The First Week Without Sam Sarr

Editorial Foroyaa
It is like a funeral. People are pouring from all corners of the country to express their shock and concern. Some cannot hold their tears. The students who used to have evening classes in physics, Mathematics and other subjects are now in limbo.

Social science teaches that prisons are correctional institutions where those whose behaviour falls short of the good standards set by society as lawful behaviour are kept for sometime to facilitate their rehabilitation. Once this rehabilitation is effected they are placed back into society to live productive and contributive life.

Those people with exemplary characters who are incarcerated are referred to in political science as prisoners of conscience. Such people are those who stand up for their beliefs regardless of the peril or the cost. Sam Sarr had an honours degree in Physics and Mathematics 33 years ago. He taught A level and O level courses at Gambia High School for over a decade preparing the future generation to become the builders of a society of liberty and prosperity. The Generation he taught is gradually taking charge of the destiny of this country. They are now in their late thirties and forties.

Despite the fact that his education was grounded in the physics and mathematics Sam realized that a Physicist and Mathematician without social conscience could make instrument of mass destruction just to commit genocide against a whole population. He was convinced that education should go hand in hand with the nurturing of the social conscience.

History has taught him that a half educated person without social conscience is a virtual criminal. Such a person would live only for himself at the expense of others. Such a person would not hesitate to perpetrate all sorts of injustice against his or her fellow human beings without any feeling of guilt or remorse.

This is why Sam taught his students to have social conscience through plays like “belful na bone na throat” meaning that “Foolish pride is a bone in the throat”; “Habatee amut Ngering Haajalo la isi” “pomposity is the root to social discord and social conflict” and so on and so forth.

His plays sought to teach his students to embrace humility and detest greed, love truth and abhor falsehood, cherish justice and shun injustice. He wanted their hearts to speak the language of compassion so that they would not make any righteous person to suffer for promoting truth and justice.

We hope that as the students he taught go to their beds each night they would ask themselves whether they are utilizing their offices to promote justice or injustice, freedom or servitude, emancipation or enslavement, humility or pomposity, temperance or greed, poverty or prosperity.

If they are promoting justice, freedom, emancipation, humility, temperance and prosperity they are assured a final resting place in the valley of the exalted for eternity. On the other hand, if they live on this earth to perpetrate injustice, servitude, enslavement, pomposity, greed and poverty they are assured a final resting place in the dustbin of history.

Sam belongs to the category of people who works day and night to wipe tears from the face of the living instead of making them to shed tears. He belongs to the exalted category of society. He may undergo trials and tribulations but sooner rather than later history will absolve him; sooner rather than later we will re unite with him in grace and glory. This is the verdict of justice and common sense and it is incontrovertible.