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Duganafi Gaenana Falaeh:Here we go again…
Saturday, 12 June 2010 23:09
In this edition of Duganafi Gaenana Falaeh, Mr. Peters dilates on another reshuffle in Jammeh’s cabinet, British
humour, the World Cup, appreciating life’s minute bits, his disgust at a sentence being reduced, Diane Abbott and…grown men and breast milk!Please read on…
Here we go again…
There was absolutely nothing amiss in President Jammeh’s latest cabinet re-arranging when he gave Energy Minister Sira Wally Ndow her marching orders and redeployed two other ministers. He has been doing it for a while now so he must know what he is doing. Or does he? My take on the hiring, firing, re-hiring, re-firing is this: if you are going to take over a decade and half to fire God knows how many civil servants, when will you get it right? I mean, how many projects have to be abandoned and a new one kicks off only to be abandoned and another kicks off again. And it goes on and on and on.
Stability is a Greek novel. You can start an initiative but can’t guarantee if you will see it through before the ‘electric broom’ swishes you off. This shows no signs of abating and more and more desks will be cleared. At the detriment of the nation.
Something to guffaw at…
I have lived in Banjul all my life, spent a weekend in Dakar and live in London for a while now. What I’m trying to say is I can’t claim to see the world as I haven’t. But I stand to be corrected that no country has anything on British humour. Gambians have a sense of humour but nothing to toe-to-toe with with what the inhabitants of this little island dishes out daily. The humour is even in the tabloids, television panel shows and…everywhere. There is nothing to hurt your sides over after going through an issue of, say, The Point newspaper. It is another sacking, political rallies, a press release or two, sports and that’s it. Even my old paper, The Independent, was equally stiff too.
However, I do recall some stinging editorials. Marcel Thomasi: at whose service?, A word to Yankuba Touray and Aziz Bojang: At whose service? had some sprinklings of sarcastic humour in it.
Mohamed Al Fayed once called Prince Phillip Frankenstein and Princess Camilla a crocodile. Someone took time out to write in the public
opinion column ‘that is a very serious allegation to make…against crocodiles.’‘Anyone who gets in the lift and gets off on the first floor needs to stand trial,’ someone else pointed out. Another person wrote wanting to know where is the place called ‘Not in Service’ on the buses located as he has never been there.
Five years ago, when there was an outcry of whether fox hunting should be banned or not, someone, clearly fed up, wrote that ‘all those in favour of fox hunting should be rounded up, put in a plane, flown to the Serengeti, give them a head start and set a pack of lions on them. Then they will know what is like to be hunted.’ I had the misfortune of being in a packed bus that morning and it took all I had not to burst out laughing.
Even the editors are at it with their headlines.
‘Nut Fare’ says one in which a woman who has been working in a chocolate plant for seventeen years was sacked for eating a nut off a bar of chocolate.
‘Not Fare’ says another when a bus commuter was tied to his seat by the bus driver for fare dodging.
Football managers are not to be left out. Sir Alex Ferguson was once asked if he were given a gun with one bullet, will he shoot at Victoria Beckham or Arsene Wenger? The legendary Scotsman gave it some thought and replied, ‘can I have two, please?’
Harry Redknapp, when he was bossing a relegation-bound Southampton six years ago, wasn’t so keen on Man United sniffing about for his keeper Anti Niemi. ‘If we sell him, we might as well all go home!’
When he moved to manage Portsmouth, he was less than chuffed when Lomana Lualua went to play for the DRC in a CAN tournament and contracted malaria. ‘I don’t know what he is doing playing for the Congo when he was just born down the road.’
One time deputy Prime Minister John Prescott landed one jab at a voter who threw an egg at him. Asked about the scuffle years later, he had this to say: ‘I did what I’ve been told to do-connect with the electorate!’
I was thumbing through a tabloid paper at the newsstand when the owner walked up to me.
‘That makes it 10p, eh?’ he said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘The price, I meant,’ he replied.
‘No,’ I looked at the price tag which said 20p and told him so.
‘Well, you’re reading it so it plummets.’
I had to laugh at that and put the paper away.
