According to one of the guidebooks, Limbe is one of the centres of English resistance in Cameroon, Bamenda being the other. Cameroon is kind of like Canada in reverse, official-language-wise. Both French and English are official languages, but English is only spoken in North West and South West Province—the rest of the country speaks French. Given the earlier statement, I was awfully surprised to spend most of our mini-holiday on the beach doing the talking because everyone we encountered spoke French—some exclusively. So if Limbe is a stronghold for English-speaking Cameroon, well, I think they’re losing.
--Presented at a CAWG event in Altona -- In Living More with Less , Doris Janzen Longacre shares a story about envelopes from Marie Moyer, a missionary in India, who was studying Hindi with Panditji. Marie writes: “From his philosophic mind, which probed the meaning of events and circumstances, I learned more than Hindi.” Just before her teacher’s arrival one day before Christmas, she’d received and opened a pile of Christmas cards and discarded the envelopes as he walked in the room. She writes: “He sat down soberly and studied the situation, then he solemnly scolded me: ‘the reverberation of this wasteful act will be felt around the world’.” Marie was stunned. “What do you mean?” she asked him. “Those envelopes,” he said, pointing to the wastebasket. “You could write on the inside of them.” “Chagrined”, Marie apologized and rescued the envelopes with the help of Panditji, who “caressed each one” as he pulled it out of the garbage. This forever changed Marie’s relationship to p...
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