to unnecessarily drive away people who wish to come and spend their money can have a detrimental effect on our economy. This is factual, for I have gay friends who regularly visit The Gambia, but once they hear and read the hostile remarks directed at them they have said that they might never go to the Gambia and would even launch a world-wide campaign to deter other people. I urge we temper the language being used. I hope this will be published in good faith.

Gawlo Jallow.

Editor’s Note:
In good faith we do publish your letter, but we would also ask you one or two questions: would you sell your very soul for tourism dollars? This is the kind of mind-set that leads to slavery! Just because we need tourists, you suggest that we should accept sexual behaviour that is contrary to the tenets of Islam, Christianity and family values that The Gambian society holds dear? I am afraid the majority of the Gambian people and our President will tell gays to take their tourism elsewhere – rightly in the Daily Observer’s view!

Author: DO

History Corner - Peoples of The Gambia: The Akus

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

The peoples of The Gambia consist of the Aku, the Fula, the Jola, the Serahule,the Serer, the Mandinka, the Wollof and a recently- settled Ethiopian Managing the Daily Observer. Over the next few weeks the Daily Observer will give an historical introduction to these peoples of The Gambia. In alphabetical order we start this week with the Akus.

One of the results of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was the emergence of a district ethnic group along the West Coast of Africa generally referred to as the Creoles, with a Krio language spoken throughout the region. The Creole is said to derive from the Yoruba word ‘akiriyo’, meaning “these who go about paying visits after a church service.” In The Gambia, the Creoles are known as the Akus.

The origin of the Akus dates back to the late eighteenth century and first half of the nineteenth when their ancestors, a number of groups of freed slaves, were landed in Sierra Leone.

The first batch of settlers to be landed were freed black slaves who had been living in England and sent to settle in Sierra Leone in 1787. The original settlement, known as the Province of Freedom, was the beginning of Freetown, the present capital of Sierra Leone.

Some’ of the settlers were discharged soldiers and sailors who had served with the British forces during the American War of Independence. Others were former slaves who had escaped from their American masters. Many of these people congregated in London unemployed and destitute.

It was for this reason that the British Government agreed to suggestions that they be sent to found a new home of their own in Africa, and so it was that this first batch of settlers landed in the “Province of Freedom” in May 1787.

In 1792, new settlers were to join the settlement from Nova Scotia. These were former slaves who had fought for the British in the American War of Independence and settled in Nova Scotia by the British. By 1800, a group of Maroons also joined the settlement from Nova Scotia. The Maroons were former slaves who had revolted against their owners in Jamaica and set up their own state. They were defeated by the British who sent them first to Nova Scotia and then to the Province of Freedom.

The number of these settlers were to be increased considerably by another group known as the “recaptives”. These were men and women rescued from ships that were carrying them to be sold as slaves despite the formal abolition of the slave trade and slavery.

Ship loads of these recaptives were constantly landed in the area and by 1811 they outnumbered the Nova Scotian and Maroon settlers combined. These recaptives originally came from countries throughout West Africa from The Gambia to the Congo. Few of them came from East Africa.

By the middle of the nineteenth century this mixture of settlers and recaptives had blended into a distinct cultural group. Without a common language of communication they would invent the Krio language which, based on European languages, was developed under the influence of the recaptives own various African languages including that of their neighbours, the Temne and Mende.

Cut off geographically and spiritually from their community based ancestral religions, and unable to perform their own rites, they embraced the Christian preachers in their midst. They took new names and began to wear European styled clothes.

Realising the practical advantages education and technical skills could offer them, they were ready to learn and see to it that their children also learned the white man’s culture and civilisation. Through hard work as tailors, masons and blacksmiths, they would earn enough capital to give their children the education which would prepare them for important positions in trade and commerce.

Sir Charles MacCarthy, who was Governor in Sierra Leone from 1814 to 1824, saw the settler community in Sierra Leone as people who could advance the prevalent European view that what Africa needed was Christianity and European civilisation. He proposed that the Colonial Government and Christian missions should cooperate to transform them into a Christian population who would spread Christianity and European ways throughout West Africa.

As a result of missionary activities Western education flourished in Sierra Leone. In deed mission schools were started since the founding of the settler colony in 1787. By the 1840s there was a large network of primary schools, and grammar schools for boys and girls were established. From 1876, Fourah Bay College, founded in 1827, was empowered to award degrees of the University of Durham. As a result of this investment in education, a distinguished body of Aku professional men emerged.