A warning, though. Jokes that wash in Jollof won’t necessarily fly over here. In Jollof, you can walk up to a complete stranger, tell her you fancy her two year old daughter, give her a D10 note for ‘kebba dampha,’ and that you will be back for her hand in marriage when she is of age. Both you and her mum know it is humour and leave it at that. You walk up to a woman in a Tesco aisle pushing her eighteen month old girl in a buggy, try that same joke and see what happens! With paedophiles and all kind of twisted men on the prowl, such a joke will never take off here.
World Cup? No, thanks!
By the time you read this, football’s biggest showpiece would have kicked off in South Africa. Despite it being held on African soil for the first time ever, I couldn’t get myself in World Cup mode this time around. I refuse to get carried away, thinking the teams I back will do well. I will watch whatever match finds me at home and leave it at that. I can’t tell you what team is in what group, save the England one, thanks to the media. Thanks to the media again, I know Brazil and Spain are the clear favourites. What do they know? It was 80/1 for an Italy-France final last time around and no-one saw that coming. Before that, it was South Korea in the last four. Thus, I have learnt enough not to get carried away this time. My nonchalant attitude is not matched by the rest of the population as St. George flags are fluttering all over the place, from cars to roof tops, 10 Downing Street included. People are decked out in the latest England kit, television screens are the must have items this summer, refrigerators have been stacked with booze and millions have been betted at the bookies. Now, when I read that the economy lost £1bn when England didn’t qualify for Euro 2008, I didn’t get it at all. Back then, a Gerrard 4 England shirt was going for £4.99. Now, the un-named top alone goes for a stiff £40.00.
Now I get it.
Some team mates of the 1966 World Cup winning team, notably Gordon Banks, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters (No relation but it is not a bad thing to have the same surname as someone who scored in a World Cup final.) have been wheeled out to natter on that day in July 44 years ago and what the current crop should do to emulate them. Basically, they’ve been saying the same things they said four years ago so I know Gerrard and co. won’t be ruling the world anytime soon.
Don’t get it twisted, I’m not anti-English. I do want 2018 World Cup to be held here. It is just that England revel more in glorious failures than anything else. In other words, it is an English thing to come up short at major tournaments. Italia ’90 is still doing the rounds and ’66 has been thrust at us so much I can name the starting line up of the team that day if I put my mind to it. This current crop of players will never win anything in an England shirt which is a tad sad as a team with Lampard and Gerrard marshalling the midfield, Terry and co keeping it mean at the back and Rooney putting the frights on defenders is one that has to win something. Yes, England are fourth favourites to win the World Cup but I won’t get all excited about it. I don’t even think the African teams will make anyone sit up and take notice like, say, Senegal did eight years ago. I’m not even sure the Dutch, my team, will rid themselves of the best-team-not-to-win-the-World-Cup tag.So what’s the point of watching religiously when I can read the latest Grisham novel?
Life’s not so bad after all…
It is human instinct to moan, groan and make a fuss over nothing. Some of us do it with a reason, some, gratingly, for the sheer hell of it and some do it because they got nothing better to do.
I have been wearing prescribed glasses half my life and I do sometimes wish I wasn’t. I do sometimes wish I had vision like Jay-z-who, in a concert in South Africa, ‘bigged up’ a fan in the crowd way off for wearing Rocawear jeans. How he saw what brand jeans the guy had on is a mystery to me-then I realized how stupid and ungrateful I am or was when I read of a story in the paper of a five year old girl who is unsuccessfully battling neurofobromatosis, which causes numerous tumours to grow. One of these tumours affects her eyesight and she will go blind soon. The bright side to the story is Scarlett Hellewell, the girl in question, gets to see her baby sister before darkness closes in. For good.
That story chilled me, more than it did the fact what would I do without being able to go through a novel, a pastime I take for granted?
Another story of a dying five year old suffering from an inoperable brain tumour (unsettling coincidence, that) got her wish to sing to telly mogul Simon Cowell before she died three days later.
Before you moan about being broke (we all are. It is a recession), someone stepping on your trainers (simply wipe it) or getting all worked up over a job application (another will come up), spare a thought for these two five years olds (one dearly departed) and…shut the hell up!
Think about it, life’s not so bad at all if you can find time to moan.
Lock him up for good!
