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Gambia: Traditional & Cultural Values
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The Daily Observer (Banjul)
EDITORIAL
25 February 2008
Posted to the web 25 February 2008
This weekend's inauguration of the Paramount Chief is very much in the tradition of building up the nation.
Many African Presidents did, on coming to power, totally sideline centres of traditional power such as the village heads and district chiefs in order to consolidate their one-man rule. Even the much admired and rightly greatly respected Kwame Nkrumah attempted to weaken the Chiefs of Ghana, including the Asantehene of the Ashanti. In Uganda, Obote's downfall followed his usurpation of the powers of the Kabaka, and the sending of the Kabaka to die in exile.
President Jammeh, an African patriot and great respecter of African tradition at heart, has always gone the other way and worked hard to build-up traditional and respected authority structures from the grass-roots up. Every country has its traditions, languages and cultures and this is what holds the society together.
Look for example at President Jammeh's own personal respect for Sir Dauda Jawara. It may seem a mute point, but do we really think that Odinga and Kibaki would be so hostile to each other if they were both dressed in Kaftans instead of suits and ties, talked Swahili to each other instead of English, and respected our calm African ways of talking to each other respectfully instead of taking hostile positions and shouting at each other as the English do in their Parliament? (By the way, Odinga's father, the late pan-Africanist Oginga Odinga, would not be allowed into Kenya's Parliament by the colonialists because he insisted on wearing traditional dress and sandals).
Much of the nonsense on the internet, and the abuse and misunderstandings they subject each other to, is simply due to the fact that they are trying to deal with contentious matters in English - and in the manner of the Anglo-Saxons.
Let them have that debate, that argument, that discourse in Wollof or Swahili first and see if they will quarrel. Even President Jammeh, when making the excellent speech at the Paramount Chief's inauguration, got most joyous responses from the crowd when he occasionally broke into the local languages. And President Jammeh and Lawyer Darboe made their post-2001 election encounter so memorable because they spoke to each other from a unifying cultural and traditional perspective.
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Our languages, traditions and cultures are what hold us together - they are the nuts and bolts of our oneness with our African selves. We lose that and we disintegrate because as the President said we become "trees without roots" blown here and there by any winds.
I see the greatest harmony in African societies when we hold onto our cultures, traditions and languages. Greeting someone in Swahili, we always say "Hujambo ndugu?" or "Hujambo dada?" (how is it brother/sister). In English it is a thoroughly impersonal "Good morning?", or simply a barked-out "Morning!", whether it is a good or a bad morning.
In The Gambia we say "Asalam Malaikum" (peace be on you) - but in England and USA we may be arrested on suspicion terrorism if we greeted each other with "Asalam malaikum"! I say a big ASALAM MALAIKUM to you all, my Gambian ndugus and dadas.
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