How Not to Write About Africa

PCVs May Finally Get Coverage

 

Sexual harassment and unwanted advances are a huge, daily problem for female volunteers in Cameroon.  Being grabbed or having obscene things shouted as you walk by is inescapable and something you’re advised to “ignore,” “just deal with,” or “grow a thicker skin” about – the attitude, and sometime literal advice is, if you “can’t handle it,” you should “go home.”  Gender discrimination in workplaces is also often a daily reality and struggle.  Treating women like property or objects isn’t “culture,” it’s wrong.  Further denying women choices about what happens after their choice has been taken away is also wrong.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/06/24/abortion_coverage_for_peace_corps_volunteers_who_are_raped_goes_to_a_full.html

Ambassador speaks Pidgin!

 

Well done, Ambassador Entwistle, for learning and speaking Pidgin on air!

But shame on NPR for calling Pidgin “broken English.”  Pidgin shares much of its lexicon with Standard English, but is a separate language in its own right, with its own grammatical structure and syntax.  While it is a first language for many in West and Central Africa, it continues to be disparaged and its use discouraged in schools, disenfranchising many from more than a basic level of of literacy and education.  Comments such as the one mentioned only serve to reinforce ideas of a hierarchy of language and the discrimination that attends such perspective.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/03/05/286257776/u-s-ambassador-speaks-pidgin-english-nigerians-love-it