Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Antropologia Culturale, Etnologia, Etnolinguistica Tesi di Laurea Unbroken circles and unfinished legacies: a Gambian story Relatore Ch. Prof. Francesco Vacchiano Laureanda Giulia Giovanna Longo Matricola 871884 Anno Accademico 2018 / 2019 Abstract This is a story. An unfinished one, as every story that takes shape from a real experience. It is both the story of a life and a memoir of a journey. They are interdependent but maintain their own singularity insofar as every voice resounds the peculiarity of the individual. However, these are not single voices. They don’t carry within them the danger of a single story. Because as Chimananda Ngozi Adichie argues “the single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” Born and raised from a daily exchange, by practicing an active and shared listening and throughout the experiencing of everyday life in urban Gambia, the oral account of activist Alieu Bah, also known as Immortal X, and the ethnographic narrative carried out using both writing and photography are mutually developed, intersect and echoing with other voices and other stories. The first part focuses on Alieu’s life story - recorded as a dialogue we were both involved in and maintains in its written form a trace of this alternation of voices. His account - always grounded in the Gambian historical and socio-political context - begins with childhood memories and crosses the spiritual and political awakening and ends with a future challenge. The second part explores everyday life through ethnographic narration and documentary photography in contemporary Gambia. It is the product of a singular experience in which portraits of the neighborhood, reflections on politics and society, fleeting encounters and intimate connections all come together. Keywords: The Gambia, Life Story, Youth, Activism, Photography Contents Preface !! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 10 Introduction!" "" " " " " " " " " 20 Chronology of contemporary Gambian History! """""34 Maps! """"""""""""37 Alieu’s life story! """""""""" ▻" Overture: sitting in the dark, how everything begins"""""42 ▻ " Being born in the 90s in Gambia"" " " " " " " 50 ▻ From Tablighi Jamaat to Sufism with a brief interlude into Salafism"" 62 ▻ Moving in Kololi"" " " " " " " " " 70 ▻" In-depth into Tarbiya"" " " " " " " 74 ▻" Back from Medina Baye: anarchism, the Standard Newspaper, Coalition 2016, #GAMBIAHASDECIDED and post-Jammeh blues"" " " " " 82 ▻" Unmasking the jamboree of the New Gambia: Occupy Westfield"" " " 88 ▻" The struggle continues"" " " " " " " " 94 ▻" Pan-Africanism"" " " " " " " " " 102 ▻" Towards an African Internationalism"" " " " " " " 112 ▻" Scientific Socialism"" " " " " " " " " 116 ▻" Language of revolution"" " " " " " " " 122 ▻" Third World"" " " " " " " " " " 128 ▻" Neocolonialism"" " " " " " " " " 134 ▻" Race and tribalism"" " " " " " " " " 140 ▻" Human rights and democracy"" " " " " " " 144" ▻" Freedom of movement"" " " " " " " " 150 ▻" On indigenous healing, superstition and belief"" " " " " 156 ▻" Reflections on mortality"" " " " " " " " 162 ▻" Coda: we fuzzed in the sunlight, waiting for something to happen""""170 A memoir for Gambia "" " " " " " " " " 176 Conclusions!! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 293 Acknowledgments "" " " " " " " " " " 315 Appendices !! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 319 Appendix A " Gambia has decided: T-shirts, Billboards and the long road to the inauguration Appendix B " #GambiaHasDecided: a love letter from the frontlines Appendix C" Reflections from the borderline: on the spirit of struggle, selflessness and service 6 Appendix D" Fuck academic de-colonial philosophy Appendix E" An official statement from the #OccupyWestfield Collective Appendix F " Let’s get free : a love letter to the Third World Appendix G " Returning to the Source: Remembering and Grounding with Amilcar Cabral Appendix H " Memento Mori: The Presence of Death and Hastening the Revolution Appendix I " Human Rights is a Farce: A dispatch from the Neocolonial state Appendix J " Liberation in our lifetime: Towards an African Socialist Anti-Manifesto Appendix K " Build Organization: A love letter to 'leaderless’ movements Bibliography!!!!!!!!!!!341 Online sources!! