Echo Exclusive Interview with Associate Editor, Mathew K. Jallow

In a rare moment, our Editor-in-Chief, Ebrima G. Sankareh sat down with his long time friend, brother and colleague, MATHEW K. JALLOW, Associate Editor of The Gambia Echo newspaper. A prolific writer and erudite commentator, Mathew K. Jallow has spent the last 30 years as a voice of the voiceless, a crusader for human and people rights and an unyielding and vociferous voice for justice and fair play in Gambian society and everywhere he encountered injustice and foul play. A well read and widely travelled teacher, journalist, activist and rara avis campaigner for human rights, Mathew K. Jallow holds degrees in Hospitality & Tourism, Business Management and a Graduate Degree in Public Administration from the prestigious University of Wisconsin. He is currently a Doctoral student in Political Science. In this very provocative and revealing interview, Mathew takes the posture of a great conversationalist and speaks out frankly and naturally, as he has always been known. He began this eye-catching and educative story from his native Sare Gainako, a village that remains indelible in memory as evident in most of his poetry and stories here in The Echo. If this interview were his memoirs in a book, I would have called it his “Magnum opus” and we look forward with great anticipation that very soon, we will read Mathew’s long anticipated book. Below is our exclusive.       

Echo: Mathew K. Jallow please begin by introducing your self to our readership.

Mathew: You got my name right. Ha Ha, like you don’t know me. Well, seriously, I was born in Niamaina, Sare Gainako village. My grandfather Gainako Jallow moved from Sambang Fula to found the village that he named after himself. For the Fulani people, it is a traditional and I dare say, a cultural thing to name villages after their founders, and it has nothing to do with vanity.

Echo: For a man who relish so much about his culture and tradition, how did you end up attending western style education- was it easy to abandon the cattle field?

Mathew: To be very frank, I hated herding cattle. Very often I would fake sickness just to avoid chasing cattle all day, and when I did fake sick, no one except my dear mother believed me. She would back up my stories of feigning sick no matter what. Believe me, cattle is really a grueling job, partly because it can be particularly very difficult to keep a hungry herd of cattle away from lush green rice, peanut and sorghum crop fields. When cows see a pristine carpet of lush green crop field billowing invitingly in the wind, and stretching as far as the eye could see, they are thinking a buffet party, but for me it was big trouble. When I couldn't stop them from destroying crops, I got beat up. The cows and I had different motivations. Where the cows saw a luxurious carpet of grass stew, I saw a cane on my behind.

Echo: My maternal grandfather, Yerro Aineh Sowe who later settled at Sare Fawora, near Maymeh in Jokadou with his siblings, Demba Aineh Sowe and Fawora Aineh Sowe drifted from Badibou. I retain vivid memories when as a young man, my aunt, Da-Chargie Buya Bah of Wellingara, Tabokoto taking me to Neneh Mcdouall’s Cable and Wireless home at Banjulding because Nenneh’s mom was also from Badibou. I am not so sure of the exact relationship but I know your own mom is also from Badibou and legend has it that in fact, the phenomenal Mama Tamba Jammeh is a relative. Please elucidate.

Mathew: Actually, my mother came from Badibou, Yuna-Agale to be precise. On my mother’s side, the family straddles the Senegal-Gambia border. Yuna-Angale came out of Yuna-Senegal and the villages are just 2 miles apart. To the villagers along the border, the invincible boundary that lies between the two villages does not exist. The two people(s) come and go as they please just as they have done for ages. My maternal grandmother had two sisters and one of them was called Gibbeh Tedi Bah. I believe that was her name and she was the mother of the great colonial era chief Mama Tamba Jammeh, the subject of your poignant question. She was married to a Mandinka or Jola man and the reason I am not sure of the ethnicity is that even today, there is argument whether the Jammehs in Badibou are of Jola or Mandinka stock. The rest of our family on my mom’s side is spread around all the Fula villages in Badibou, Kombos and Fonis; from Yuna village 3 miles south of Sukuta-Sabeji to the other Fula villages around Brikama and beyond. Yes, I do have some Mandinka relatives but the off springs of Mama Tamba Jammeh do not seem interested in knowing the origin and the Fula family and relatives of Mama Tamba’s mother. So we on the Fula side just let them have their peace. Today I have in-laws, nieces, nephews whose moms come from every tribe in The Gambia; Sarahules, Jolas, Mandinkas, Wollofs and Sereres. This is the demography of the new Sare Gainako. Finally, as you rightly recalled, Neneh Mcdouall’s mother is also, Fula from Badibou just as Da-Chargie and the rest were from Badibou. What a small world?     

