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Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret,Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)
This year has had plethora of public worries in Africa over broken English among the young people and school children. It first started in the mid of the last months  in Nigeria, when the Nigerian government officials displayed public worry over the dying English and the strongly emerging slang known as pidgin English in Nigerian public offices and learning institutions. The same situation has also been encountered in Kenya, when in march 2014, Proffessor Jacob Kaimenyi, the minister of education otherwise known as cabinet secretary of education declared upsurge of broken English among high school students and university students a national disaster. However, the minister was making this announcement while speaking in broken English, with heavy mother tongue interference and insouciant execution of defective syntax redolent of a certain strong African linguistic sub-cultural disposition.
There is a more strong linguistic case of broken English in South Africa, which even crystallized into an accepted national language known as Afrikaans. But this South African case did not cause any brouhaha in the media nor attract international concern because the people who were breaking the English were Europeans of non British descend, but not Africans. Thus Afrikaans is not slang like the Kenyan sheng and the Nigerian pidgin or the Liberian krio, but instead is an acceptable European language spoken by Europeans in the diaspora. As of today, the there are books, bibles and software as well as dictionaries written in Afrikaans. This is a moot situation that Europeans have a cultural leeway to break a European language. May be this is a cultural reserve not available to African speakers of any European language. I can similarly enjoy some support from those of you who have ever gone to Germany, am sure you saw how Germans dealt with English as non serious language, treating it like a dialect. No German speaks grammatically correct English. And to my surprise they are not worried.
The point is that Africans must not and should never be worried of a dying colonialism like in this case the conventional experience of unstoppable death of British English language in Africa. Let the United Kingdom itself struggle to keep its culture relevant in the global quarters. But not African governments to worry over standard of English language. This is not cultural duty of Africa. Correct concerns would have been about the best ways and means of giving African indigenous languages universal recognition in the sense of global cultural presence. African languages like Kiswahili, Zulu, Yoruba, Mandiko, Gikuyu, Luhya, Luganda, Dholuo, Chaka and very many others deserve political support locally as well as internationally because they are vehicles that carry African culture and civilization.
I personally as an African am very shy to speak to another fellow African in English or even to any person who is not British. I find it more dignifying to speak any local language even if it is broken or if the worst comes to the worst, then I can use slang, like blend of broken English and the local language. To me this is linguistic indicators of having a decolonized mind. It is also my hypothesis that the young people who are speaking broken English in African schools and institutions are merely cultural overtures of Africans extricating themselves from imperial ploys of linguistic Darwinism.
There is no any research finding which shows that Africans cannot develop unless they speak English of grammatical standards like those of the United Kingdom and North America. If anything; letting of English to thrive as a lingua franca in Africa, will only make the western world to derive economic benefits out of this but not Africa to benefit. Let Africans cherish their culture like the way the Japanese and the Chinese have done, then other things will follow.
Ayesha  Oct 2020
Sunflower
Ayesha Oct 2020
So many check out the young, blushing days
Nobody saw this sunflower set
nobody yet all—

and how swift must the ends be
One jolly night and the moon passed out
an impure crescent—gnawed away

the sunflower stumbled and fell
bees swaying by the carcuss; wordlessly buzzed
an obsolete king robbed of jewels
—by his very own lovers

Nobody saw the petals leave
nobody yet all—
Abandoned for the crown could hold no more
pushed away by the wind, sold to dirt,
decolonized

—you'd pick them up; bring home
stir in a bubbling stew
—I'll take a shot, and you will

How lovely do words feel—how gruesome
running down my throat; sneak up my lungs
an old door creaks open—right inside this heart

and nobody saw the sunflower set
Fell and he bled then cried—
and the buzzing lingered but a blink

a few heard the sunflower set
heard but little—
heard still.

You'll look for more petals and I will.
—silently sliding them into strangers' bags.
A friend told me about a little child she saw fall off his bicycle on the road, and how he cried and how it broke her heart.
Lawrence Hall Sep 2023
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                 Joining the Class Struggle

                              “Yuri, what splendid words!”

                                  -Anna in Doctor Zhivago

Lift high the red banner, comrades and comradettes!
Lift high the made-in-China bullhorns against the rich
Make crudely misspelt signs and block the streets
(How dare the workers work while we’re yelling at them)

Pull down the statue of St. Joan of Arc!
Because she was, like, you know, a Confederate general
And smash the windows of the corporate coffee shops
(Make mine a decolonized double decaf)

Liberate the people’s goods! To arms! To arms!
(But who will stay behind to work the farms?)
Classy J  Nov 2023
Land mines
Classy J Nov 2023
Quick stepping, hold the breath in.
Nesquick bunny am I hoping or hopping?
Amongst these land mines that means certain death.
Just one wrong step, what do I have left?

Positive Change is trauma unlearning,
Gotta be the role model I was always yearning.
Cause I know what it’s like when my canoe was sinking.
Vicarious victim drinking with sharks,
Was never the best at swimming.
Or confronting my problems,
For awhile I was sitting.
For awhile I was drowning.
At the back of the bus with the rest of the goblins.
Until I stood my ground like Rosa Parks,
Straight spitting.
Speaking truth even if I’m portrayed as the **** villain!
After all, I’m used to it cause I’m a **** ***** Indian!
A savage in need of sterilization.
Today we just call it cancelation.
Cause snowflakes both left and right can’t handle a native with education.
No wonder we are so underfunded cause they don’t want restoration.
They don’t want truth nor reconciliation.
They want us to keep us starved so we rely on their salvation.
Ooh ****! Better start…

Quick stepping, hold the breath in.
Nesquick bunny am I hoping or hopping?
Amongst these land mines that means certain death.
Just one wrong step, what do I have left?

Feels like I’m trying to swim upstream,
When for the longest time residential schools,
Were treated as ponzi schemes.
Or as justifiable things.
And I can’t lie that growing up that **** did sting!
Was silenced and punished by the authorities.
And I ain’t just talking police,
I’m talking anyone that held power over folks like me.
Hell I Can’t even go shopping without being assaulted and asked for my receipt!
Cause after all I’m the thief, a snotty nose Rez kid that needs to go back to his tepee!
Where health and safety is decreased,
But yawl don’t care or share mercy.
To us Street beasts.
You know what? **** these land mines,
I don’t care if ya triggered!
Better prepare yourself to be decolonized,
By your friendly neighbour hood prairie…

— The End —