Sembene Ousmane

God's Bits of Wood

Marion

'Learning - learning what?' Niakoro demanded, and there was both mockery and sadness in her voice. 'If I call you I am told not to disturb you - and why? Because you are learning the white man's language. What use is the white man's language to a woman? To be a good mother you have no need of that. Among my people, who are your father's people, too, no one speaks the white man's language, and no one has died of it! Ever since I was born - and God knows that was a long time ago - I have never heard of a white man who had learned to speak Bambara, or any other language of this country. But you rootless people think only of learning his, while our language dies.’

This business of the help we are getting from outside. I don’t understand it. The support from the French Unions, for instance. You have Europeans who have come all the way from up there, just to break up the strike, and then there are Europeans who send us money to go on with it. Don’t you think it’s odd?

Real misfortune is not just a matter of being hungry and thirsty; it is a matter of knowing that there are people who want you to be hungry and thirsty - and that is the way it is with us.

'That is all I had to say, and I have said it in French so that he would understand me, although I think this meeting should have been woulacted in Ouolof, since that is our language.'

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