Missives from the Congo 026

First of all, I’ll apologize for the long drought to missives. There are a number of reasons for the delay including a fabulous vacation in Europe, and some less pleasant happening as well. In any event, I’ve only got a few weeks left so I’ll bear down and do my best to become productive again.

So this week’s missive concerns language; specifically the English language. English is the language of this and most UN missions. Most internal communications within MONUSCO are in English, notwithstanding the fact that the Congo is a francophone country. The reality is that English is a much choice for a cross-nationality language between the contingents. However, most of the military and civilian personnel are not native English speakers. Event those persons who speak English fluently often use a grammar and syntax that is difficult to understand and at times incomprehensible; and that’s in writing. When you factor in the accent it’s sometimes very difficult to understand what is being communicated.

All of that is normal and perfectly understandable but it sometimes leads to very interesting reading. What triggered my desire to write this missive is a memo concerning security in Goma which I just had to share. I have transcribed it below.

“Dear All,

The aim of this missive is to raise the awareness of UN staff members about the new criminal trend involving street children with a plausible underhand support of uncontrolled security forces in Goma.

In fact, one incident has occurred recently involving one UN car and a band of street children who used distractive cunnings to draw the attention of the UN driver on the front of the car while another group of street boys attempted to open the doors of the car and steal valuables.

The incident took place at the sight of the security forces that remained inactive and seemed to be the mastermind of the band of thieves.

Nonetheless, all UN staff members especially vehicle users are advised to exercise caution and keep all car doors locked while driving in the City of Goma as the phenomenon of naughty street children has spread all over the city and continue to operate dubiously in connivance with uncontrolled law and order personnel.

…”

This memo is pretty typical. You get the idea of what is being communicated but I would certainly not write this way. Or at least I don’t think I do. I especially like the “distractive cunnings” and the “phenomenon of naughty street children.”

In other instances you get people who just use words that we are not used to. My former operations officer was very fond of the word “intimate” meaning “To make known subtly and indirectly” (ie. Hint). I would “communicate.” I actually changed “intimate” to “communicate” for a while but it kept popping up so I looked it up in the dictionary. It was being used in a reasonably correct fashion so I let it go. This time my pet peeve word is “shifted” in the sense of “To move or transfer from one place or position to another”. The problem I have is that they are referring to people not things. So if a person is medically evacuated they get “shifted” to a hospital.

At the end of the day it doesn’t matter much. As long as people understand the message you are trying to convey but it does make for interesting listening.