Maybe, next time

“Send Him to the House of Representatives for He is the Right Man!”

The words perched above Papa’s head on the placard as if they had risen from the blackness of a tribal mask. The sketch of his campaign symbol, an axe, ran below the bold and pleading declaration next to two prayerful words:

Vive Johnson!

A dawn mist reluctantly gave way to a soft clear morning on election day. Outside our compound gate, five cars lined up, their drivers’ palms itching with excitement and ready to take off. The placards carrying large prints of Papa’s face and his axe symbol were affixed on each car, bow and stern.

Papa’s campaign team were about to launch out into the streets of Soldier Town Ward. Those men were making it their committed duty to the candidate to dig out the voters from their backyards and cart them to the polling stations. The people must vote for the right man! The fleet of old Morris and Vauxhall boneshakers should measure up to the task and hold out through the busy day.

Left to my mother alone, our home would remain forever in the spirit of the letters chiselled into the stone arch over our compound gate—Humble Home. Were it not for politics our home would have continued—humbly and quietly away from the noisome pestilence of campaigning and the possibility of my father going into public office. My mother was happy otherwise with her husband’s quiet job and our peaceful life away from the prying eyes of the public.

But my mother knew she would fail in her own year-long campaign to get Papa to withdraw from the race. It was the first-ever election of that kind in the country; the old colonial constitution had at last been amended to change the Legislative Council to the House of Representatives.

It was not clear to my mother whether everyone in the political parties understood the kind of work that demanded of our politicians but she certainly did not like the death threats that came in my father’s letter box at the post office; nor the strange intimidating noises outside our windows.

She was scared and so were we when someone left a slaughtered red cockerel on our doorstep or when a fetish gourd dish with an animal horn dressed with red cloth and cowry shells sitting inside a bed of grass appeared in our front yard—left there during the night by someone who obviously did not know of my father’s indomitable spirit.  

Because if that was their idea of scaring my father into withdrawing his candidature they did not have a clue of who there were up against.

The word ‘fear’ did not exist in my father’s vocabulary; those words which existed there he used at his broadcast talks in town and they would also come in handy during important all-party meetings he attended to decide on self-government for the country. In fact, the more fetish calabashes and the more dead cockerels his opponents dumped in his path, the more he was convinced that politics in this country needed to become civilised.

When my mother insisted he told her again that she was not giving any thought to the kinds of people who would step in if he stepped down. They were people who in this day and age still believe that charms of cockerel blood and animal skin could run a country. Well, to get the country where it should be going, the right men and women must get into politics.

Any constituents therefore who thought animal horn or bleeding chicken were enough to frighten those upon whose hands and minds the future of our country lay ought to think again. Silence or withdrawal would be the biggest betrayal of the great cause of growth and advancement for our country. Those who would depend on juju to get into office ought not to be in our House of Representatives!

It had become Papa’s kitchen and bathroom speech and my mother could repeat it in her sleep. She hated the provocation as much as she was wearied by my father’s stubbornness. She detested lying in bed and listening to opposing candidates tearing her husband to shreds over the public address system at the nightly party meetings.

The tirades would be absolute lies and slander with Papa’s name ringing out into the Bathurst night. Those men with the free reins of a microphone in their hands broadcast such imaginative lies about my father. And not even once did Papa ever curse back when it was his turn to speak at his own political rallies. My mother could not see how a seat in the House of Representatives was worth such pillaging of a good man’s reputation.

“You don’t worry about the abuses but how about the children when they go out there on the school playground?” my mother asked him.

“It is a small price worth paying for our country,” was his rehearsed answer.
Of course, they called us names at school. My classmates Bright and Gomez teased me in class—‘Johnson Politics’, they called me. But none of it seemed to shake Papa.

He agreed it was unfair for people to bother us, but he considered that a small price to pay to get the right people to lead in the affairs of this country. It appeared while my mother was dying of disgust with the game of politics, Papa’s appetite only increased for more slander, more sleepless nights, more cult rubbish thrown in over the fence and endless hours on the campaign.

Well, the day broke—a lovely morning in early May. People were already waiting in long queues at the poling stations. It was theirs to decide whether they wanted the right people to represent them or whether they preferred those who stooped so low as to curse and lie and make juju to send unworthy men into an institution as noble as the House of Representatives.

As Papa moved in and out of our bedroom with piles of documents, I compared his tense face with the bright photo on the placard. The photo of him looked more confident and relaxed than he did that morning. I was no taller myself than the placard, so it was easy for me to look at my father straight in the face. As I stared into those bold and kind eyes I wished so much that I were old enough to vote.

Young men rushed about the house and buzzed around in high spirits. They threw electioneering jargons at each other. They addressed my father as “Uncle” and received confident taps on their backs from an equally worked-up politician. When they were ready to go, they all trooped out of the house with much noise and fanfare—VIVE JOHNSON! VIVE JOHNSON!! The motorcade revved, the horns blared and in a loud confusion of cheering they drove off—Papa’s black necktie choking the bone collar of his spotlessly white shirt was fluttering in the wind outside the car window—and they were gone.  

As my mother waved them away, we shouted: Papa, good luck! —that was what we wished him every morning when he set out of the house to go to work—good luck! And as far as I was concerned it was just another day, except for the car horns and the placards.

My mother pulled us back into the house. All was quiet again. We could at last hear what was coming out of the radio set—the BBC was playing the Irish Lilibolero before the precise pips and the reading of the 8 o’clock world news.