Echo: What was village life like growing up in Sare Gainako and who were your schoolmates at the village primary school?

Mathew: Village life in Sare Gainako was mostly uneventful, but everything changed dramatically when the Catholic missionaries came to town one day and said they needed land on which to build a school. Before they came to Sare Gainako, we were told later, they had been to Choya, journalist Demba A. Jawo’s village, Penai, Katimina, Dungal, Sinchu Jombo, Sare Demba and Sambang, and according what we were told, all the Alkalolu in these villages rejected the idea of a school on their lands. In Sare Gainako too, the then Alkalo, an uncle to my father and his brothers, also refused, but luckily my father’s older brother, Samba Eggeh Jallow, the father of Dr. Saba Jallow, Georgia Southern University, Georgia, professor, was also at the meeting and immediately offered the missionaries the land on which the school now stands. He became a life-long friend of both Rev. Father James White and Rev. Bishop Michael Maloney, who was then only a priest. My schoolmates in Sare Gainako included Bubu Jallow, Yero Bah, who is the Niamina West chief now, Samba Gagigo among others. My father did actually not enroll me, because he had decided that I had to stay and help the family herd cattle and farm. My older brother James P. Jallow, who now lives in Sweden, was the reason I went to school. I was attached to him and so we became inseparable. So each morning I followed him to school and would stay there and wait, mostly standing outside the windows until school was over. I got beat up and punished in many different ways, but it did nothing to stop me from following my brother to school. Eventually, my father’s brother and the Headmaster, John Baldeh, enrolled me without the knowledge of my father. The rest is history.

Echo: After passing the common entrance to attend Saint Augustine’s high school, am sure life must have been pretty different. Take us through your journey of boyhood in Banjul.

Mathew: When I went to St. Augustine’s I was the youngest in the school pretty much until I was in the third form. Felix Gomez and I shared that title. My classmates were mostly much older than me; in fact some were even older than my older brother.

Many of us from missionary schools in the provinces who had no family in Banjul, lived in a boarding facility established by the Catholic missionaries at 73, Hagan Street. It was a hard life for many of us; the food was often horrible, and was certainly never enough. To make matters worse, we rarely had enough sleep most days, and we were often beaten with belts even for very innocuous infractions. It was a horrible way to grow up. We were woken around 5.30AM each morning to serve mass and do chores around the church, the compound and the rooms occupied by the priests. I lived at this mission boarding facility with Bernard Baldeh, my brother James Jallow, Henry (Foday) Baldeh, the late Michael (Cherno or Bolong) Baldeh, Henry Jammeh, William Kujabi, the late Thomas Senghore, and Henry Jawo among others. Basically, it was Fulanis from Sare Gainako School, Fula Bantang School, Basse, Mansajang, and Jolas from Bwiam and Kanilai and Sereres from Njongon and Mbollet schools who lived together at the Mission. Each year when some students graduated and left, new ones were brought in to replace them. The year I came to the boarding facility, Alfred Mboge, a Banjul native, was our Head Boy. That year when he graduated, Bernard Baldeh became the Head Boy, and this process went on for the next several years, from Bernard to James Jallow, then to Henry Jammeh until finally, I was in the Upper Fifth Form and it became my turn to be the Head Boy. Within a few weeks of becoming Head Boy, I wrote a letter of protest to the missionaries on behalf of the boys under my charge. I explained the horrible living conditions we were subjected to. I then proceeded to give the priests an ultimatum, which they did not comply with. A few days later, on a Sunday afternoon, with all our belongings on our heads, I led the boys out and left the Mission for good. For years we had been complaining, and neither Alfred Mboge, Bernard Baldeh, my brother James Jallow or Henry Jammeh did anything to attempt to help change the predicament we were in. Eventually, some one had to do something about our conditions and that happened to be me. But, because I still had no relative in Banjul, I headed for the compound of Sheriff S. Sisay, then Minister of Finance, and the father of lawyer Hawa Sisay-Sabally. He was our parliamentarian and that was the only relations we shared. He was gracious to allow me stay with him while I completed my last year in high school. Hawa Sisay-Sabally was still very young and not even in school yet. With that mission revolt, I broke the more than half-century of tradition, which brought rural provincial boys without relatives in the Banjul area, to the Mission boarding facility on 73 Hagan Street.

