Amidst accusations of looting by their now former president, Gambians look anxiously toward the future

While much of The Gambia celebrates the departure of longtime leader Yahya Jammeh and thanks the African troops who helped force him out, many in his native village are bitter.

During his 22-year rule, Jammeh built two roads leading to Kanilai village, one named after himself, the other after his wife.

It was also in Kanilai, a remote place 100 kilometres away from the capital lost in dense foliage and giant trees, that Jammeh built a huge palace, several sports centres, a hotel — and even a zoo.

"In Yahya Jammeh we trust," reads a sign painted on the side of a truck driving through the palace entrance.

All across Kanilai, where Jammeh was born in 1965, giant posters of the smiling leader dressed in long traditional white robes and gripping a rosary, are stuck on walls.

But as the country turns a page on the Jammeh era, nostalgia, resignation and even bitterness are kicking in.

The veteran strongman flew out of the tiny west African nation Sunday for a life of exile in Equatorial Guinea — run by an equally autocratic president — under pressure from the international community to recognise his defeat at the ballot box.

"God put him in power, and God removed him," shrugged a young man in the village who refused to give his name.

With access to the palace denied and the atmosphere not welcoming, the AFP team of journalists cut short its visit.

But as the huge metal gates of the palace complex swung open to make way for two trucks loaded with sheep and goats, a massive arch could be seen in the distance.

"These animals are being taken to (Jammeh's) farm," a security guard whispered, adding that some of the ex-president's relatives were still there.

Accusations of plunder

Hours after Jammeh and his family left, an aide to Adama Barrow, the new president, accused him of plundering millions of dollars in his final days of power.

"The coffers are largely empty," Mai Fatty said.

But Jammeh was apparently unable to carry most of the possessions he had accrued over the years on the unmarked plane to Equatorial Guinea.

He left many — like his herds — behind at the so-called Kanilai family farms.

In a telephone call to Barrow that was recorded and televised before he finally agreed to step down, Jammeh joked he was considering a life as a farmer.

It took the threat of a military intervention by Malian, Senegalese, Togolese, Nigerian and Ghanaian troops for Jammeh to finally give up and stand down.

While Senegalese troops backed by Nigerian air power were welcomed with open arms elsewhere in The Gambia, in Kanilai the villagers were enraged.

When the operation got under way, Kanilai became one of the troops' first targets.

"They shot at Kanilai," said a villager who was one of the rare local critics of Jammeh's rule, and who was angry that the whole of Kanilai was made to pay.

"There're only poor people's houses. Yahya Jammeh did nothing here," he said, pointing to the ramshackle mud shacks lining the road to the palace.

But one soldier said he was grateful to Jammeh for building roads and for introducing colour television.

There was no such nostalgia in Farafegny, a village to the north of Kanilai on the Senegalese border.

There, a policewoman openly expressed her disdain, turning a poster of Jammeh upside down before throwing it away, and removing a calendar with his picture from the wall, for good.