An apprehensively uneventful day passed. My mother spent most of it in the kitchen. Occasionally, she would answer calls over the fence from passers-by wishing her well and telling her my father would win.

Lunch arrived and it was benachin. My two older brothers did not seem to be hungry; they seemed more drawn by the events. I ate quite heartily. My mother was worried that we were missing school because of the election. But my father’s campaign organisers advised that it was dangerous for us to leave the house on election day. They said some unkind people might recognise us on the street and we might suffer molestation.

Over the years, we gradually began to feel that it was a stigma that our father should be in anything as disgraceful as politics. Papa had won a few elections in his time; he had won a big one to become the Deputy Chairman of the Bathurst Town Council—a position we would call deputy mayor today.

That was how he met the Duke of Edinburgh in 1957. I vividly recall his black cravat and a bowler hat and white gloves when he marched up the pavilion at MacCarthy Square to shake hands with the duke, Prince Phillip Mountbatten, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II.

As a senior party member in the Democratic Congress Alliance he did not hide his strong views that we should be running our own affairs. He stood firmly against the unfortunate attitude Europeans administrators held towards us—and most of his troubles while he was a civil servant came from his dislike of the total control they had over our lives.

He said we had the skills and all we needed was the will to be masters of our own destiny. The people needed a strong man to look after their interests—that was why he agreed to be president of the Association of Junior Civil Servants.

He was regularly at odds with the Colonial Government charging them often with ignoring the rights of the people—little surprise it was to my mother that Papa had to retire prematurely from government service.

He framed a huge placard on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and hung it on the wall in our living room. He believed in the Declaration and referred to its provisions along with those of the Government Orders and Financial Instructions to argue cases in letters he wrote to help many civil servants seek redress in their troubles with the government as well as the courts. While all of that sounded important, my mother was still not quite sure whether it was worth all the trouble for my father to be involved with politics.

Evening came at last and our house filled up again. The strains and fits of a burning afternoon had died down somewhat; now it was the long night of watchful waiting for the results to be announced.

The tension was thick in the air—electric, one might say—even the chit-chat and laughter in the room was tense. From the corner where he sat my father tried unsuccessfully to hide his tenseness; the veins coiled under the skin of his temples and sweat beads shone like glass pimples on his balding dome. But he never lost his genial smile.

Of course, my mother played the kindly hostess; she looked much improved from the stress of the afternoon gone when she could have walked out of the house and never come back.

She was now more in control and looked hopeful and bright as she served drinks and talked among his visitors—party people mostly and some of our relatives and neighbours who came to wait with my father. She was happy the day was over and the results would put everything to rest again.

She was a patient soul and she too was as expectant as the candidate was. While she entertained the guests, she kept an eye on us her young and bewildered brood that sleepily digested the fuss in the house—and for whose sakes she was glad she hung on.
My father’s trusted men were out witnessing the counting of the votes. It was their business to bring home the news—good or bad.

Meanwhile, the vigil at our house seemed unending. At one point the house fell silent; there was a heavy stampede of revellers trampling past only a few streets away. Everyone listened for the name they were chanting—

VIVE JOOF! VIVE JOOF!! VIVE JOOF!!!

—until the chanting faded.

Everyone in the room took a deep breath and relaxed again. Those were the party people from the Half Die Ward taking home their own good news—their candidate, Joseph Henry Joof of the United Party, must have won over his opponents, I.M. Garba Jahumpa of the Gambia Muslim Congress and I.H.S. Burang John, the Independent candidate. Everyone braced again, waiting for VIVE JOHNSON for the Soldier Town Ward. At what exact point I slipped passed the fringes of the fullest concentration I could not tell. I fell asleep where we sat on the floorboards in our little corner watching the spectacle of agitated and expectant adults.  

In the morning, I was alone on my parents’ bed. I ambled out and over to the porch and there I found Papa shaking hands with one of our neighbours, Pa John Thomas, the carpenter, I think it was. The old man was congratulating Papa on his performance. My mother appeared with a tray of food. I could see she looked more relaxed.

She was not smiling or anything—just composed and going about her business. I stood at the top of the short staircase and waited for my father to finish talking.  “We’ll get them next time,” I heard him say to Pa Thomas who had already reached the gate.

Papa came back up the steps. “Hello, Bill,” he said picking me up and ruffling my head playfully as he carried me into the house.  Then it hit me. The House of Representatives did not get the right man. While we ate breakfast my mother whispered to us that a man called Melville Benoni Jones had won the election for the Gambia National Party.

Papa lost for the DCA and Mrs Augusta Darling Jawara lost for the People’s Progressive Party. My brothers might have understood all of that detail; don’t ask me—I absorbed some of it, no doubt, but the good rest flew way past over my head.

My father who certainly knew everything about it did not seem perturbed and, in fact, was enjoying sipping his tea and quietly reading a copy of the Gambia Echo newspaper. That seemed to reassure me that things were all right after all—I mean, no one was going to come and ask us out of our house for losing or begin breaking our windows or stopping my mother from cooking, that sort of thing.
 
There was a broken campaign placard leaning against the wall next to the dining table. After breakfast, I walked up to it and gazed into the face in the loosely hanging photo. I leaned my head over to the side in order to have a straighter face-to-face with the man in the picture. It was Papa alright; his smile was still there and he still looked like the right man to me. I gazed into those eyes again—they were even bolder and kindlier and they seemed to speak confidently to me that Papa would surely get them—next time!