𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐇𝐨𝐧. 𝐌𝐛𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐚 𝐉𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐚’𝐬 𝐅𝐮𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐬 𝐁𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐚 𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐆𝐮𝐧𝐣𝐮𝐫, 𝐖𝐞𝐝𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝟏𝟑

By Musa Bassadi Jawara | Bintou’s Point, Kerewan

Since the death of Honorable Mbemba Jatta’s passing on Monday, I took time today to visit with the family in Gunjur. I’ve not been in Gunjur for over a decade, and the earth under my feet remembered me before I remembered the turns.

The remains of the late Hon. Mbemba Jatta will be laid to rest at the Gunjur central cemetery on Saturday, 16th May 2026

I wanted to take time and travel to Gunjur this Wednesday May 13 and visit with the family before the arrival of the corpse on Saturday for burial. There are duties that cannot be delegated. There are condolences that must be carried in person, with your own breath and your own shadow in the doorway.

It was a somber and sanctimonious occasion — hushed, reverent, prayer-laden, heavy with memory and softened by faith. The kind of silence that listens. The kind of grief that sits upright. You could feel the weight of a great tree fallen, and the shade it leaves behind.

I addressed the Gunjur community, Jatta Kunda and families of Kombo South with passion and in celebratory recollection of late Mbemba Jatta’s life as narrated in the tribute on Monday. I did not mourn a politician. I remembered a brother-in-law, a statistician, a land-giver, a quiet architect of roads and of dignity.

The crowd was glued to my account as I stated with intense and grandiloquent intensity of the immensity of the loss of this illustrious son of the Kombos, Gambia and West Africa sub region. Elders nodded. Young men lowered their gaze. Mothers pulled their wraps tighter, as if to hold in the ache. Because when you name a man truly, the whole village remembers at once.

Arrangements are set for Saturday the arrival of a powerful family delegation escorting the corpse from the United States. As the corpse arrives in the wee hours of Saturday morning May 16, Kombo South, Gambia will gather at 10 am at the Central Mosque in Gunjur for Janazah prayer and community-led, befitting funeral rites for a man of extraordinary and sensational stature. From New York to Yundum, from the cold of a foreign morgue to the warmth of Kombo sand — this is the last journey of a son who never forgot where his navel was buried.

Insha Allah it will be a funeral of unique and fitting farewell for a well deserved public, family, community servant. Let the Kombo Coastal Roads he conceived carry him home. Let every grain of laterite bear witness. Let the drums be measured and the prayers be loud, for a man who served without noise deserves to be sent off with thunder.

I am glad I took time to visit Gunjur ahead of the funeral and touch base with the family and community. To look Sister Mariama in the eye. To press the shoulders of his children. To tell Jatta Kunda: your son did not labor in vain. The ledgers of Allah do not forget.

I was overwhelmed with admiration of people of Kombo, the young, elderly women and men surrounding hugging and quietly approaching me in solidarity and absolute admiration as if I was a visiting statesman or popular pop singer or famous star. I was so touched that I decided to have an extended stay and organize an impromptu dinner for the entire community under my charge.

What began as condolence became communion. We broke no kola nut in ceremony, but we broke bread in memory. The same hands that built Mbemba’s roads now stirred pots for his remembrance. That is Kombo. That is family. That is the quiet republic he helped build — one meal, one land deed, one dignity at a time.

So here is my closing charge to Gambia, to Kombo, to all who claim to build nations: Measure a man not by the height of his microphone, but by the length of the roads he left behind. Not by the volume of his speeches, but by the number of landless families he gave a plot to call home. Mbemba Jatta was generous to his last change, and to his last breath.

Let us not bury him only with soil. Let us bury him with policy. Let us bury him with scholarships in statistics for Gunjur’s children. Let us bury him with a Land Bank named after the LANSAREWARS, so no poor family sleeps on borrowed ground. That is how you immortalize a quiet giant. That is how you answer grief with nationhood.

Allah yarham Mbemba Jatta. To Allah we come and to Him we return.