Echo: Who were your schoolmates in Banjul, your friends and mentors?

Mathew: At Saint’s my schoolmates included Ousainou Darboe, Omar Jallow (O.J.), Dr. Pap John Williams, Felix Gomez, Michael Azziz who was my best friend and we shared Aunty Ken’s Njambi and Nyebe everyday when we had school breaks. I remember a lot of people, some younger, and some older than me.

As a Mission boy, I was naturally close the Catholic Community of Banjul, and so the first club Cherno Michael Baldeh and I joined was the Santa Maria Boys Club; headquartered at Baby Rene’s family compound. Baby Rene is George Gomez’s younger brother. Much later, we joined the No.1 Primet Street Vous, which was the compound of the family of Baboucarr Mbye. Other members of our club included Dr. Alhagi Jagne, Baboucarr Sarr, U.N.D.P, Mr. Otis Sarr, RVH, Ringo (Starr) Njie, the late Pet Darboe, and the late Baboucarr Gaye among others.

Echo: Now to your God-given talents of penmanship-how did it all begin and what power in your view does the pen possess?

Mathew: English language has always been my forte in school. I was, however, terrible in math, and math classes always scared the hell out of me. However, I once had 80% in a math exam that I was not expecting to pass. I could not believe it. What happened was that our math teacher in Form Three, doubled as a police cadet officer at night. In class he would stand in front of the class, with our exam papers before him. One after the other, he would call a student’s name and the student would answer and stand up. The teacher would doze off for a minute or so, and would open his sleepy eyes. If he liked the student standing before him, he would be inclined to give him a passing grade, if he did not, he failed them. That was the only way I could get that high grade in math. Sorry teacher, in case you read this. In any case, I have always loved to write, and I remember when I was living with Sherrif S. Sisay, I wrote a collection of stories, which I planned to publish, but somehow I lost the manuscript. But, writing is an art form, and the more you do it, the better you become at it. It takes time, but it cannot be done without extensive reading. I can thank Newsweek Magazine and The Reader’s Digest for expanding my insatiable knowledge for politics and helping me improve my writing skills. Unlike many writers, I am embarrassed to use other peoples thought processes and writing skills and masquerade as my own. I have never done it, and I will never do it. One does not just jump and be a good writer over night. It takes time and practice, and always remember that the secret is in reading, reading, and more reading and practice, practice and more practice. Almost every article or sentence I see on our online papers, I can tell you if it was original construction or lifted from a previous writer. When I was at the Daily Observer, some reporters there went to great lengths to plagiarize articles and commentaries just so they can appear to reach my standard of writing. Everyone knew this, but we never discussed it with the perpetrators. Back in the seventies, I wrote for The Gambia Onward I think it was; for the late Mr. Allen of Grant Street. Later in the 80s, both Demba Jawo and I wrote for Mr. William Dixon Colley. Mr. Demba Jawo was Mr. Colley’s right-hand man. Mr. Colley was so impressed with my articles that he made very positive predictions about my future in writing. Writing has been my life-long passion and I have been doing it since I was in high school. If today I am a master in the art, one thing I can assure you is that it did not come easy. I invested patience, practice and a lot of reading to it. The reading part helped develop and grow my vocabulary capacity, but also my grammar, and the intricate art of sentence construction and punctuation of course. I get mad at myself when I put a comma or colons in the wrong spot, which I sometimes do of course.

Echo: Who among your teachers influenced you most and how?

Mathew: Paul L. Baldeh most definitely. He is the father of Batchi Baldeh former M.D. of the now defunct G.U.C. Paul was one of the first ten Gambians to ever graduate from any university. His father Ngai Baldeh of Sare Ngai near Fulabantang was probably the wealthiest Gambian in terms of cattle. He had thousands of them, in fact they were so many no one knew the exact number. Paul L. Baldeh taught me at St Augustine’s, and he graduated from Dublin University at a time when one could easily count the number of black people in Ireland. Mr. Baldeh was revolutionary who often asked us to cross out from our history textbooks things he called “white peoples’ lies” about Africa. He came back from Ireland very radical, and perhaps, an angry man. He knew the conditions we lived under at the mission house, because he had lived there years before himself. He came around ever so often to give us money. Later, he became Minister of Education under Jawara’s government. At that time, Michael Baldeh, Buba Baldeh’s father was a minister, so were Andrew (Assan Musa Camara), M.C. Jallow, Mr. Omar Mbakeh and M.C. Cham and the second tier of Fula politicians were coming up into politics.

