The Visit, Part Two
on Phil Bradfield (The Gambia), 20/Jul/2010 09:56, 34 days ago
(Written 20/07/2010 08:15, RED5, Janjanbureh)There was no discernable order to the milling crowds down at the bridge site. Parked vehicles lined a roadway still teeming new arrivals. Akoraplayer, backed by a troupe of drummers, was singing from a stage high to the left of the road, and all around were people, people, people: soldiers with rifles, smartly-dressed dignitaries sporting DELEGATE passes, and ordinary Gambians by the thousand. These last had spilled off the road onto the rice fields on either side, standing and squatting on the banks delineating the plots, as well as thronging the tarmac and its verges. Across the road from thekoraband, two long canopies provided shade for cramped rows of empty seats; obviously the VIP area.But where had the big man gone? Having no idea what might happen where or when, I continued aimlessly past the tents and the stage towards the bridge itself, sliding through the narrow gaps between clusters of chattering Gambians. A familiar face appears, coming towards me: my neighbour Diwa, who has sprouted a name-badge informing me his name is actually Dibba.‘Sankung!’‘Dibba! How’s things?’We were shouting at each other from a distance of less than two feet, to make ourselves heard over the noise of thousands in a small area.‘Ah, it’s crazy, man! I’m going back now, all this pushing and stuff is too much.’Pushing? As Dibba headed on his way, I was puzzled. Yes there were masses of people here, but mostly it was static. What was going on up ahead that warranted enough pushing to drive Dibba away? I continued on.When it happened, less than a minute after Dibba had passed by, it happened with disorientating speed. In front, a knot of armed soldiers appeared, shoving people aside and clearing an alleyway through the scrum. And there the President was, passing by not ten feet away, smile fixed on his face and waving to the deafening hordes. A Peace Corps volunteer had magically appeared at my elbow, driven there by the crowd’s internal Brownian motion, and as we staggered this way and that in response to the suddenly violent human currents, we both whipped out our cameras and started clicking.The President stopped, looking directly at us. He approached Evelyn, who in the space of a second had been forced ten feet from me in the crush. He said something into her ear; I couldn’t hear what over the din, but my heart stopped beating: this man’s whim was law, and he had a small army within shouting distance. Had we done something to offend him? What had we done!?He moved on. I released the breath I hadn’t realised I was holding. Resisting the human tide following after Jammeh, I forced my way back to Evelyn’s side.‘What was all that about?’‘He just said “you’re free to take as many photos as you like”!’The crowd continued to pursue Jammeh like iron filings following a magnet; I looked around me for just a second only to find that when I looked back, Evelyn had vanished again, swept away.After the excitement, tedium ensued. The scrum settled into some semblance of calm around the VIP area, where speech followed speech followed speech. Of course no-one could hear what was being said; like at every similar event I’d attended in The Gambia, the PA system was nowhere near adequate for the task. The speakers’ voices just merged with the hubbub of the crowd, about 95% of which was hanging around the fringes waiting for something interesting to happen.I called up the Peace Corps to see where they’d got to. The line was bad and the environment noisy; all I could hear was ‘crossed over ... Sankulay Kunda, but... until... waiting...’, from which I worked out that they’d abandoned the formal events and crossed the bridge’s pedestrian walkway. I gave it a few seconds thought – I wasstarting to get a bit hungry and tired, would I rather go home? – but then decided to wander over and see what was happening on the far side.What was happening turned out to be much the same as what was happening on the island, just without the inaudible speeches. But then Evelyn’s comrade Katie dropped the bombshell that I hadn’t been able to make out on the phone: although people were being allowed to walk over the bridge from the island to Sankulay Kunda, no-one was being allowed to walk back the other way until the President had officially opened the bridge by driving his Hummer across.This was at about six in the evening, and there was nothing for it but to wait. So we waited while the day darkened rapidly into dusk and then further into night, until someone switched on a floodlight over on the far side. My backache, brought on by standing around all day, worsened to a searing pain. The crowd developed a regular pattern of movement, creeping gradually further onto the road until the stick-wielding police drove them back, only to start shifting forward again. We waited and we waited.Some time after eight, an engine started up on the far side. Was this it? The motor settled into an idling rhythm, and nothing happened. What the hell were they waiting for?Finally, well after nine o’clock and with my patience long exhausted, the Hummer growled its way across to us at SKK. The President’s supporters did their best, but there was no hiding the fact that the hours of waiting had taken their toll: the response was noticeably muted. Everyone just wanted to get back to their homes and get some food and some rest. And in my case, some relief for my back. And so when the Hummer turned round and headed back across to the island, we were on its tail as fast as our tired legs would carry us, heading for the three kilometre walk back into town.***That wasn’t the end of proceedings: there was a program with music and drumming organised that evening in Jammeh’s honour, but I ended up missing it as the Peace Corps and I got trapped at Bendula’s by a heavy storm. The same storm put an early end to the program, so when the storm blew over and we headed in that direction, it was already over.Even without that though, it was a crazy day. I couldn’t tell you which part was most bizarre: the biscuit throwing (and the way people were fighting each other to get them), the President’s massive entourage and the amount of military hardware on show, the one-way rule on the bridge, the sheer frenzy of the whole thing. Or maybe it was just the presence of the man who has near-enough absolute power over this country. Throughout, it was utterly chaotic, and characterised by short, frenetic bursts followed by long, dragging periods of waiting, waiting, waiting. Or to put it another way: it was a thoroughly Gambian day.