Among this body of distinguished professionals were men like John Thorpe who became the first West African to qualify as a lawyer in 1850; Samuel Ajayi Crowther who became the first West African Christian Bishop in 1864, and Africans Horton who qualified at Kings College, London, as West Africa’s first medical doctor in 1859.

Meanwhile the small Sierra Leone colony offered only limited scope for this ambitious and enterprising population whilst all along the coast of Africa their skills were in demand. They found jobs as clerks and agents for European exporters or set up as exporters on their own.

As missions spread they found jobs as pastors ad teachers. Their skilled tradesmen built and repaired houses in the growth coastal towns of West Africa. By the middle of the nineteenth century Akus were scattered in communities from The Gambia to Fernando Po, forming distinct societies widely apart from the indigenous inhabitants they preferred to Call “natives”. In deed for the whole of their history the Akus had though of British West Africa as one unit.

In the case of The Gambia, the British had, in the 1830s, sponsored a large scale immigration of the sick recaptives and criminals not wanted in Sierra Leone society to Bathurst (Banjul) and to Janjangburey in the Central River Division.

As in Sierra Leone, some outstanding Akus emerged in The Gambia. One such leading Gambian Aku was Thomas Joiner. Joiner was a Mandinka griot born about 1788 who was captured and sold into slavery in the Americas. He was to work hard and bough his freedom. He worked as a steward on a boat sailing to West Africa. On reaching The Gambia, he left the boat and started a new life as a trader and soon became a prosperous merchant and ship owner.

Another prominent Aku was Thomas Rafell, an Igbo recaptive, who settled in The Gambia in the early 1820s as a discharged soldier. Having been wounded in the Anglo-Niumi Wars he was granted a pension of four dollars a month by the British.

He also became a successful businessman. He used his wealth and influence to establish, in 1824, an Igbo Social Society which became a very active watchgod on British colonial administration in The Gambia, especially in matters affecting the welfare of the people.

Perhaps the most outstanding Gambian Aku has been Edward Francis Small who, as well shall see, was the doyen of modern Gambian politics. Indeed the Aku community in The Gambia, as their counterparters in other West African colonies, became the first vigorous advocates of a modern nationalism whose concepts were to spread not only in West African but throughout the whole African continent.

However, with Independence and political power being assumed by the indigenous peoples of the societies in which they settled, and forming small minorities in such societies, the Akus became a submerged people.

The History of The Gambia by Dawda Faal is available at Timbooktoo.

Timbooktoo: 4494345

Author: DO

Religion

Monday, May 14, 2007

There are four religious traditions in The Gambia.

1. Traditional African Animism
2. Islam
3. Christianity
4. Baha’i

The first settlers of this region were animists. They believed that supreme power was possessed by a pantheon of various spirits similar to those of ancient Rome. Idols were worshipped by spilling sacrifices of wine, water, milk or blood on the ground. In ancient days human sacrifice used to take place in addition to animal sacrifice. Animal sacrifice still happens.

Animists believe in reincarnation, life after death, and a set of morals. Some animist related shrines are still in existence and even non-animists visit them for blessings. These include the Katchically crocodile pool in Bakau, Folonko crocodile pool in Kartong, Sanimentereng in Brufut, the crocodile pool in Abuko Nature Reserve, and the crocodile pool in Berending.

Christianity came to The Gambia with Europeans, missionary work was very active in the early 19th century. The following churches are in existence in the country today - Methodist, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Baptist, Adventist, Pentecost, Charismatic, Jehovah Witnesses and the Church of Canaan.

Baha’i was founded in Iran in the 19th century. It spread to The Gambia in the 1960s, and the Baha’i National Centre is established in Banjul opposite the Royal Victoria hospital. There is also an information center on Bakau Newtown road.

Islam was founded in Arabia during the 7th century AD by the prophet Mohammed of Mecca. The religion was introduced through North Africa to West and Central Africa.
Although Islam existed in pockets in this region since the days of the Ghana Empire, it was the “jihad” or Muslim holy wars during the 19th century that established Islam in The Gambia as a unifying force.

The Holy Koran contains the religious laws and doctrines of Islam which are believed to be the direct words of God as revealed to Mohammed. The term “Islam” means “to submit” in Arabic, and Muslim means “one who has submitted.”
Accordingly, Islam directs its adherents to surrender to the will of God and follow the five guiding principles, commonly called the Pillars of Islam.

The first pillar is to recognize that there is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.
Lahilaha illailah Muhammadur-rasullailah is the phrase in Arabic which is repeated many times a day as part of the daily prayer.

