Today Newspaper - Online Edition - The Gambia's Quality Newspaper: Gambians Celebrate JAMMEH'S 'Gift to Humanity’

Gambians Celebrate JAMMEH'S 'Gift to Humanity’
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ADIAMOH ABDULHAMID  on 20 January, 2010 10:03:00
 
Robustly attended by scores of dignitaries, including members of the Gambian
Cabinet, diplomats, religious heads and countless others, the celebration
showcased the undeniable rewriting of contemporary medical history through the
humble, yet astounding medical feats recorded by President Jammeh in his mastery
of the use and application of herbal treatments to cure and manage a series of
symptoms and diseases which were hitherto considered either terminal or
incurable by mainstream medicine. Sometimes in January 2007, when the Gambian
leader announced that he had discovered a veritable treatment for HIV/AIDS, the
whole world, especially the medical establishment, was put on notice.  But as it
could be expected of the White-dominated and controlled medical industry,
President Jammeh's claims were ridiculed before they were even put into the
crucibles of scientific and empirical tests.  However, as months rolled into
years after his proclamation; and as patient after afflicted patient gained
substantial succour from their suffering, and as sanguinity replaced infirmities
in their veins, President Jammeh's claims of knowledge of herbal medicine, and
specifically his convinced assertions that he “had been given the secrets”
to cure and manage many of the dreaded infirmities such as HIV/AIDS, Asthma,
high blood pressure and infertility etc., began to shine unstoppably like the
rays of a rising sun.  And as results of CD4 counts of proven HIV/AIDS patients,
conducted in the reputed laboratories of Morrocco and Dakar, streamed back into
the Gambia with significant reductions in the levels of the previous afflictions
they carried, the medical establishment that had jeered and booed now admitted
its defeat with a deafening silence. No one put it better than Tamsir Mbowe,
Gambia's Health minister at the time and the man who now exclusively manages the
PTP. Addressing President Jammeh, who is the very subject of the celebrations,
Mbowe said: “Your Excellency, your confidence in your mission, your love for
humanity, your absolute trust in God, your boldness in defying the furies of
critics, your modesty in victory, all these and others attest not to an aimless
search for clues, but to a firm conviction that you have the knowledge, the
medical herbs and the power to achieve great results in the treatment of
HIV/AIDS, asthma, diabetics, hypertension, infertility and other diseases.
“You are not only a visionary leader, a philanthropist, a servant of the
people but an herbalist and a healer of the sick. Your name has already been
written in medical history as the first medical practitioner to come up with
medical herbs that have the potency to treat and cure HIV/AIDS and other
diseases”. While every one in the audience nodded in near obeisance to the
veracity of Mbowe's words, only few actually understood the beyond-the-letters
message that he was passing across.  This was it: His words captured and subtly
relayed an history of the fierce but silent struggle that President Jammeh faced
from the West-controlled medical industry in his bid to prove the efficacy of
African herbal cure and by extension, his admirable attempt to open a
respectable window of honour that may allow the rays of glory to shine on the
abandoned and generally despised legacy of indigenous African knowledge, wisdom
and sophistication. But the West's medical industry wasn't actually targeting
Jammeh; the real aim of the attack was to dismiss any need to acknowledge that
Africa or Africans possessed or could posses any indigenous corpus of knowledge
and/or know-how that could, without carrying the penumbra of the West's linear,
Newtonian thinking, be of relevance to solving any or many of our world's
contemporary burdens. And even if no other understood Tamsir Mbowe's words,
Jammeh certainly couldn't have missed their import. After three years of
bringing some measure of health and the peace that comes with it to many people
who would already have thought they were never destined to have any, President
Jammeh could have been excused if he had thumped his chest. But he did not. He
simply praised Allah for the “blessings” and then humbly moved on to thank
the Gambian people so sincerely you could have thought they were responsible for
his knowledge of herbal cure.  Then he announced some more good news: He was now
ready to take on cases like stroke, sickle cell, diabetes, and arthritis. In
addition, he promised to announce eight new treatments by the time the PTP is
marked next year. Numerous beneficiaries of the President's treatment programme
showed appreciation through a march pass which also had in its lines, staff and
well-wishers of the programme, students, and other youths. There were too many
expressions of gratitude than can be recounted here, but one put it perhaps more
succinctly.  Fatou A. Drammeh is a student at the Gambia High School and the 3rd
runner up in the recently decided Miss 22nd July Pageant. She has never been a
patient healed by the president's herbal mixtures, but she told TODAY that she
was touched by the Gambian leader's “gift to humanity” which has healed her
of all her doubts in the possibility of the Gambia becoming a “superpower”.
She could have meant it in the medical sense.
Jami Cole, who was in Kanilai for the event, contributed to this report.