In Equatorial Guinea
JAMMEH’S NIGHTLY CONFESSIONS
By Gambiano
JAMMEH: First I beseech yester’s Tuti Faal and chide today’s Zeinab. And to Halima I commend a path to Halifa’s heart, if fate needs only wishes to hatch its results. Sallah is what they both share–a happenstance for my bloom or gloom. This, all in dreams of a return home. But a drop these are in Gambia’s ocean of my crimes. If wrong could be monetized to drachmas, the accounts of mine shall but swell to accretion and infect the land to her peril.
OBIANG: What names these are that tend to paint the heart’s variety on thy face this hour– the despondency, the fret, and the melancholy? Halima thou tend to pronounce, yet with colorful remorse, and Halifa with confident fright. Who can that Halima be?
Zeinab enters through back door without Jammeh noticing
JAMMEH: At eighteen, I ravished her damsel existence as was my wont with many a woman. Such was her vulnerability that even deactivated conscience canst, but dole out Dollars to her lap. Thereafter, a fair maiden was jettisoned for Zeinab’s rightful wrongs. For veritable Halifa–aye, the phonetics in the name and the humility the bearer carries will make a better Gambia. Perchance he shall prevail on the coalition to let me fester not in banishment.
ZEINAB: Her name on thy lips again this abode shall crumble to dust!
JAMMEH: For the vixens, let that assume precedence over the clock’s next tick! My host counts no offense, but words matter not in hell, neither deeds wholesome nor glorious language.
ZEINAB: (To Obiang) He measures your hospitality to hell’s welcome–this ungrateful guest of unaccounted origin.
JAMMEH: Excuse her damned deductions. But my exit from Gambia was a retribution from hell. Like a century old spell, I’m purged to the fore–for birds to cherish sylvan territories and reach for boughs low and high; for flowers to quietly admit their love to the morning sun; for sweet maidens to rest pretty faces on chests of deserving grooms; for bows of free speech to finally find arrows of free expression; for heads of households to be restful on late night pillows with peaceful assurances from heads of security agents; for connoisseurs to savor local delicacies to visceral delight. My host, I pray, misappropriates not the fair judgment of my catharsis.
OBIANG: Wielding power I tutor my son who now receives pressure from France and other faces pale; losing it thou may coach me on. Only that I too keep a stock of human skulls filled with virgin blood, deadly fangs of a black mamba, boiled sacrum and viscera of an infant. If power is patentable, I shall be the first to pay its cashiers. But that without, we court the dark blessings of preternatural forces.
JAMMEH: Beware of fake custodians of fate. They shift punctuations of the mathematics of God to soil the hands of men like us. O scribes of transcripts kept in hell, allow me snatch mine to wipe it clean. And beware, O man, of a woman sworn to extravaganza.
ZEINAB: And a man that hides even corpses of his victims.
JAMMEH: Be more mindful of a consort privy to such graves, but laments them not as long as her purses bloat.
ZEINAB: Did I order Ello Jallow dead?
JAMMEH: Did you abandon me for it?
ZEINAB: Haruna Jammeh, Masireh Jammeh, Deyda Hydara, Daba Marena, Jassacha Kujabi, Alpha Bah, Basiru Barrow, Chief Manneh, Kanyiba Kanyi, Solo Nkrumah, Solo Sandeng–do I proceed? To be Jammeh, verily, is to secede from reason and be gory, dark, and occult.
JAMMEH: And to be Zeinab is to devour all such description yields. Didst thy conscience return from an 18 year vacation? Wasn’t it thy avocation to irrigate from Gambia’s finances? Had thou been conservative with such trips foreign, Ello Jallow might still be breathing.
ZEINAB: My crimes are barren where thine flourish with quintuples or more. Ello had to perish under surreptitious maneuvers?
JAMMEH: His love thou secretly nurtured to let me rave to the grave. And from thee, this hour, a stabbing sermon of spontaneity?
ZEINAB: It was thee that opted to consort with an 18-year old Halima–cursed be my tongue for pronouncing it.
JAMMEH: And I brought thee when there was another. Listen, O leech-like spouse that binds to money! Tonight I wear cleaner lens to fathom that evil begets only another. The evil of a house for thee in Potomac is sprung of one that choked Gambia’s coffers. It was such that sacrilegiously beckoned Ello and thee to Maryland at the hemorrhage of my venom.
Obiang bids goodnight and exits
ZEINAB: The same evil brought an 18-year old to thy sartorial pleasure. If Halima lost to my jealousy, Ello, earlier lost to thine too brutally. I see Barrow exacting retribution, but too economical with it as to let thee live.
JAMMEH: If my crimes preside over my burial, they shall return to prosecute thee for being paramountly party.
Enter messenger
MESSENGER: Yankuba Badgie, Malick Jatta, David Colley, and many more in Barrow’s shackles. What counsels thee for our trouble-makers on the ground?
JAMMEH: APRC lived not on oxygen, but human blood and Gambia’s epithelium. It shall leave behind naught but cursed memory. And I, its fountain live to witness bleaker days. Not again do I ask for human skulls to burry spells, nor cowries to cast and sow hourly seeds of mischief. Announce me not, O Teodoro, to demons of thy longevity. Of what pleasure is that castle next to thee in Potomac? With it shall be rendered to ignominy all that bears this troubled name.
ZEINAB: (Soliloquy) Be monolithic, money-mettled, O Suma! Unleash the same malignant spells of yours on the Obiangs as to siphon from their earnings with abandon. Wealth earned ill shall be spent ill. With money, Jammeh was a slave–without it less than one. If chanceth upon it, I shall make of the Obiang playboy a useful spendthrift.
JAMMEH: By the heavens, thou aren’t worth a philanderer’s soiled linen. Thou art sure to leave me sooner than the world freezes my assets. Forgive me, O Gambia!
Ends
Nietzsche: “God is Dead”
God: “Nietzsche is dead”
Jammeh: “Mandinkas will never rule Gambia again”
Mandinkas: “Jammeh will never rule Gambia again”
Ends
Hmm, for a journal keeper who usually hits the mark, this offering is rather dry and devoid of any flavor. It is lacking in humour or gravitas. I am an avid reader of your journals, please endeavor to maintain the same quality. Hope this doesn’t hurt some ego or Id. I am sorry if it did.
Sidi,
Thank you. Indeed thank you, and your concerns well considered. However, “humour” and “flavor” would be last in a segment that highlights furtive murders, gut-wrenching disappearances, economic slaughters, etc. Like a film, some scenes make you laugh. Others make you cry. Others make you think. Yes, I’ve written others with a tinge of humor before Jammeh was removed. But serious themes were also inherent of my style. Please help me learn.