Snowmen in Africa. It's the modern day equivalent of monks exporting their faith to far flung regions of the world, but still following the same Rule. Monks ended up wearing cotton habits in the winter months, and woolen ones in the summer, because the Rule dictated the particular months certain clothes should be worn. Here in November, the Southern Hemisphere children are in the middle of their summer holidays.
Three years ago the Rwandan government declared English the official language. Formerly a colony of Belgian, Rwanda is largely French speaking. Pupils had to switch language in the middle of their studies and French speaking teachers with insufficient English were out of a job.
The result was a widespread shortage of teachers. Volunteers from the U.S. filled the gap and Uganda provided a more stable source of staff.
These teachers discovered a shortage of books, English books, that is. Shipments of American and British books were donated to the young of Rwanda to help them learn to read in our tongue. And that is how I found myself reading to an eager bunch of children about snowmen.
When the coldest it gets is a tropical thunder storm and the children are more likely to keep a goat, than have a dog as a pet, how can this new language be anything other than academic? If were are going to export our language, let's ditch the books about dogs, cats, hamsters and snowman, stop acting as though we were monks from a time gone by and give some thought to recipients of our charity. Anyone out there ready to take up the challenge and write a Rwandan English storybook?
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