In school every one feared Rev. Father Seamus Little, but he was by far the best English teacher St. Augustine’s ever had. He definitely had influence on many of us; he certainly did influence me. Just ask anyone of his former students at Saint Augustine’s.

Echo: After high school, you ended up as a teacher and in fact, enrolled at The Yundum College. Why did you choose teaching and what were your college days like?

Mathew: My last year in high school was a very painful experience. I felt like the priest teachers at the school were exerting some kind of revenge on me for pulling all the boys out of the Mission House. I felt they were making my life a living hell. After high school, I could not find employment, try as I did. Eventually, I ended up as a laborer, hauling merchandise with my uncle John Bah, from the Wellington and Russell Streets, using a rented Puss-Puss (will barrow). The only other people, who were doing that kind of grueling work in Banjul, were the black Mauritanian immigrants.

I was then for the first time homeless in Banjul, because what we made each day just took care of our daily feeding needs. There was not enough left to rent a place to live. Much later, the Rev. Father Fleming who was then priest in charge of St. George’s School in Mansajang, Basse sought me out and hired me to teach in the Secondary School there. After a while, I wrote the Yundum College Teachers Exams and passed. Besides St. George’s School, I taught at St. Theresa’s, Kanifing, Madina Serign Mass, Lower Nuimi and St. Peter’s, Kombo Lamin.

Echo: You grew up at a time when the agitation for independence was fiercest and the super powers' struggle for spheres of influence and dominance in the cold war was intense. How did these struggles and contradictions shape your worldview? 

Mathew: I have always hated conformity, but reveled in militancy. Growing up, I was the real embodiment of contradiction. On the one hand, I loved and adored John F. Kennedy, but on the other hand, my heroes were all socialist dogmatists, who were exporting a utopian socialist philosophy; Mao Tse-Tung of China, Fidel Castro of Cuba, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Che Guevara whose name is still tattooed on my right arm, and has been for the past thirty-five years. I was a supporter of the black freedom struggles in the United States, even though at the time I knew very little about what was going on in America. I was drawn.

Echo: I understand you studied in Scandinavia- tell us your story.

Mathew: As I said before, I sat the College Entrance Exams while I was teaching and passed, so I went to Yundum College. I was part of a group of friends some of who met at college, and we influenced many things that happened on campus. The other group members were Modou Sidibeh, from George Town, late Lamin Jobarteh from Kaur Janneh Kunda, Trophimus Warner from Brufut, Habib Badjie from Sibanor and some other affiliated members like Kakai Sanyang. Professor Abdoulaye Saine was also in college with us. I heard from word of mouth that I had been expelled from college after a riot we organized, so when college opened after the summer holiday, I never bothered to go back. Instead, I found a job with Vingressor, a Swedish travel agency, which then was the only tourism operating company in The Gambia. They had only been in business less than two years, and so I became the fourth Gambian ever to be employed in the infant tourism industry as a tourist guide. The other three were Badou (Faal)? who now lives in Sweden, late Michael (Cherno) Baldeh and (Pa)? Faal. Mr. Faal later started a local tour agency along Pipeline Road. I took tourists on a bus to Basse and returned with them by the riverboat, the Lady Wright. My job was to make sure they enjoyed themselves, I told them about our history and culture every step of the way, and generally helped them in whatever they were doing if they needed help. It was in one of these trips on the Lady Wright going to Basse that I met a Norwegian with whom I became good friends. When he was going home, we exchanged addresses. One day out of the blue, I got a letter from him, thanking me for the help, which of course I was only doing a job I got paid for. At the time, I was making plans to attend Kalamazoo College, in Michigan, USA, but an opportunity to go to Norway opened up quicker for me so I went to Norway at the invitation of my Norwegian friend. There I became the first Gambian to attend a Norwegian University, followed a year later by Alhagi Jagne, Mbye Baboucarr Sarr who were friends from our Primet Street Vous days and Sheikh Tijan Nyang, who with me were then the only Gambians living in Bergen. When I transferred from Bergen University to Oslo University, I joined student demonstrators of the Vietnam War and I was never behind any rebellious activity. One of the students I shared a dormitory with, Swen Scothiem, was a rebel rousing radical leader of the student movement and we became fast friends.

