MY ESCAPE

AFTER THE PRESIDENT OF THE GAMBIA RAPED ME, I HAD NO CHOICE BUT TO RUN

- Toufah Jallow

“THREE PEPPERS FOR FIVE DALASIS!”

“ Get my onions for 10!”

“Hey, pretty lady, come buy my stuff!”

It’s June 2015, and the air in the neighbourhood market in Yundum, The Gambia, is full of dust and exclamation marks as I hurry from one vendor to the next under the hot sun. Around me, sellers have spread their items over corrugated metal and cardboard balanced on wooden platforms: a display of fish in one place, salad greens at another, rice at another still. They flap fans back and forth to keep flies from settling on their goods.

The plan for my family’s meal that day is a stuffed chicken. Covered head to toe in a black niqab, I look like many other women in the market, though I wish for anonymity more than purity. Near the entrance to the market are the two men who have followed me on the 15-minute walk from my mother’s home, and who now watch as I go from vendor to vendor.

I make my way to my destination, a shop that sells cooking oil. Tucked against the perimeter of the market, the store’s corrugated side panel provides a place just out of view of the entrance. As the vendor passes me my oil, I tuck it into the basket at my feet and sneak a look at the entrance. I can’t see the men, making it likely they can’t see me. I know the oil seller will recognize my younger sister, Penda, or mother, Awa, when they come looking for me, and that the basket of food I am abandoning here will be passed on to them.

I duck out the back of the shop to where the taxi drivers gather. I slide into the front seat of the closest car. “I need to go to Banjul,” I tell the driver, handing him 500 dalasis, just over 10 Canadian dollars. I take the SIM card out of my phone and throw it away so I can’t be tracked. My life now depends on me escaping The Gambia.