I once stated in this column I was raised right and blah blah blah. What I didn’t state was I’ve developed an air of superciliousness when it comes to certain apologies for humans.
I’ve never looked down on anyone but I will argue till my breath cease that I’m a rung or two or more above rapists, racists, paedophiles and sex offenders.
The better we get society rid of these despicable, repulsive scumbags, the better for a better world for us humans.
I was seething when I read of paedophile Roy Whiting, who killed 8 year old Sarah Payne in 2000, will have his sentence cut from 50 to 40 years. The judge took into consideration he will be in his 80’s when he is eligible for parole but I don’t get it.
What more did he have to do to get life?
Rapists, racists, pedophiles and sex offenders, in my book and in the book of any sane being, should be caged in and only be made to leave in a pine box.
Till we get the death penalty for them.
Will we have our ‘Obama moment’?
For readers not in the UK or in the UK but pay less mind to UK politics, Diane Abbott is the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since 1987. And, lest I add, she is the first black person to be elected into Parliament.
This week, she secured the 33 nominations required to throw her hat into the Labour leadership race after Gordon Brown quit. She is up against the Milliband brothers, Ed and David, Ed Balls (Really, that’s his last name. I didn’t cook it up) and Andy Burnham. It goes without saying that the odds are stacked against her but so were the odds against a guy born to a Kenyan father and an American mother with Hussein as a middle name across The Pond.
Still, I’m not getting carried away with an ‘Obama moment’ occurring in the UK. Then again, what do I know? I never gave the most powerful man in the world with a surname that rhymes with the first name of that of the world’s most wanted man a chance against an ex- First Lady.
Let’s see when the new Labour leader is announced at the party conference on 25th September if Abbott can pip the rest to the post.
Then I will start envisioning a PM who looks like my girlfriend for life.
My mum, that is.
You can’t be serious!
I read of a new mum whose side hustle is selling excess breast milk to mums who could not, er, milk their own. Now, her Internet enterprise has taken off with…men. I almost retched out my breakfast.
Excuse me?
I know we humans are the only mammals who keep drinking milk when we are all grown up but men investing in bottled breast milk? Are you serious?
All those men need to be rounded up, stripped of their pampers and made to invest in pairs of boxers ASAP.
They make real men look very bad.
For criticisms or suggestions, please email me at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
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Comments
Ps: your team and my team are in the last 16. i fancy us to meet in the final..with a party on the river Amstel to follow.:)
Of course I hope against hope that they beat Slovinia...but hope springs eternal.
Bobby Charlton wouldn't blame the ball... he'd stick it your net from any distance.
And all..for £25 a week.
Argentina produce great players like Maradona..and Kempes. This Messi is of the same ilk.
Plus they entertain...not frustrate.
Gerrard and Rooney misfired..so the team were without inspiration.
But they may yet have an under dog moment and play well. This is a familiar script..to us.
Ive played poker with Emil Heskey...he shakes when he has an ace. {laugh}
Argentina for me though.
Mike.
Mike, give the lions a chance :). What team you backing btw. I know it aint the lions. Im backing the Dutch and wanting the 'home' teams to do well.
Seen it all before...sorry.
It always ends in crocodile tears.
More interested in Alan Shearer's tour of Soweto..and what it means for them?
Zilch..Zero..Nothing.
Shearer asked the boy..what did you think of the game...did you enjoy the match?
The young guy said...Well Mr Shearer..I have a small financial problem with that.
In short...I have no money.
If Fifa had good intentions...they would have raffled of 500,000 free tickets.
Mike
That Messi...drives through defences on a motorbike.
England have no answer to that.
England are a two man team...from Liverpool...Gerrard and Rooney...both Liverpuds....The rest just don't have the bottle. The young Scorpions would do much better. Mike.
I did predicted they will draw with the US but i thought 0-0. I predict they will beat Algeria 1-0.
Dont take that to the bank, yet. :)
Congrats to the Black Stars. Good win. For you all not familiar with the pronounciation of Ghanaian names, the goal scorer is pronounced guy-an not ja-ian. The commentator is tripping.
Bet if Gambia were there, they would go Nnn-ji rather thatn Njai!
Just a suggestion Bro?
Mike Scales.
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