Show Some Respect When Travelling Abroad

Last night, I was looking through many pictures and snapshots that you can find on the internet. I was looking in particular for pictures of Sierra Leone, wondering what it looks like today. I came across a comment that struck me as being kind of insensitive. A young university student from Tennessee was in Sierra Leone working, and had taken some pictures of billboards in Freetown. One billboard was partly in "Krio" which is the word used for Creole, or the language that the freed slaves used. Her comment about the billboard was that it was written in Krio which is "Basically, bad English."

Before I go on, I'm going to just address that comment with my own take. Of course, it is rude to insult the way other people speak. But this comment also displays a lack of knowledge in both language and history. All languages started out as "bad" something else. French, Spanish and Italian are all bad Latin. English started out as bad French mixed with bad Germanic/Scandinavian. American English is bad British English. Same for Canadian English (but not quite as bad of course!). And Southern American English, for y'alls information, is bad Yankee English.

Now some history. The reason the Freetown Colony spoke Krio, is that they were freed slaves. But they were not freed in their own country, they were freed together with other people from different tribes that could not understand each other languages. The only way they could communicate with each other was with a new common language they made up for themselves, and this language was Krio, and based heavily (but not entirely) on English.

They also had not been given the benefit of formal English classes by their slave masters, although possibly the first ones that came from Canada may have been able to read and write. That's because Canada didn't make writing and reading a punishable offense for black people, like the southern USA did at the time.

Now to get back to language. Krio is actually not just "bad English" because it is now a written language. Meaning it has a defined syntax, spelling, and there are books published in Krio.

Now that I have dealt with that one innocent comment from a young woman visiting Sierra Leone, I want to continue with my feelings toward some people who travel and do not have respect for local people and cultures. I'm sure it's unintentional in most cases. But it seems to me when I was a CUSO volunteer we had a very strong sense of respecting the country we worked in. We were taught something of their history and culture and we were expected to learn it. The original motto of CUSO was "To serve and learn".

I went to the CUSO website to see if they had any guidelines on how volunteers from Canada should behave in foreign countries, but there was nothing. I guess it was just assumed that if you have to teach somebody how to respect a foreign culture, this person is not suitable for CUSO. I want to add that CUSO was completely unlike religious missionaries in that we did not go to eliminate local religion or cultures, we were a secular organization whose goal was more in eliminating poverty through education and infrastructure.

Some tourists are incredibly disrespectful of countries they visit whether intentional or not. They shout at people who do not understand their English (not even realizing that their English is actually non-standard), and look down on local people as lazy, ignorant, and dishonest.

I'm just going to wrap up with an anecdote from my trip to Mexico. I was talking to an American at the next campsite about travelling, he said he had never been out of the United States. Even though he was sitting in Mexico, a good 500 kilometers past the southern US border. Is this a common American attitude? I sometimes wonder from all the US flags I see flying on flagpoles in front of cottages in Canada. The only place you will not see this is on the St Claire river between Michigan and Ontario. There is not one single US flag flying on the Canadian side. I assume this not allowed because the Customs Agents don't want to confuse the boaters as to which side of the river is USA and which is Canada.