Exit the Strongman: The world saw the Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh as a brutal, eccentric dictator. But his hometown still loves him.

'Sëriñ Tuubaa' 2 - the messenger, #Kanilai, #Gambia, West Africa - #GambiaDoors (c) Helen Jones-Florio . _ #storiesbehinddoors -I came across this door on a trip to Kanilai, last year when we were interviewing supporters of ex-president, Yahya Jammeh. The village is in southern Gambia, near the border with Senegal. The former president of The Gambia, #YahyaJammeh was born in the village and when he seized power, during a coup in 1994, he began to expand what was previously a quiet back-water, where maize and groundnut farmers worked the land, on a small-scale. Today, it has a (now empty - after Jammeh was voted out in December 2016 after 22 years rule of fear and dictatorship and subsequently fled into exile in Equatorial Guinea in January 2017) presidential palace, a wrestling arena, a luxury hotel and a game park, and a zoo. Jammeh said that the zoo would allow Gambians to "experience African wildlife”. However, this never became the success he envisaged, with animals dying due to hunting, predation, and insufficient food. It is also alleged that Jammeh ordered many of his victims, killed by his henchmen, the Junglers, to be fed to the hundreds of crocodiles. The truth will out, no doubt, during the @trrc_gambia - this monumental, historical, truth, reconciliation, reparations commission is in progress as I write this _ Find out more about what we (with @jasonflorio) are doing in the Gambia https://www.gofundme.com/gambiavictims-of-a-regime _ _ #WestAfrica #Travel, #photography #doors #doorsofAfrica #SmilingCoast #storefronts #urban #decay #facades #abandonedplaces #thedoorhunter #everydayafrica #documentary #ig_doorsandwindows #decay_illife #derelictplaces#shopsignage #derelict #architecture #wallart#urbanafrica #disappearingmalta#kanilai https://www.instagram.com/floriotravels/p/Bsup9zMg2pm/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=404f93awpfnq

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