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From: jsq@im4u.UTEXAS.EDU (John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: net.nlang,net.travel
Subject: Re: Maps are not an international language either
Message-ID: <660@im4u.UTEXAS.EDU>
Date: Thu, 21-Nov-85 23:04:34 EST
Article-I.D.: im4u.660
Posted: Thu Nov 21 23:04:34 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 23-Nov-85 10:53:57 EST
References: <34@druny.UUCP> <44@druny.UUCP> <547@dlvax1.datlog.UUCP> <531@tjalk.UUCP>
Reply-To: jsq@im4u.UUCP (John Quarterman)
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 27
Xref: linus net.nlang:3478 net.travel:1701

It's very rare to find anyone in black Africa who understands maps.
I recall that there was an official state tourism office in Accra,
the capital of Ghana which, among other things, gave out maps of the city.
Unfortunately, the man who was giving them out couldn't read them.

In Congo and Gabon Equatorial Guinea (or Guinea Equatorial in French:
it's a neighboring country in Central Africa) is commonly referred to as
"Equatorial".  Evidently the people who do so take that to be a proper
name, since I never found one who knew what "Equator" meant.

A number of people in that area asked me, when they discovered I was
from the United States ("Etats Unis"), whether I was from North America
or South America.  Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Canada, and such places
are just states in the United States, you see.

The usual answer for the distance from wherever you happen to be
(in the bush) to anyplace in the same general region is "two kilometers".
It doesn't matter whether the actual distance is half a kilometer
or thirty.

That reminds me of the chief in an outlying village of backwoods
Gabon who had no trouble believing that men had walked on the moon,
but got upset when we told him we had crossed the ocean to get to Gabon:
nobody can cross the ocean, after all....
-- 
John Quarterman,   UUCP:  {ihnp4,seismo,harvard,gatech}!ut-sally!im4u!jsq
ARPA Internet and CSNET:  jsq@im4u.UTEXAS.EDU, formerly jsq@im4u.ARPA