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City of Banjul
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
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Gentle Giants of Chaku Bantang

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During our childhood days, Chaku Bantang was blessed with many great elders who personified respect, human dignity, and gracefulness. Another one of those elders was Pa Sanor Jobe, a larger-than-life, handsome and gentle elder whose big compound was just opposite the main Farafenni market, at the beginning of the street leading to Jigimarr village and on to Kahen. About a mile beyond Kahen, the path passes through the small village of Bereto and connects with the highway leading to what used to be the Bamba Tenda ferry terminal, now the location of the Senegambia Bridge.

Bamba Tenda used to be a bustling commercial hub, with shops lining either side of the highway from the waterfront to about a hundred meters inland. Passenger cars, including Gambian and Senegalese taxis and buses, as well as large trucks used to fill the area waiting for the ferry. Sometimes, vehicles spent long hours and even days waiting to cross, and their occupants patronised the many businesses filling the area. From food restaurants and vendors to petty traders, to shops, Bamba Tenda was a busy business hub before the bridge made it needless to stop there. Beyond the shops coming towards Bereto were the farro, the rice fields where Chaku women could be seen working away at their crops. Farafenni is said to derive its name from a reference to these rice fields. It is said that Farafenni is a shortened form of Farro fenyo to, a Mandinka phrase meaning “the tail of the rice fields.”

Pa Sanor Jobe was a fairly tall, well-built, fair-complexioned man with a kind face and gentle disposition. He was the father of our elder brothers Sulay Jobe, Barham Jobe, Kebba Jobe and Lamin Jobe (King Jaja of Opobo). He was very widely respected in Chaku Bantang. His sons, especially Kebba Jobe and Lamin Jobe, were hugely popular among the town’s young people. Kebba Jobe was like a magnet to Chaku youths, and the front of Pa Sanor Jobe’s compound was a popular gathering spot for both boys and girls on after school and off-school days. Kebba Jobe was a basketball enthusiast and was often seen walking with crowds of boys and girls through the market to the Farafenni Community Centre basketball lawn. He was a very lively fellow who was always laughing, and was largely responsible for bridging the long-standing gap between the Wolof, Fulani and Manjako boys on one hand, and the Mandinka boys on the other. During our earliest childhood days, these three groups of boys tended to keep to themselves and were not very friendly to each other. But at some point, we all had a common friend in Kebba Jobe and his brothers, and we all converged at Pa Sanor Jobe’s compound to chat, laugh, drink attaya and go play basketball. It was here that I got to know boys like David Parker and Gala the Senegalese football genius. I never saw Pa Sanor Jobe complaining about the loud noise at the front of his compound. He always had a ready smile and a kind word for everyone.

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Pa Sanor Jobe was the elder brother of Pa Juka Jobe, father of our elder brother Yusupha Jobe (Roger Brown), my good friend and age mate Mbye Jobe, and their younger brother Ebrima Jobe. Mbye Jobe and I were karate freaks and would sometimes practice together, or go take pictures at Pa Youssou Jain’s photo studio, posing as Bruce Lee or some other Kung Fu legend. Pa Juka Jobe was one of the gentlest elders I have ever known. He was a tall, slim man with a gentle walk and an easy smile. In the latter years of his life, Pa Juka Jobe joined my father and others as a fish seller at Farafenni market. I never saw Pa Juka Jobe arguing with or getting angry at anyone at the market. He was always kind and always gentle. May Allah bless the souls of Pa Sanor Jobe and Pa Juka Jobe in eternity.

I spent most of my childhood days helping my father at the fish-selling section of Farafenni market, which was located side by side with the meat-selling section. My father, Pa Mamadou Jallow commonly called Pa Mod Jallow, was a major fish merchant in Chaku Bantang. He was a fairly tall and rather no-nonsense man who believed in the virtues of hard work and success. He was one of those elders who could not contemplate failure, and who frowned upon anything that smelled of laziness. He believed that Western education was a sure recipe for failure, drunkenness and abandonment of Islam, and this explains why he pulled me out of school on so many occasions. Because I liked reading and school so much, Pa Mod Jallow thought that I was a lazy good-for-nothing who shunned his noble profession and wanted instead to become a Toubab and a Kaffir. In order to convince him that this was not so, I was always helping him sell fish at the market. Even when I went to the University of Sierra Leone for my undergraduate studies, I would always go help him sell fish whenever I came to Farafenni for holidays. I actually loved wearing my tattered and smelly “uniform” and selling fish at the market. It was an abiding lesson in humility and good company, for the market always offered interesting spectacles and opportunities to learn about life and human nature. How I loved watching and listening to the many dramas that always played out at Chaku Bantang market!

I liked to think of my father as the Okonkwo of Chaku Bantang, for he shared some obvious personality traits with Chinua Achebe’s main character in Things Fall Apart. Like Okonkwo, my father valued hard work, amply provided for his family, and could not contemplate failure. He had unbelievable levels of energy and endurance. Every evening, every night or every morning, he either travelled to Kaolack in neighbouring Senegal to buy fish for retail in Farafenni, Kaur and neighbouring villages, or went to Kerewan, Salikenni, Balingho, Bamba Tenda, or Tendaba to buy car loads of barracuda and ladyfish for re-export to Kaolack. He was relatively well to do, owned a few cars, and every Ramadan, he would slaughter a bull or two and share the meat with communities across Chaku Bantang.

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Often, my father would tell me that I should just stop going to “this useless school” and take over his fish business. He liked to tell me, “I can pay the monthly salary of a minister with a day’s profit!” I knew he could, but I loved education and would always remember the lyrics of the song by Bob Marley, “Wisdom is better than silver and gold!” I also knew that no amount of money could buy or compensate for the beautiful worlds, ideas and characters I encountered in books like King Solomon’s Mines, The African Child, She Who Must Be Obeyed, Things Fall Apart, Gulliver’s Travels, Treasure Island, Return to Treasure Island, The Radiance of the King, The Beggar’s Strike, Xala, So Long a Letter, God’s Bits of Wood, and the many other fascinating books I used to read! In the end, my father gave me his full support and blessings to proceed to Armitage, Gambia High and beyond! Pa Mamadou Jallow was certainly a formidable elder and a strict but good parent who was very widely respected in Chaku Bantang. May Allah bless his soul in eternity!

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