eight children.
That evening he watched reruns of the Wedding, and talked with his host about the next day’s test match. It had always been one of Jawara’s great disappointments that his country, unlike, say, Guyana, had not taken the Empire’s game to its collective heart. The occasional unofficial test matches against Sierra Leone in the early 1960s had by now almost faded from the national memory.
Lately, though, there had been more serious causes for Gambian concern. The previous November a Libyan-backed coup had been foiled only with Senegalese help, and in the meantime the poor performance of the economy had led to food shortages, particularly in the volatile townships in and around the capital. That evening, sitting in his friend’s living room, a pleasant night breeze wafting through the open French windows, Jawara might have felt momentarily at peace with the world, but not so his countrymen.
As Newsnight drew to a close in the Sussex living room, two lorry-loads of armed men were drawing up in front of The Gambia’s only airport, at Yundum, some ten miles as the crow flies to the south-west of the capital, Banjul. The forty or so men, some in plain clothes, some in the uniform of the country’s paramilitary Field Force – The Gambia had no Army as such – jumped down from the lorries and headed off in a variety of directions, in clear accordance with a previously decided plan. Those few members of the Field Force actually on duty at the airport had received no advance warning of any exercise, and were at first surprised and then alarmed, but the appearance of Colonel Junaidi Taal, the 500-strong Field Force’s second in command, was enough to set their minds at rest, at least for the moment. Clearly this was official business.
Taal did not stop to explain matters. As his men fanned out to occupy all the relevant aircraft, offices and communication points, he headed straight through the departure area and into the office of the airport controller.
The last plane of the day – the 21.30 flight to Dakar – had long since departed, but the controller was still in his office, catching up on paperwork. As his door burst open he looked up in surprise. ‘What is this…’ he started to say in Mandinka, his voice trailing away at the sight of the guns in the hands of the civilians flanking the Field Force officer.
‘There has been a change of government,’ Taal said bluntly in English.
The controller’s mouth opened and closed, like a fish’s.
‘The airport will remain closed until you hear to the contrary,’ Taal said. ‘No planes will take off, and no planes will land. The runway is being blocked. You will inform all the necessary authorities that this is the case. Understood?’
The controller nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said, wondering, but not daring to ask, how much more of the country these people – whoever they were – had under their control. ‘What reason should I give the international authorities for the closure of the airport?’
‘You don’t need to give a reason. They will know soon enough.’ He turned to one of the two men in civilian clothes. ‘Bunja, you are in command here. I’ll call you from the radio station.’
Banjul lies on the south-western side of the River Gambia’s mouth and is separated from the rest of the southern half of the country – the major tourist beaches of Bakau and Fajara, the large township of Serekunda and the airport at Yundum – by a large area of mangrove swamp, which is itself intersected by numerous small watercourses and the much larger Oyster Creek. Anyone leaving or entering Banjul had to cross the creek by the Denton Bridge, a two-lane concrete structure two hundred yards long. At around two a.m. Taal and twenty rebels arrived to secure the bridge, left half a dozen of their number to set up checkpoints at either end, and roared on into Banjul.
The lorry drew up outside the darkened building in Buckle Street which was home to Radio Gambia. No one answered the thunderous knock on the door, so two Field Force men broke it down, and the rebels surged into the building. They found only three people inside, one man in the small studio, sorting through records for the next day’s playlist, and one of the engineers undressed and halfway to paradise with his equally naked girlfriend on the roof. The engineer was bustled downstairs, while the two remaining rebels handed his girlfriend her clothing bit by bit, snickering with pleasure at her embarrassment, and fighting the urge to succumb to their own lust. It was fortunate for the girl that the coup leaders had stressed the need for self-discipline – and the punishments reserved for those who fell short of this – to all of their men. The girl, tears streaming down her face, was eventually escorted downstairs, and left sitting in a room full of records.
The radio station now secure, Taal called Bunja at the airport and checked that nothing had gone amiss. Nothing had. Further calls confirmed that the Banjul ferry terminal and the main crossroads in Serekunda had been seized. Taal called the main Field Force depot in Bakau where the coup leader, Mamadou Jabang, was waiting for news.
‘Yes?’ Jabang asked, his voice almost humming with tension. ‘Everything has gone according to plan?’
‘So far,’ Taal said. ‘We’ll move on to the Presidential Palace now. Are our men in position around the hotels yet?’
‘They should be,’ Jabang replied. ‘The tourists never leave their hotels anyway,’ he added sourly, ‘so it hardly seems necessary to use our men to keep them in.’
‘We don’t want any of them wandering out and getting shot,’ Taal reminded him. Their chances of success were thin enough, he thought, without bringing the wrath of the white world down on their heads.
‘No, we don’t,’ Jabang agreed without much conviction. ‘We’re on our way, then. I’ll see you at the radio station.’
Dr Sibou Cham yawned and rubbed her eyes, then sat for a moment with her hands held, as if in prayer, over her nose. You should pray for a decent hospital, she told herself, one with all the luxuries, like beds and medicines. She looked down at the pile of patients’ records on her desk, and wondered if it was all worth it.
There was a muffled crack, like a gun being fired some way off. She got wearily to her feet and walked through the treatment room to the empty reception area, grateful for the excuse to leave her paperwork behind. The heavyweight concertina door, which would have seemed more at home in a loading dock than a hospital, was locked, as she had requested. Ever since the incident the previous May this had been done. Her attacker might be in prison, but there were others.
She put the chain on the door before unlocking it, then pulled it open a foot, letting in the balmy night air. Almost immediately there was another sound like gunfire, but then silence. It was a shot, she was sure of it. Perhaps a gang battle. She might be bandaging the victims before the night was over.
She closed the door again and sat down at the receptionist’s desk. All the drawer knobs were missing, which seemed to sum up the state of the place. It was all of a piece with the peeling cream paint on the walls, the concrete-block partition which had been half-finished for six months, the gaping holes in the mosquito screens, and the maddening flicker of the fluorescent light. It went with a pharmacy which had fewer drugs than the sellers in the marketplace.
What was she doing here? Why did she stay? One person could not make all that much difference, and maybe the very fact that she was there, working herself into the ground day after day, took away any urgency the authorities might feel about improving the situation.
But where else could she go? Into private practice, of course. It would be easier, more lucrative. She might even get some sleep once in a while. But she could not do it. In The Gambia it was the poor who needed more doctors, not the rich. If money and an easy life was what she wanted, she could have stayed in England, got a job in a hospital
