LETTER TO THE FUTURE GENERATION

Dear future generations,

I fear how you may receive or perceive this writ from me, but I pray and advise you that you put away personal sentiments and confront the realities represented in this writ. My gratitude that you still managed to survive the plundered environment by my generation. And of course, sending this with regrets and apologies that we could not hand over a safe, healthy and embellished “home”.

In this, I made up my mind to confess our wrong doings, tell you the goods we have done, and of course respond to your questions about how “sweet” “home” (to us) became a “misery” (to you).

To begin with, home was a place everyone (my generation) was proud to called an abode. It has housed one of the most patriotic citizens of my time, and sadly, it equally housed the chauvinistic and ignominious citizens all together. You would not like what I am about to say in succeeding paragraphs, but……I promise to balance between the havocs and luxuriance.

Progressively, as alluded earlier that, home was the best life could have offered to some of us: but this wasn’t the same when gaseous emissions, liquid discharges from industries, pollutions of all kinds, waste of all kinds in the streets, deforestations and extravagant hunting of wildlife, took order. The luxury we had always enjoyed began to diminish by day – and this has not gone unnoticed, but only few took this displeasures seriously.

Like I promised I am going to counterbalance between the two extremes (havocs and luxuriance). To continue, the safe heaven gradually ceases to exist, and this became a colossal concern to a very small proportion of my generation. The few that took this effect seriously rose up as advocates in different thematic areas. Ranging from: Climate Change, Environment, Health, Marine Life, Anti-plastic….to name but a few. And I can proudly tell you, I was one of them. These few people called “activist” did great and were able to restore and maintain just part of the gratifications of home, thanks to their tenacious commitment, dedication and activism.

Again, home was struck with the misfortunes of bad leadership: weak governance, poor structures in all aspects, fragile public health systems, poor waste management, unreliable water and electricity supply, a seemingly unending corruption, inefficient education system, daily augmentation of consumable commodities, high cost of data…. Inter alia. These atrocities came to life immediately after we attained our independence from the colonialist (I will tell you about them in my subsequent writs) and had since then continue inflicting agony in the lives of many. It saddens me to tell you that, many invaluable and endeared lives had surrendered to these atrocities. All these are the fruits of bad leadership.

You must be wondering what had been the reactions of the citizenry (the victims)? Well, it has not been taken lightly dearies. I was one of them. We protested despite their grave efforts to suppressed us – they even had the guts to ceased some lives in the process. We made life so uncomfortable to them like they’d done to us (though theirs was more extreme and agonizing). We did our best, yet the results were unsatisfactory. They exploited our resources to our own detriment under the pretext of serving us. We knew it was a scam at the outright. But their accomplices and sympathizers would neither let us be nor let us breath.

You wouldn’t believe what am about to tell you! Our penultimate resort was to rely on the justice system – will let you hypothesize our last resort. Yes, in light of all these uncountable atrocities, this era wasn’t devoid of perpetual abuse of power, tribalism, increased rape cases, child molestations, murder, gender discriminations and so on and so forth. With our societal patriarchal system, most, if not all the cases against women are deprived of the justice they deserved. Hard to believe right? I am sure some of my colleagues that will write to you will write in affirmation.

To conclude, all these I just mentioned are the tip of the iceberg, will tell you more in my subsequent letters. And I haven’t told you this except to learn from our mistakes and rehabilitate your world. And of course overlook our grave demolition of “sweet home”.

Regards,
Modou Lamin Jammeh.

Author: Modou Lamin Jammeh

An Undergrad at the UTG, pursuing a Bsc in Public and Environmental Health.