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 347 7 What is Montevideo but the sum of the people I loved and hated in her and of so much given and received? My furies and my sorrows come from these men and these women. They are my national history. """"" "" " " " " — Eduardo Galeano What we are writing here is history. Or at least the personal account of an eyewitness to history. Our brother, Jimmy Baldwin (peace be unto him), used to constantly tell us in SNCC that "you all have to bear witness. "That is all we are doing here, bearing witness to what we have done and seen in the hope, God willing, that it will prove instructive to those who follow us. And it was President Ahmad Sekou Toure (peace be unto his fighting spirit) who unfailingly reminded us that "only the people make history. It is not individual heroes, not individual geniuses but only the people who make history."" " " " " " " " " " " "" """""" "" " " " " — Kwame Ture We all are witnesses - voluntarily or not - through the written form or simply just by living, we all carry the responsibility of being witnesses to our own lives, to the many livings of our loved ones and to those we barely know, and thanks to that we become more generally, witnesses of our time, bearers of contradictions and traditions and sometimes also, of innovations. As specific points drawn upon an imaginary continuous line, the three place us in a particular position vis-à-vis history and its corollaries: Preface memory, loss, remembrance, continuity and revolution. Not one of us is born in a vacuum, neither of us could we ever claim to be an isolated point in a quiet landscape of abstraction and although at first glance, it may seem paradoxical, what divides us is precisely what we share. What binds us is the legacy each of us carries within herself and himself. A legacy that lives through, because of and despite of us in the ordinariness of the account. We might have preferences, specific attitudes or penchants but we can’t deny and we can’t escape from this simple truth: we are all storytellers precisely because we are both equally listeners. No matter how little our audience is or how short, incoherent, boring or incomplete our stories are 10 or whether our name is Ogotemmeli, Malcom single story shows people as one thing, as X, Kwame Ture, Angela Davis, Acephie Josef only one thing over and over again” and “that or Chouchou Louis, we all have the right and it’s impossible to talk about the single story the duty to tell and listen to our stories and to without talking about power” (2009). The the many stories that give meaning to our story about to be told here is an attempt to inhabiting the earth as human beings. engage properly with a place and a person They can be whispered into someone’s ear in and with all the stories of that place and of bed, shouted out loud in the midst of a that person. It praises human equality, square, stammered, rapped or censored but emphasizing how we are similar notwithstanding all stories matter because all stories have our differences and the many subjectivities dignity. As Chimananda Ngozi Adichie collected within it try to annihilate not the argues “Stories matter. Many stories matter. people but the stereotype. Stories have been used to dispossess and to But before Adichie and Achebe, Frantz Fanon malign, but stories can also be used to already stated in The Wretched of the Earth, at empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dawn of the decolonization, that the the dignity of a people, but stories can also colonized intellectual, dusted over by colonial repair that broken dignity.” (2009) culture, represents a threat for the national Then, if what we have in common is the culture (1968) and that the mission to be power to be enchanted, moved, angered and fulfilled by the new generations of decolonized triggered by telling, listening and retelling, cultural actors is the affirmation of their own what separates us? It is the plurality of cultures looking at their own stories, finding visions, the multitude of genealogies, the inspiration in their people and working different ancestors and the various places alongside with them. What Fanon is praising with their own particular cosmologies, legends, here is precisely the awakening of a new colors, trees, smells, ways of singing, playing, consciousness, a revolutionary consciousness dancing, mourning and celebrating. grounded with the masses of the people in In a nutshell, the different ways through their specific historical and cultural context. which we witness our time, never ceasing to Not by chance the section dedicated to the be at the same time bearers of a specific building of a national culture, post-independence legacy. Recognizing, accepting and embracing struggle opens with a quote of Sekou Touré, the multitude of legacies and the beautiful, the revolutionary president of Guinea, friend inevitable multi-vocality of their bearers, of Kwame Nkrumah and mentor of Kwame witnesses, janitors and storytellers means Ture, who engaged the complete withdrawal avoiding the danger of the single story. from French neocolonialism, affirming that The risk of the single story is precisely the Guinea prefers poverty in freedom to richness lack of balance of stories among the world’s in slavery. people(Achebe