Colin Freeman, Banjul, The Telegraph, 11/25/2012
"Viewed from the comfort of the deckchairs on the vast, palm-lined beaches overlooking the Atlantic, life in Gambia can seem as unblinkingly bright as the guaranteed winter sunshine.
"For the 65,000 Britons who flock here each year, the former colony has become a West African Costa Brava, offering super-cheap package deals, few lager louts, and nothing more hazardous than over-eager street hawkers touting voodoo masks and talismans.
"Absent from the hawkers' sales patter, however, is any mention of the very real witchcraft cult that has blighted this tiny nation of 1 million in recent years.
"The story of Gambia's darker side begins on the other side of the sleepy capital, Banjul, where a few miles from the luxury beach resorts, there is the rather more spartan accommodation of the 'Mile 2 Hotel'. The nickname for the notorious Mile 2 prison, its mosquito-plagued cells are a likely destination for critics of Yahya Jammeh, Gambia's eccentric faith healer-turned-president.
"A modern-day version of Papa Doc Duvalier, the late voodoo-practising dictator of Haiti, Mr Jammeh has a reputation for jailing anyone who says things he doesn't like. Such as questioning, for example, his declaration last year that he would rule for "a billion years" if necessary, or his claim in 2007 to have invented a herbal HIV cure. ...
"In 2009, more than 1,000 'sorcerers' were rounded up at gunpoint by the president's 'Green Beret' special guards and forced to drink hallucinogenic potions to 'exorcise' them. ...
"Like the executions, the reasons for the witchhunt remain shrouded in mystery ...
"Mr Jammeh, 48, who prefers the title of 'His Excellency Sheikh Professor Doctor President', has also cemented his grip on power by more conventional methods.
"Since taking power in a bloodless coup in 1994, the US-trained former army lieutenant has won four straight elections via a strategy of brazen political patronage. As he puts it: 'I will develop areas that vote for me, but if you don't vote for me, don't expect anything.' ...
"Tourism has also boomed, with a peculiar niche for elderly British women seeking Shirley Valentine-style romances with young male Gambians, known locally as 'gigolos'.
"... critics say Mr Jammeh has acquired all the traits of an old-school African 'Big Man'.
"Vast posters of him stare out even on the tourist strip, and he lives in a heavily-guarded presidential palace, where he keeps a fleet of luxury cars including a customised Hummer stretch limousine. His official convoy, a 30-strong caravan of SUVs guarded by pick-up trucks with anti-aircraft guns, will run anyone off the road that gets in their way - foreign diplomats included. ...
"The European Union, through which Britain contributes, granted Gambia 78 million euros for the period 2008-2013, much of it, ironically, for projects to support the media and 'access to justice'. ...
"Mr Jammeh's continued practice of his controversial HIV 'cure' programme, which hundreds of Gambians have now undergone.
"The scheme has appalled health groups, who point out that it is potentially lethal because it requires patients to give up normal retro-viral treatments for up to a year. ...
"Whether any of the HIV patients allegedly 'cured' by Mr Jammeh have since passed away is yet another mystery.
"Details of the scheme's outcomes are kept under close wraps by the presidential doctors, and nobody therefore knows whether some 'gigolo' might be passing HIV onto his British patroness.
"Either way, though, it seems that Gambia's voodoo 'curse' may claim more victims yet - and might one day drift beyond its sun-kissed shores."
Perhaps in His Excellency's earlier U.S. military training classes the term war-craft was simply mistranslated into witchcraft. In any case, on the bright side of patriotic immigration reformers never being able to get the U.S. Congress to ax our special Diversity Lottery--which, on top of millions of other migrants coming from the Third World, adds a whole other side river of newcomers from Africa and elsewhere, because it is thought by our ruling elites that we are not becoming diverse enough fast enough--is that all this might finally address America's embarrassing shortage of sorcerers.
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