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Hope against hopeFriday, May 30, 2008
I entered the Daily Observer offices one evening some months ago to edit the newspaper and found a gruesomely disfigured face of a little girl on the front page. The editors explained to me that the little girl needed help for an operation to her face.
I offered dalasi 10,000 from the Daily Observer kitty and you, dear readers, responded massively the next day. You, dear readers, and we here at the Daily Observer fell in love with Little Jainaba (for that was the little girl’s name) and hoped for the best for her. And it looked good. Her disfigure tumour was controlled using drugs and then successfully operated on. Little Jainaba became a ‘normal’ laughing child for a while. In Dakar, her mother simply said, “she plays, she laughs and greets people now something she never did before.” Last week we relayed news of progress and promised you that we will let you know when she returns and we added that we would celebrate. Sadly, seven days or so later, Little Jainaba’s soul has headed off to Paradise. We pray for her, and we know Allah will bless her little soul. But we are also sad, very sad. We will miss her, we will miss her return from dakar to The Gambia. We had even organised a vehicle to bring her home. When we asked the Speaker of the National Assembly for her car and driver to bring Little Jainaba home, the Speaker said yes without hesitation. As it is, Allah’s will is that her final resting place should be in our sister country Senegal where she was laid to rest today. We are also left asking ourselves some very tough questions. Were we right to get so emotional involved in Little Jai’s struggle? Did we act irresponsibly in raising so many people’s hopes when the case initially looked so hopeless? Valid arguments can be made either way, and we will accept humbly the views of our readers. We share our sorrow with Little Jai’s family and with all our readers, specially those who like the First Lady Madam Zinab Jammeh and the gentleman in the letter opposite, got so moved that they became personally involved. All our fates are in the hands of Allah and we pray that Allah blesses Little Jai and give her soul eternal rest. Author: DO
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