Echo: Is it true that you also lived in Europe in the 1970s and then lived in the Sahara before returning to The Gambia to work for Freedom from Hunger Campaign and then Action Aid?

Mathew: Yes, I traveled around mainland Europe, settling eventually in Spain. I experienced General Franco’s dictatorship, and when he died, I was there. They began to round up foreigners in the wake of Franco’s death. I was captured and sent to the Gran Canaria island of Las Palmas main prison Branco Secco. Eventually, the Spanish authorities wanted to deport me back to The Gambia, but I told them I was living in Norway and that is where I was returning. After several months in prison, they took us to the French border at the foot of the Pyrenees mountains, but the French border authorities would not let me in due to lack of visa. It was back to a prison in Barcelona. There I met and befriended members of ETA, a political organization still operating in the Spanish region of Basque. I was making a political statement to the Spanish authorities for singling out Africans for deportation. I was taken from Barcelona back to Las Palmas, by prison bus and boat from Cadiz in southern Spain to Las Palmas and then to the southern Spanish Sahara port of La Guerra. Since there were no docking facilities there, I was put in a boat and ferried the half mile to land, but the border authorities refused to allow me to come ashore, so it was back to the boat again. After several hours of negotiations, I was finally allowed to come down. I headed straight to Nouadibou in Mauritania about five miles away. In Nouadibou, I worked as a dishwasher in a local restaurant owned by a Guinean Susu family, but after several months, I found my way to Nouakchott, the capital and later to Dakar, Senegal. In Dakar, I did every damn job to survive; specifically, I worked in a restaurant near a huge brand new hotel construction site during the day and picked valuables such an empty bottles to sell at Sandaga Market in the evenings. After eight months, I went to the Gambian Embassy, where officials made arrangements with one Mr. Jaiteh, a businessman from 15 Hagan Street to give me a ride home. When I arrived in Banjul, I went to Albert Market where I slept at night and in the morning went to the U.S. Embassy to read or about town to find a job. Meanwhile, I was carrying cases of fresh fish from behind the market to the fish stalls and getting paid fifty bututs for each case, but in the mornings and late evenings, I carried bales of cloths on my head to and from their storage, and I got fifty bututs for each bale. That was the standard price then. I was ashamed to go and live with anyone and be somehow either dependent or obligated to him or her. While I was still behind the Albert Market, I saw an advertisement for a project officer’s job at Freedom From Hunger Campaign under the management of Buba M. Baldeh, later Youth and Sports Minister in the Jawara regime. I applied and a week later there was a test for all fifteen of us on the short list. The essay part was to write a paper about our understanding of what “TESITO” meant to us. My paper on this topic was a home run. Except one, I believe everyone else who did the exam was either a senior or in middle level management in government. In any case, one Mr. Malatsi, a South African refugee at the Community Development Department, marked our papers. In the exam, I was way ahead of the next best result, so I got the job. But, the results put Buba Baldeh in a dilemma, since he was being widely criticized for Fulanizing F.F.H.C, but after facing then Vice President Assan Musa Camara about this, Assan Musa said emphatically that if the qualifications were based on the results of the test, and I had the best test results, I must be offered the job irrespective of what anybody says. After three years, I left F.F.H.C because Buba and I did not get along well. I then joined Action Aid, which was new at the time.

Echo: What would you say are your proudest achievements working for the poor rural folks in The Gambia?

