By Dave Manneh
They offer mirrors when they cannot show you soil. They invoke skylines to make you forget the ground under your feet. Last weekend, President Adama Barrow stood in Brufut and declared: “Brufut is just like Dubai today.” To us, this was more than hyperbole. We heard the familiar cadence of Sanawuyaa, the ancient joking relationship that binds us.
We have uncovered the secret: the President has spent too much time among our Brikama cousins, who have found a way to “glamorise” the very dust they once mocked. Tongue firmly in cheek, he now joins their side of the old joke, declaring Brufut “just like Dubai” as if red dust were shame, not soil. Brikama have always coveted the sea breeze that brings health and shine to Brufut. Now Barrow offers us a shimmering, impossible future, a ritualised retort to our coastal heritage. We recognise the script.
Yet true Sanawuyaa is not one-sided teasing. It carries the sacred weight of Dangkutuyaa, the pact of mutual protection codified at Kurukan Fuga, where our ancestors swore that those who joke must also defend. To joke without protection breaks that sacred charter of our coexistence.
The geography of our inheritance
This teasing lives in the land itself. For generations, our Brikama cousins joked that the road to Brufut coated them in thick, red dust. They mocked our protein-rich Kuta Soobo, yet they envied the vitality of coastal life, even as they subsisted on Tonso subo and Netatuwo.
Today, the state paves over that red dust. But beneath the surface lie the ancestral ecologies that define us: Kajabang, Jarta Berrê, Kennébarring, Sutuba, Mariyawayé, Kofayang, Kolomankasala, Wullinkamma, Baa Sumaila Konko, Salaba.
Each farmyard holds a name. Each swathe carries a lineage. And each name guards a living truth: the sea breeze is our ancestral medicine, a natural “lung wash” that heals; the ions from the breaking waves clear the mind. This is the strength our cousins from Brikama secretly envy.
When the state approves renaming ancestral places as “Gardens” or “Heights” and blocks this healing air with walls of glass and concrete, it does more than rename. It severs lineage and health. It erases history. It is cultural and ecological erasure, a colonial mindset laid bare.
The necessity of protection
If this “Dubai” vision erases our rich ecological inheritance, then our Brikama cousins in the Cabinet (Ministers Abdoulie Sanyang and Ismaila Ceesay), and West Coast Region Governor Ousman Jallow Bojang are failing their sacred duty. Under Dangkutuyaa, those who hold power must shield their kin from harm. Yet they stand silent as the state disinherits Kombonkas of their birthright.
A true joking partner mocks your diet but ensures you always have a place to cook it. He teases you about the dust on your feet but never helps the nation-state steal the ground beneath them. We remind those Brikamankolu who have the President’s ear: your power is hollow if you fail to defend your cousins’ land and your own from this unrelenting assault.
Who designs the dazzling future?
The Dubai metaphor turns a living landscape into a blank cheque for speculators. It trades our heritage for a hologram. This deal steals our grandchildren’s legacy before they draw breath. Authentic development must honour the landowning clans. It must emerge from Free, Prior, and Informed Consent and include restitution, not proclamations disguised as jokes.
Securing the Brufutian future
We champion progress, but we resist oblivion. We resist the quiet violence of systemic disinheritance. At Saama Kanto: Securing Futures, we build an alternative: a future that honours customary rights and centres community ownership. We translate defence into research, advocacy, and policy. We know that while Sanawuyaa preserves peace, it must never enable the liquidation of our inheritance.
Therefore, we say to our Brikama cousins: We accept the tease, but we demand shared vigilance. The threat is not to Brufut alone, but to the landed heritage of all. We must stand together as one people, with no space for doubt or division, until our common inheritance is secure.
The hour is urgent. Without action, generations will be born into landlessness and powerlessness. This cannot be our legacy. Use your proximity to power to defend our inheritance. Honour Dangkutuyaa by securing the tenure of every landowning clan across The Gambia, starting with the three districts of Kombo that fell under the State Lands Act: Kombo Central, Kombo North, and Kombo South.
Mirrors only reflect what stands before them. But the dust of Sannehmentereng and Sutuba, the healing breeze, and the memory of our ancestors, hold the truth. This is the story we will defend with our roots, our research, and our united resolve.
The author is a member of the Securing Futures: Land Rights Action Collaborative (SFLRAC).
Saama Kanto/Securing Futures, a Land Rights Action Collaborative (SFLRAC) is a Gambian think tank. We use community-based participatory action research to secure land rights and advocate for accountable governance and sustainable development policies.
