As a columnist, it brings me a great deal of satisfaction to meet strangers who inform me that they read my column. But about the only disheartening thing is to read my column and find out that my identity was misrepresented.
I am talking about a column I wrote recently ("Let's Talk Politics," Oct. 15) in which due to editorial oversight I was mentioned as having been from Nigeria. Nigeria is a country in the West of Africa. Kenya, where I am in fact from, is another country in the East Coast of Africa.
The editorial oversight is kindly pardoned, but I feel this misrepresentation is symptomatic of a far larger issue among Americans. This is the irritating attitude of knowing just enough world geography to be able to fly from California to New York while assuming that everything beyond Great Britain on this side and Japan on the other is currently uncharted waters and land when, in point of fact, this is not the case. It becomes a little more aggravating when people project the notion of being fashionably ignorant about such matters.
Africa, the hardest hit by this "fashionable ignorance," is not a country, rather it is a continent and it lies several thousand miles to your right when you are facing North in the United States. South Africa, Egypt and Libya are, surprise, surprise, part of Africa. Iran and Iraq, on the other hand, are not. In Africa, we don't ALL speak African or the Dutch derivative, Afrikaans. Afrikaans is spoken in South Africa because the Dutch immigrants who landed and settled there in the 17th century didn't want to lose their European ancestry yet they didn't want to be co-opted into the mass of the English-speaking British Empire of yesteryear. It survives today as the only African-evolved European language.
Like all large land masses with natural barriers within them, there is a diverse mix of people in Africa. In the North, we have Arabic speaking countries -- Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Tunisia (shh! not pronounced "Tunishia"), Algeria and Morocco. In the Central, there is Cameroon, Central African, Republic and Chad. In the East Coast, we have KENYA, Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia, Djibouti and Ethiopia. In the South lies South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Angola. The West of Africa is a somewhat large chunk and comprises well-known countries like NIGERIA, Niger, Courte D'Ivoire, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Gambia.
This list is, of course, not all-inclusive, but my point is to give you a sense of African geography so that you do not offend someone next time you meet an African and are casually tempted to ask who the President of Africa is. We have the Organization of African Unity (O.A.U) which, might I add, is constituted by sovereign states.
As a bonus fact I will point out to you that, due to colonialism, we do speak European languages like English, French and Portuguese, all in addition to a myriad other languages (not dialects!) as per ethnic group (not tribe!). Kiswahili (which I speak fluently), Igbo and Zulu are examples that spring to mind.
Be conscientious!
