Skip to main content

Daily doubletake

As a group of Cameroonian adolescent girls at Seme Beach in Limbe passed by I caught snatches of their conversation. “Hunh,” I thought to myself, “that sounded like German.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions, Karla,” I quickly retorted. “They’re probably speaking a local dialect with gutturals and sibilants like German.”

Then another chattering girl breezed past, her words quite distinct: “Ich weiss nicht,” removing all doubt as to what language they were speaking.

I know Cameroon was under the Germans for a good part of their colonial history, but it still wasn’t something I was expecting to hear.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Winnipeg Transit woes

  “We’ve increased support for municipalities year after year because we know strong communities depend on reliable, stable and predictable funding increases,” Municipal and Northern Relations Minister Glen Simard said in an emailed statement to the Free Press Tuesday. https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2026/06/23/winnipeg-transit-needs-funding-boost-additional-staff-to-follow-new-provincial-accessibility-regulations-city-report This in answer to City of Winnipeg chair of Public Works Janice Lukes plea for the province to cough up money for the needed upgrades. Listen carefully because these are words I won't often say: I gotta agree with Lukes on this one. If the province is handing down new standards, given their higher capacity for raising revenues, they ought to help the city fund meeting said standards. What Simard fails to acknowledge is that those "year after year" funding increases started at the bottom basement after Conservative cuts and likely h...
Post a Comment
Read more

Carney's sound check

 The Liberals are advertising a summer survey. Let me Mr Carney know what you think! Of course, the multiple choice questions force you to give the answers Carney wants to hear, but fortunately, there's an open box for further comment at the end with a 2500 character limit.  I don't have all day to spend on this so it's a slightly in coherent rant, but I can't let this man think everything is fine while he turns this country into a totalitarian surveillance police state whose only industry is war-making.  https://action.liberal.ca/a-summer-sound-check/ Here's what I think, Mr Carney.  The things that "stand out" the most for me are the things that horrify the most. Every single thing Carney has done or championed since April 2025 is awful for ordinary Canadians (only good for Carney's investment portfolio). You can shove your AI. Yes, Canadians need protection from AI but your disgraced grifter of a "AI minister" is the last person to do that...
Post a Comment
Read more

Keep Canada a country of welcome

We're supposed to be grateful that we got a Liberal government instead of a Conservative one that would scapegoat immigrants. However, even under Trudeau, Liberals had subtly started to send the disgustingly popular message that Canada's social ills can be traced to our newcomer population, when in fact, in both housing and education (favourite victims of the blame immigrant narrative), the real villain is the federal government's funding cut backs.  And now Carney is blaming immigrants for health care too. Now he's claiming we can't afford to pay for health care for immigrants (as though we can afford to waste human potential by allowing folks to languish in untreated illness for lack of funds!) So here's a letter to the PM and the immigration minister to protest the cuts to immigration. This time from MCC. Mine, of course, has my own flavour added.  Click here to send your own. I am writing to you to ask that you keep Canada as a country of welcome.  Stop bl...
Post a Comment
Read more