In his religious sermon shortly before leading Friday prayers, Imam Salifu Mbye entreats his hushed congregation in Sinchu Alhagie, 14km south of the Gambian capital Banjul to cup hands together and implore the high heavens for much needed rain.
He is responding to a request the previous day by the Supreme Islamic Council calling on religious leaders nationwide to offer prayers during their Friday act of congregational worship for plentiful rain which has been few and far between this rainy season.
Like Imam Mbye, Muslim leaders across The Gambia have been imploring Allah to open the skies for rain on which farmers depend for a good harvest.
Mid-August always records the highest amount of rainfall in The Gambia but this year has been different, causing disquiet among the country’s farming community.
The 2019 rainy season has so far witnessed the lowest amount of rainfall in The Gambia in years, leaving farmers turning to religious leaders for intercessions with Allah on their behalf.
Ebrima Jallow, the Imam of the grand mosque at Wellingara, just outside Sinchu Alhagie blames the paucity of rain tis year on what he called the sins that have incurred God’s wrath on Gambian society.
Although the relatively new settlements of Sinchu Alhagie and Wellingara are not farming communities, their residents come from other parts of the country where agriculture is a crucial livelihood for relatives they left behind.
“We sin too much and we are not ready to repent. For us at our mosque, we pray for more rainfalls daily. Although I have not received any formal notification from the Supreme Islamic Council instructing us to pray for rain, we do it daily here” he tells the African Press Agency.
Imam Jallow says that disobeying Allah comes with consequences.
“People behave like animals now. Women parade themselves almost naked, men are into promiscuity and bad behaviors all the time.” he points out regretfully.
“We want to be like other people that we are not and can never be” he adds, suggesting Gambians imitating ridiculous things from Western cultures that cannot be agreeable with what should obtain in African society.
As Gambians mark Eid-ul-Adha on Sunday, Imam Jallow says perhaps God will release his tender mercies on The Gambia through much needed rain which would cause crops to flourish and offer a turnaround for the bleak prospect for farmers.
However, aside from God’s wrath over a fall in moral standards, Sainey Sanyang believes there is a scientific reason for this year’s negligible amount of rain.
He says it is the inescapable result of progressive deforestation which had intensified over the past few decades, causing unpredictable weather patterns.
“Unless we address that we will continue to record poor rainfalls in the future” he warns.
Sanyang says he was chagrined by the amount of deforestation taking place in villages he’d visited across the country, where people are felling trees with reckless abandon and seemingly oblivious of the environmental consequences.
University of The Gambia students Sang Mendy and Illiassa Jallow agree, saying Gambians have never been more rapacious about the environment with the indiscriminate felling of trees, a crucial factor in degrading the ecological balance that otherwise facilitates rainfall suitable for agricultural activity.
Mendy believes that aside from the depletion of what was left of Gambia’s forest cover to satisfy the demand for charcoal and other fuels, desertification is also at the heart of the problem.
Meanwhile as helpless Gambian farmers wander around their parched fields tending to wilting crops and keeping a weary eye on the sky, Islamic clergies like Imams Mbye and Jallow clutch their beads in prayerful longing for God’s bountiful mercies in the form of rain.
There is one single thing on their minds – blessing fields with rejuvenated shoots to harbinger a plentiful Gambian harvest in the intervening months.
DB/as/APA