Mathew: Although I was very proud of my achievements building rice causeways, schools, seed stores, vegetable gardens and seed banks from Kiang Dumbokoto to Koina on the South Bank and from Baddibou, Kerewan to Wuli Sutukoba on the North Bank over fifteen years, my proudest achievements have no direct relations to my official jobs. What I did outside my job gave a great sense of accomplishment. For example, when I joined Action Aid, the whole program was premised on an informal education concept. What this meant was that Gambian children in all Action Aid schools were being taught to be in trades such as knitting, cooking, and carpentry etc; however, upon becoming the first Gambian to be promoted to a project management position, I told the Director that I did not like the idea of informal education for our kids. I made it plain, Action Aid; London office must change the mission statement of the organization. I made it clear to him that we needed to change to formal education to allow these Gambian kids to go on be doctors, lawyers, and scientists among other things. When I brought this up at a weekly management meeting, Malcolm Mercer, who was in charge of informal education, sent two of his staff to my office to persuade me not to bring the issue up again. He was qualified in non-formal education and any change in program mission meant he would lose his job, and the two people he sent were; get ready, James Alkali Gaye and Rex Bojang, two of my best socialization friends at Action Aid. When they brought their bosses’ concern to me, it outraged me. I told them that the future of Gambian children was more important to me than Malcolm Mercer’s job. I disgraced them out of my office, but later I still picked them up in the evening as I usually did, and we went out to share some beers together. Later when Sajo Jallow joined Action Aid, we became fast friends and we took up the issue of formal education with the Education Department and before long, Action Aid were forced by government to change their entire school curriculum to formal education. The other thing I was most proud of was again helping force Action Aid to join the newly established S.S.H.F.C, but again after dragging its feet for nearly eighteen months, government told Action Aid that it had no choice; it had to join S.S.H.F.C. In the end, the organization had to make back payment of membership dues for all its more than hundred employees for the nearly two years it had been dragging its feet. I also defied an Action Aid ban on giving rides to any one who was not a member of staff. In fact, I instructed all the drivers under my management to take any school children they found on the roads, and actually all the children from Muslim High School used to come to our Half Die Street offices to wait for my drivers to take them to the Kombos. On one occasion, I made three trips between Kanifing and Gambia High School to pick up students. I could never in good conscience go home and eat while school children still waited in the hot sun at The Gambia High School. There was no way I could do it, and no way would I do it. In the mornings, those who lived around me in Dippa Kunda converged at my address to bring them to school. If a student I knew decided not to go to school, the other would tell me where the student was hiding and I would go smoke them out and take them to school, and their parents thanked me for it, and that was more than enough for me. Finally, when I was with Wadner Beach Hotel, I again organized a sit down strike there, because I did not like what employees were being fed or the way they were treated. They were relegated to the back in some stupid enclosure to have their meals, because management did not want tourists seeing them having meals. It was almost as though they were ashamed of their employees interacting with tourists. I gathered the employees under the huge outdoor bar and restaurant and proceeded to tell them about our grievances. Mrs. Brit Wadner the owner of the hotel, and his favorite employee, Peter Jassey, managed to turn all the workers against me. They sent the chief security guard, who later worked for Action Aid, to beat me up and throw me out of the hotel premises. I was asked never to return to work there. I lost my job, but I was able to instigate far-reaching changes for the employees I left behind. It was for them that I did it, not me. After all, I was treated differently and was comfortable in my position at the reception desk, with my friends Adama Bah who is now with B.B Hotel and Pa Laity Jagne.

Echo: Many readers of The Echo are often surprised when I say that our Associate Editor Mathew K. Jallow founded TANGO? Can you please verify this?

Mathew: In 1982, while still with Action Aid, I held a community-sensitizing meeting in Kiang Kolior, and suggested something to the villagers. After I finished speaking, the village chief told me that another organization’s workers had been there and they told the villagers to do things, but differently than what I told them. I then understood that we had a duplication problem. Two week after I returned to Banjul, I sent out a circular to the major organizations in the country; Freedom from Hunger, Christian Children’s Fund, Save the Children U.S.A, and Catholic Relief Services among others; in which I proposed the formation of an umbrella organization for all NGOs in the country. I then outlined the reasons why this was necessary. The name itself, The Association of Non-governmental Organizations, (TANGO) was coined by me. I invited representatives of organizations to a meeting at the Ministry of Agriculture conference room at the Central Bank building. I wrote requesting use of the conference room for this meeting and this was granted. O.J. was then Minister of Agriculture. Among the people who came to that meeting were my friend and co-worker Sajo Jallow, Pierre Badjan from CCF, Mrs. Njie from Catholic Relief Service, Momodou Bah from F.F.H.C and a few others. We had a successful meeting, but a few months later, I traveled to the United Kingdom and Ireland and the rest is now history. Can you believe that I still have some of the original hand-written documents, I wrote when TANGO just started?

Echo: Amazing record keeping! Now to journalism, what is the biggest challenge facing Gambian journalism and how can we improve the lot of our people?

