By Baba Galleh Jallow
After reading the second episode of this Gentle Giants series, a lady called Mariama Saho commented: “Great piece. But thinking out loud, it seems the women in Chaku were invisible.” Many episodes later, my good friend and brother Batch Samba Baldeh expressed similar sentiments regarding the absence of female elders in the series. Both of them were right. Judging by my overwhelming focus on male elders, it did seem that our great female elders were invisible to the eyes of this narrator. And to some extent I must admit they were. Like many Gambian communities, the Chaku Bantang of my childhood days was a man’s world, and most of the people I knew and interacted with were men. The relatively few female elders I knew either lived in our immediate neighbourhood of Farafenni Wharf Town, or were engaged in some kind of business in and around the market where I spent most of my childhood days helping my father at his fish stall.
But needless to say, there were many great women behind the scenes in the story of every single man I mentioned in this series. Without our great mothers, grandmothers, aunts and sisters, our society would not have functioned the smooth way it did. If our great male elders looked well-dressed, noble and energetic in public, it was thanks to the tireless work of our mothers, our grandmothers, our aunts and our sisters at home, at the market, and in some cases, in the farms and rice fields of Bamba Tenda. I remember from a very early age seeing long lines of our great Mandinka mothers walking the relatively long distance between Farafenni and Bamba Tenda every morning and every evening, their “kobies” (long hoes) on their shoulders, as they worked to produce rice for their families and beloved communities. They also worked at the market where the majority of both vendors and daily shoppers were women. No account of the great elders of Chaku Bantang will be complete without mention of our great Queen Mothers, however few we may have been fortunate to know.
As charity best begins at home, I must be forgiven to start by mentioning my own dear mother, Ya Isatou Barry, may her soul be blessed in eternity. Neneh, as I used to call her, passed away on August 18, 2006, while I was in exile in the United States. That is one of the costly prices we had to pay for speaking truth to a despotic regime: losing our nearest and dearest and not being able to sit by their side and comfort them as they left this world. While Neneh and I were constantly in touch, the news of her sudden passing was and remains the single most painful event of my life. Almost nineteen years later, the pain of her passing is as fresh as it was the day I received the devastating news.
Neneh was a short, fair-skinned and very beautiful lady. She was one of the kindest and most friendly people I have ever known. Outside of her occasional, inevitable fights with my very difficult father, I never saw or heard Neneh as much as argue with any other person, inside or outside our family or compound. She was always smiling and joking with our neighbours and acquaintances. I am perhaps one of a relatively small number of sons who can say, with all due humility and gratitude, that my mother never for a single moment ever got angry with me. That is not to say I was an entirely good and innocent child. Her calm and kind personality was matched by an incredible level of patience and inner strength. Through thick and thin, Neneh was always there for me, with her abiding advice to always respect, obey, and help my father. May Allah bless her soul in eternity.
Neneh liked to refer to herself as Tola mo Neneh, Pularr for “Mother’s youngest child,” for she was the youngest of Grandma Jarrai’s five children – three male, and two female. Grandma Jarrai was herself a short, slightly built, and fair-skinned lady who must have been a stunning beauty in her youth. Because her children lived at different locations in Senegal and Gambia, Grandma Jarrai moved around a lot, spending some time with each of her four living children: my Uncle Sorrie, a World War Two veteran, my Uncle Sulay and my mother’s immediate elder sister Ya Awa all lived in Senegal. I did not know my second uncle Illa because he passed away when I was a baby. Only my mother lived in The Gambia and Grandma Jarrai spent a great amount of time with us. She was a very quiet, soft-spoken elder who I think, was even incapable of arguing or quarrelling. When I was very young, I used to lie down on the mat beside her on clear, moon-lit nights and ask her questions about the stars in the clear night skies. She used to call me Ndaneh mo Tola, Tola’s light-skinned one. May Allah bless her soul in eternity.
When my mother’s elder sister weaned her first daughter Oumou, she gifted her to my mother who raised her up as her own. Oumou, who passed away only two years ago in 2023, was the woman who baby sat and took care of me when Neneh was busy. She was a fairly tall, dark-skinned and very strong woman. A generous lady with a ready smile and hearty laugh, she used to say she had never seen a toddler as strong-headed as I was. When we were both adults and she narrated stories of my childhood, she would say to those present that I would always do the exact opposite of what I was asked to do. “If you wanted Galleh to stop doing something, you asked him to do it. If you wanted him to do something, you asked him not to do it,” she would recall amid much laughter. May Allah bless her soul in eternity.
I knew many female elders in our neighbourhood in Farafenni Wharf Town. There were Ya Kumba Tiga and Ya Amina Ceesay right next door. They were the spouses of Pa Ablie Sowe. Ya Kumba Tiga, a short, fair-skinned lady was the mother of our elder brothers Amadou and Hassan Sowe, our elder sister Isatou Sowe, and my agemate Fatou Sowe. She was a woman of few words with a very businesslike attitude. Ya Amina, a fairly tall, also light-skinned lady with a bubbly personality, was the mother of our elder sister Haddy Sowe, and our younger sisters Ida and Ndey Sowe. Both these ladies were very kind and gentle and close friends of my mother’s. Like many women of Chaku Bantang in those days, they were housewives whose primary responsibility was to take care of their families. May Allah bless their souls in eternity.