Prayer
Prayers take place five times a day at dawn, midday, late afternoon, dusk, and at night. While each town or village has a central mosque where prayers are offered, Muslims will be found observing prayer at home, on the streets, and at other prayer grounds.
Prayers must be said while facing the direction of Mecca or sunrise and is preceded by “ablution”, that is, the ritual washing of parts of the body.
The call to prayer from the mosque can usually be heard throughout the village or town. In urban areas, a loud speaker is used.

Fasting during Ramadan
During the ninth month of the Muslim year when the Koran was supposedly revealed to Mohammed, Muslims abstain from food, water and worldly pleasures from sunrise to sunset for 29-30 days.
This is to practice self-discipline and to recall the hunger of the poor. It is also believed that sins committed during the year are forgiven if one keeps fast during this holy month.
The sick, young children, pregnant women, and those traveling beyond 50 kilometers from home are exempted from fasting.
Except for children those breaking fast are expected to compensate for missed days.

Almsgiving
Muslims believe that the charity given on earth to the poor, orphans, aged, and the infirm will become one’s livelihood in heaven.
Also a yearly payment (called zakat) of up to 10% of one’s annual income is given to the local mosque or any poor person(s) in the community.

Pilgrimage to Mecca
A Muslim is expected to undertake the pilgrimage to Mecca, or “Haj” at least once during his/her lifetime if it can be afforded.
The “Haj” can only be made during the 12th month of the Muslim year.
When a male pilgrim arrives at Mecca, he shaves his head and exchanges his clothing for two pieces of white symbolizing the equality of all believers before God.
Although a woman does not shave her hair, she also wears white clothing.
Upon returning from the Haj, a man may add Al-Haj to his name and a woman Aja-Ratu signifying the completion of the pilgrimage.

Other Islamic customs of which non-Muslims should be aware include the prohibitions against drinking alcohol or eating pork.
It is impolite to interrupt a Muslim’s prayer day when Muslim men put on their best clothes and gather in mosques for the Friday prayers. This is also the day when beggars congregate near the mosque to receive alms.
Women generally pray in the privacy of their own homes, although women past the childbearing age will be seen in mosques.

Muslim Holidays
As a predominantly Muslim country, the people of The Gambia celebrate the religious holidays listed below based on the lunar calendar. Observance of these holidays usually involves special prayers and the offering of charity, followed by feasting and dancing. These are also occasions for Gambians to dress up and visit with friends and relatives.

Yawmal Assurra
This is the Muslim new year which falls on the ninth day of the first Muslim month. The celebrations start in the evening when a special meal is prepared, and members of the family eat and pray together. The family head secures some holy water from a marabout and distributes it to his family. Muslims believe that all who drink this holy water will be blessed and saved from evil throughout the new year. Ideally, up to 10% of their income is given as charity to the poor and needy.

Maolud Nabi
Mohammed’s birthday is celebrated on the eleventh day of the third Muslim month. After the evening meal, all-night prayers and the singing of hymns from the Koran are organized by the various Muslim brotherhoods. Both men and women join together to sing praises of the prophet Mohammed. At different times during the night, the Imams (Muslim priests) and marabouts narrate the history of Mohammed’s life to the congregations who participate by singing along.

Koriteh (Ed-Ul-Fitre)
Muslims welcome the end of the month long fast of Ramadan (ninth Muslim month) with a great celebration known as Koriteh in The Gambia. This is a joyous occasion with special prayers, feasting, drumming and dancing. People also visit with friends and relatives and pray together. As in most Muslim holidays, giving charity is expected on Koriteh.

Tobaski (Ed-Ul-Kabir)
This is an important holiday celebrated by Muslims all over the world in honor of the prophet Abraham’s attempt to sacrifice one of his sons.
On Tobaski day (tenth day of the twelfth Muslim month), all heads of families who can afford it slaughter a sheep, goat, or cow and divide the meat among friends and relatives as charity.
Prayers usually take place in the morning, followed by the feast, drumming and dancing.
It is also during the month of Tobaski that Muslims who can afford it perform the pilgrimage to Mecca.

The following sensitive points must be remembered
- The eating of pork and its derivatives by Muslims is strictly forbidden.
- The drinking, buying, selling and serving of alcohol is strictly forbidden. Consequently when you visit a Muslim friend don’t expect to be served alcoholic drinks.
- When a Muslim is in the act of praying don’t walk in front of him, talk to him or do anything that may distract his attention.
- Non-Muslims are not allowed in a mosque during services, and menstruating women are never allowed in the mosque.

Author: by Ebrima Colley