Mathew: On the whole, if we are compared to any other country in Africa, we will come on top. We really have a number of good writers; this includes you Mr. Sankareh, by the way, and the relentless effort we are investing to restore democracy and lost freedoms in our country, is unmatched. Every now and then some over zealous writers report about the private lives of people, and this is plain wrong. There are two individuals whose writings I take issue with, but luckily neither of them is a regular journalist with our paper. I am not a xenophobe; in fact I am an inclusive person, a real Pan-Africanist, if you want to see one, but every Michael Scales’ writings at the Freedom Newspaper is a deliberate put-down on us; you know the kind of articles that are designed to make you think less of yourself and your people. He praises Jammeh in a veiled way, and attacks our efforts at getting rid of Jammeh as useless. To tell you the truth, I just hate the tone and substances of his articles or letters; whatever you want to call them. The second person is my fellow Fula man, albeit an honorary one; Dida Halake. He can still not bring himself to criticize Yahya Jammeh as a brutal murderer. In his articles, he dances round the edges: not coming out plainly in his criticism of Yahya Jammeh. In addition, every thing he writes is about him and how great he was as The Daily Observer boss. Am I really the only one who is offended by Mr. Scale’s writings and put off by Mr. Halake’s articles about himself? If there are improvements to be made, it certainly can be in the area of editing. Although, even I often realize I have punctuations in the wrong place after my articles are published, the comma, semi-colon and colon errors are replete in most of the articles I see in some of the papers I read.

Echo: You were a very vocal critic of the Jawara government but you are equally critical of the Yahya Jammeh regime. In your view, what is the difference between these two regimes?

Mathew: You see, people call me a journalist, but really, I am a politician first. It is my passion for politics that has always driven my journalism. Journalism gives me a platform to express my views, and I am able to do it in a manner and through a medium I have become good at; journalism. I criticized the Jawara government, because although there were a lot of excellent ideas and programs, Jawara was asleep at the wheel and one by one endemic corruption and interest group infighting destroyed one government agency after another, amounting to billions of dollars of wasted national resource: The Gambia Produce Marketing Board, National Trading Corporation, The Gambia Cooperative Union, Gambia Utilities Corporation, The Fish Marketing Board, Livestock Marketing Board, Gambia Port Authority, The Agricultural Development Bank and The Commercial and Development Bank. It was astounding how one after the other these income-generating enterprises collapsed like dominos, and with them billions of dollars of Gambians’ monies. Even today, many people still own these banks millions if not millions of dollars used to buy vehicles or build plush homes in around the Fajara, Pipeline and the Kombo areas. At least at that time we had a lot of freedom, but today under the repressive regime of Yahya Jammeh, we have lost more than just money, we have lost everything; freedoms, social cohesiveness, tribal unity, finances; you name it, it is either in short supply or it does not exist at all. Today, there is no government, what we have is a one-man regime, and unlike the Jawara era when the bureaucracy was totally inept, but it still existed, all the government institutions are virtually non-existent now. Everything is managed directly from Yahya Jammeh’s State House, which is why all the departments and ministries are standing hulks of emptiness and misery. In thirty years of Jawara’s rule, only one person was ever killed, and he was tried and found guilty. In fourteen years of Jammeh rule, close to a hundred and fifty people have been killed, some summarily executed by firing squad, while others have disappeared without a trace, and still many more languishing in prisons and jails around the country. Families have been torn apart, inter-tribal animosities have developed, especially the Jolas against all the other tribes. This is not The Gambia I grew up in, and this is not a way to govern. Now, Jammeh owns everything. He has business interests in every revenue generation government institution, and besides, he and his cronies like Amadou Samba are bankrupting our country.

Echo: Which African leader, President or Head of state would you say was the best the continent ever had and the worse?

Mathew: To tell you the truth, I hate them all, without any exception. For political leadership, I will have to look outside Africa to Sweden’s Olaf Palme, Canada’s Pierre Trudeau and of course, John F. Kennedy.

Echo: Which revolutionary leader influenced you most?

Mathew: Most definitely Ernesto Che Guevara, who helped Fidel Castro win the Cuban revolution. He was a medical doctor from a wealthy family who gave up everything to fight for change in Latin America and Africa. Before he was assassinated with the help of the U.S. C.I.A, he helped Congo drive the Belgian out. His name is still tattooed on my arm, and although I no longer share the same utopian socialist collectivist vision, I still admire him fighting to bring down corrupt, incompetent, and murderous regimes across Latin and South America. Fidel Castro was scared of him, because he had a different vision of what a revolutionary government ought to be.

Echo: I know you like music so much and were once a hippie in Spain. Equally, you are a voracious reader but who is your favourite author?

