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By Madeline Ileleji
The Mockingbird had suggested that Gambejang, the line of the Atlantic’s mouth needed to be sold and the divisions issued to its people according to their numbers, and according to their right of claim to the land. The people of the Roaring Tribe raised the outcry and it had corresponded with the plight of villagers from every region, that indeed Gambejang was a failed state. Therefore everyone agreed upon the right of settlement. Therein, upon and agreed consensus it was herein agreed that Gambejang indeed had to be sold. Reasons for their outcry were listed in the order of the Rights of Animals. The fundamental values and rights of attribution, of livelihood and of honor completely violated and disregarded by its leaders.
The vexations of its people were driven by the disregard of basic human rights that contributed to massive poverty experienced everywhere. The prices of goods had gone up unanimously with the lack of price control implemented by the Vetting Agency. Therefore the locals had bought vegetables, meat and stock, chicken and rice, oil, bread and fruits, and other commodities at a different price every week or every month depending on the emotion at the port, the purchasing price of traders on retailed goods, the taxes implemented by the Vulture Government, and the trader’s bi-weekly mood swings governed by trade frustrations. The price of these resulting accountabilities paid in full by the masses.
Yet more so, it was the caricature imposed on citizens whose claim to the land and sea swamped across their borders, merged communities and created livelihoods. Whose creatures were subjects of our eternal birth right bestowed upon us by the Maker first called upon in our old tongues, now implored upon in the foreign languages associated with our different faiths borrowed and imposed on us. The Art of God so wholly divine to us in our worship and utterance. Yet the fish, shrimps and the darling lobsters have been sold to us in foreign prices converted in the equivalence of our local currency, and the Mbyes and the Senghores, the Njies, and the Sarr’s whose existence had been bonded to the sea wouldn’t have it. And so was everyone else, those with borrowed surnames and ancestral origins farfetched across our borders yet still with the salt of the sea in their blood streams. The Aku’s- descendants of the Atlantic Slave Trade, The Jola’s- defenders of the Old Fort Bullen, the Mandinka’s- traders on foot with their cousins the Serahule’s- all descendants of the great empires, the Manjago’s of the great movements and embellished cultures, the Fula’s of the Futa Jallon Highlands, the Serre’s and Wolof of the Sea- true bloods of the Lion, and everyone else whose claim to Gambejang was either passed at birth or through parental origin. For the sea was our own, and the land toiled upon by our sweat, tears and blood.
Yet decade after decade, election after election, leaders were elected according to their tribal precedence, village preference, charity for a vote, ballots of assigned favoritism, and the promises of a better state uttered through the persistence of campaign deliverables. Leaders had come and gone doing the bare minimum and calling it Holy Grail. Yet still their words and beautiful promises were now songs to children headed on the coast of the high seas in search of better conditions, for Gambejang was a failed state.
Therefore, when the wisdom of the learned was heard and the youth took up matters to the Polling Agents of the International Coverage Body, all the outcry accounted to one unanimous verdict, “Gambejang was a failed state, it had to be sold and each of its citizen given a share.” And so the sale date was put forward, parents agreeing to their children’s demand, after generations of their kind had failed us in office with their silence, in development, in sustainability, in empowerment, in education, healthcare, technology, gender equality, agriculture etc.
On the fourteenth day of the fifth month of the Gregorian Calendar, the sale would go up, and the prices and proceedings would be governed by laws of our land according to the old ways, in the order of our customs and traditions. Those with direct birth right inheriting first, those with ancestral contribution to nation building going next, children and women following for the propriety of traditional governance, care to women and provision to children. Then the rest of the masses would follow according to their surnames, those with origins of our land and those bonded to us by blood. Then the least in the chain of distribution were those in government positions and grassroot mobilizations whose share will be issued according to what was left of the divisions; the damages implored on citizens to be deducted, the funds stolen from office to office, ministry to ministry, agency to agency, project to project, and everyone else whose association to those in public offices by blood will be deducted by 10% for associative collateral damages. We were setting the country right and this was the way to begin so.
In the afternoon of the sale when the divisions had been interpreted in all languages, the outcry of the people in response to the divisional progression of the right of sale, the crowds went silent to listen to the purchasing price of the buyers. First came the Red Rose bearing the heads of the three lions as crest with an offer to embody our land as an overseas territory without concealing plans of its usage. Their advocate had a beautiful accent, a tongue woven to speak its own unique language. The next buyers came from the New World, men whose dreams went wild beyond our stars, whose vision was to conquer our land for the purpose of a military base. And they were quite impressive for what they had achieved as once colonies of the first buyers.
The next were the Nation Without Borders whose attraction to our sea had already made them invaders. They brought in big ships to fish in our waters, shedding their waste along our shores, and along our coastal communities. More buyers came speaking foreign languages both understood and not understood, each making an offer, every offer bigger and more lucrative than the previous. However in their camps of their different regions, they formed little alliances distributing toils of our hard work on paper and renaming our land, villages, streets and ports, blueprints of our ancestors homage.
Yet the outcry of our people went over the moon again and each person who found their share divisions ridiculous roared out in frustration. The farmers echoed their sentiments, they should get the highest share for generations of their families who toiled our land. Then came the descendants of the soldiers who fought in the great wars, those that were ours and those that had nothing to do with us. ‘What business do black people have in duels?’ They asked yet they fought on the side of our conqueror’s and some never made it home. And the soldiers who refused to raise their arms in support of the incumbent roared too, they deserve the highest share for refusal to spill their own blood in aggravation of a dictators command. Almost everyone else roared different reasons for whose right it was to be given the biggest share. Each mouth and voice elongated in a peril of its own wishes and worth.
The Buyers stood aside watching marvelously the people of Gambejang as they fought each other in aggravated voices for coins with foreign faces that hadn’t been distributed, to sell the land of the sea that carried hope for the future. Roar after roar, a consensus couldn’t be reached. The people grew frustrated and wanted to be done with the trading, the grudges of tribal superiority and individual complexes all showed without a compromise. Once a people, now individuals whose moral worth had been lost in pursuit of coins with foreign faces.
The Buyers, the biggest perpetrators of uneven negotiations and settlements, rolled the dice of the soldiers in a gamble of bidding. Each tossed a different set of coins with faces of kings and queens, and great men and women who knew nothing of the true histories of our lands or the struggles of our people. And so our citizens bent over to the pile of gold, silver and paper to approportionate the shares tossed on the ground. Men and women stepped on each other for gold coins, and they failed to consider the monetary value approximation of the lands worth or of the seas worth, its greatest resource. But it also meant in the mad chaos of the evening sale that in the laws of governance and proprietary laws of ownership, documents of sale hadn’t been exchanged, and the terms of sale negotiated and agreed to.
In the face of this madness, the little people called off the bargain. They measured the worth of the land and its people to the Buyer’s purchasing price. They knew the sea was worth a ton of God and his coins. This land had bred the old ancestors. The sea had swallowed its own people. Parents had watched their sons and daughters bundled on the back of ships to pay a measures worth on another man’s land. This land had given birth to every kind of people and God dimmed it fit to let us all live on it.
And so the mocking birds children, cousins of the pelican and the royal albatross, and those of the owl, and the eagle protested in accordance to their entitlement. Because a sold land meant our people won’t have nowhere else to go. The Buyers on a norm had refused us entries to their settlements. Held us against rations of their documents. And each had preferred one man to the other for his cheek and bones, for his size and stature, for his worth and wealth, his skill and education. And our women have borne the brunt of childbirth and of crushed dreams.
‘Where else would our children call home’ said the Mocking bird. ‘Do we sell the land the land or do we hold on to our title deed?’