Mathew: It must be Saul Bellow and Irving Wallace most definitely. They were both Americans. Mr. Bellow was a professor at the University of Chicago, and Mr. Wallace wrote The Man, a 600-page book about a black man becoming president of the U.S. I read their works in the 70s and 80s. When Obama was elected President, my mind went back to the book about a black president. It was almost prophetic. With regard to music, I think I am the only African in love with blues and especially, with classic rock n’ roll; you know Jimi Hendrix, Steppenwolf, ADCD, Led Zeppelin, Crosby, Still, Nash and Young etc, etc. I know Oku Drammeh will be familiar with the names of blues singers such Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Howling Wolf and the others. But, in terms of African music, I love Farka Touray, Mali, Ganda Fadiga, Mali, Oumou Sangara, Mali, and Hawa Pullo also Mali. I also love the old Jaliba recordings, not the commercialized stuff that women dance to, and nyanerou, without a doubt.

Echo: Now to your sojourn at the Daily Observer and your American journey- why did you finally decide to come to the United States and please share with us your American experience?

Mathew: Several weeks after I was appointed Editor-in-Chief at the Daily Observer, my brothers Ebrima Ceesay and Sheriff Bojang, approached Mr. Kenneth Y. Best and complained to him about my stringent editing style, so I was relegated to lower authority. However, Mr. Best would never let me go, because my articles and commentaries were always best sellers for him. Each time I had a story in the paper, the paper sold like hot cake, and if my story happened to be the lead story, the paper would usually run out before midday. I was a sort of a celebrity and many people, strangers I mean, came to the Daily Observer just to see who I am. I remember the Fifth Form from Armitage High School visiting the Observer with their escort teacher, just to see me and have pictures taken with me. As you can expect, this created some jealousies and more over I did not like the attention I was getting. When Mr. Best left, the Observer was an oppressive place for me. Before he left, I had twice organized all the staff, except Sheriff Bojang and Ebrima Ceesay, and invited them to a meeting at the Observer lobby. I told them we were going on some kind of strike if Mr. Best refused to fulfill demand I made on behalf of the staff working conditions. Demba Jawo was there, as was Lamin Cham, some of the printing staff, the secretaries and others. Before the end of the day, all the staff at the meeting were turned against me, so I stood alone ostracized and in the end, almost every one was afraid being seen talking to me. It was very oppressive. But, when the Jammeh regime began to turn its attention to the media, I knew I had to leave, but it all came together after an article I wrote. It was about the presence of Libyan agents in the country, and another article I was researching about the infiltration of the army of an alleged Charles Taylor agent. I was summoned to give deposition at the Supreme Court, but I did not go; Ebrima Ceesay went instead. Sensing danger, I went to the U.S. Embassy and got a visa to come to America. My brother Dr. Saba Jallow, sent me an air ticket thereafter, and the rest is history.

Echo: What do you plan for the future?

Mathew: Within the coming weeks, I will announce the formation of an organization dedicated to removing Yahya Jammeh. After Jammeh is removed, this organization will morph into a political party, but until then we will do whatever is necessary to remove Yahya Jammeh and either run him out of the country, or we will capture him and hand him over to the Sierra Leone or The Hague Courts.

Before I came to the U.S, I had made up my mind that whatever I studied was to come home to utilize my education to help develop our country. It was not an accident that I studied Hospitality and Tourism, because it is our second ranking income generator; and Business Management, because what our people don’t know is that governments cannot develop a country, business and private industry do, but the policies must be right. This brings me to my Public Administration; which is the art of good governance. So you see, with my background as a former teacher with a teacher training, a former tourist guide and hotel worker, with a degree in tourism and hospitality, and a nongovernmental worker, building schools, bridges, rice causeways, vegetable gardens, seed stores and seed banks all across our country, and now with a Graduate degree in Public Administration, I am ready for The Gambia. I don’t know if I will ever lead it or be a part of its leadership, but today, there is no Gambian both at home and abroad who is better prepared than me to run the government of our country. But, whether the Gambian people will give me the opportunity to do is another matter. But, there is nothing I would love to do more than to truly help transform our country into an oasis of development and prosperity in the midst of failed regimes and wasted African governments. From the educational and experience point of view, no Head of State in an Africa country can match me in terms of education, experience and readiness combined. In fact, I can say, all around the world, no president is better prepared than I am. I am not conceited. I am being truthful.

Echo: Mr. Jallow good luck and thank you so much for the conversation.

Mathew: Thank you, my brother Mr. Sankareh.