Sex by Water

Maybe we need to write about it more. Maybe it doesn’t get (nearly) enough public attention. Maybe because it’s endemic to impoverished countries, people don’t really care. Whatever the case may be, as always, (young) women suffer in silence.

One of the things that really upsets me is that (many) issues of gender inequality are known in ‘the industry’ but not elsewhere, meaning that the people who talk about it and fight against it know about it, but that’s it. If you’d talk to a (random) guy about it, he’d think it’s a women’s issue. I’ve written here years ago that there are even ignorant women about this, simply because they have it so good. You can’t really blame anyone, it’s more profitable to cover scandals and sensationalism in the media than it is to talk about what actually affects the many.

Anyway, so this article is about young women having to exchange sexual favours to get (somewhat) potable water. What those favours may be, you can let your imagination wander and be sure whatever you think of probably gets done in real life. To give you an idea first, if you never lived or grew up in Black Africa, public water supply doesn’t exist in many African countries. I come from Lagos, Nigeria, and in my life living there, from kid to adult, I have never once experienced public water supply. Ironically, though, some people still get bills for a service they never enjoyed. With 200 million people in Nigeria, for example, every household is de facto its own government, in that you have to build a well in your compound if you want to provide water to your house. And if you’re not middle class or rich, and live in slum-like settings, then you have to buy gallons and large buckets to store water in, that you fetch from pumps you can walk to that are somewhat in the area.

And that’s where the story lies. This article isn’t about Nigeria alone, but many African countries that like Nigeria, til this day let the masses suffer and live in squalor.

I wrote about female poverty and fetching water from miles away several years but I was focusing on female poverty. It’s part of a book I planned to write but never did, I only drew the pictures. Oh well. Anyway, fetching water, in countries where public water is (virtually) inexistent, is largely a female thing. It’s so cumbersome, physically-tiring and time-consuming that most girls who engage in it, drop out of school altogether because they can’t do both at once. So they often stay at home, fetch water all day and help their moms with cooking, cleaning and household chores.

Yay!

It’s not uncommon for girls to walk in the blazing heat of at least 30 degrees Celsius for at least an hour to either a ‘water depot’ or a murky dirty river with brownish water. If they get to a water pump, a place where there’s a well or a tap they get water from, they usually queue for ages with their numerous large gallons to carry back home, on their head. And if they live in a rural environment and have to go to the nearest pond several miles away in the middle of some bush, they contend with snakes and other dangerous animals on the way. If anything happens to them and they get injured in some way, they are miles away from any clinic or hospital and even if they could get there for help, their families wouldn’t have any money to pay for treatment.

They do this all day every day. The way a normal household uses water for sanitation, personal hygiene and cooking, is the way super-poor people have do the same without any public water supply, or water from a tap in their homes, or large water tank that stores all their water for a week or two. That doesn’t exist. We’re not talking of the middle class here.

This was before the pandemic. Life was this great before there was a curfew worldwide. Since the lockdown, in places like Kenya, the poor have to deal with even more misery like suffering even more to get what we all need and can’t live without: water.

Oh, and I forgot to say; aside from going through hell just to fetch water, a lot of girls get sexually assaulted from the male water vendors in the process. You know, the guys in the slums or villages who control the water pumps, tanks and wells and make money from it – because they’re such good people. These criminals know these girls are super-poor so they extort sexual favours from them or they do things like hike prices indiscriminately. They even have a word for that: sextortion. I suppose in an age where sexting is a word, I shouldn’t be too surprised. Anyway – there needs to be an article about (presumably) single men who think it’s OK to sexploit (another new word) young women as acceptable payment for essential services like getting water. Like… even if you do sleep with the girl… how do you get paid? How do you recoup the missing money? I’m just wondering, like is the sex that good that your money problems go away? The irony is most communities frown upon female prostitutes. Men call them low-lives (even though they widely patronize them), but what do you call these so called water hawkers who pimp themselves out just to get some action?

Men can hoe but they’re never seen as such.

So basically, the lockdown creates a squeeze on everyone and desperation rises through the roof. The already vulnerable become even more vulnerable and have no one to turn to. At least there’s God.

In the midst of the pandemic there has been an increase in sexual assaults on girls fetching water. It’s so traumatizing that many of the victims, wake up super early (like 4am) just to get out the house, in the pitch black and walk for ages to get water before all the hoodlums come out and start harassing again. Talk about fear. What a life. To live in fear. Don’t you just love society? Yay!

You can’t blame these girls. They’re looking out for themselves. A lot of them don’t even say anything when they’re molested because they fear if they do, they’ll get beat up in retaliation. Yeah, those are my favourite type of guys. The ones who can’t get any so they harass and sextort and if they don’t get what they want, they beat up the girls (and rape them afterwards anyway). Gotta love (some of) the male breed. Stand up guys.

What’s even more worrying, but very common in Africa, is if these male rapists and sex offenders do get reported and taken to authority, they simply bribe their way out and return to the community they got arrested in to weed out the girls who ‘ratted’ on them, and beat them up. So you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. Get sexploited, refuse advances, get beat up. Get sexploited, let it happen, possibly get raped. Get sexploited, call the police, get hunted down and beaten up.

This is the brutal reality hundreds of thousands of girls have to deal with in Africa – EVERY SINGLE DAY!

Because even though we’re an incredibly riverine continent, public water supply is a pipe dream and an outright luxury for many. I’ve never known of public water supply until I came to Rwanda. And when I think about it, I still get shocked, like it’s not normal in Africa.

So what’s my point? My point is fetching water is overwhelmingly a female business except they don’t get paid for it. Instead they often have to pay for the goods, at a price no female ever should: with their bodies. And the only people who tend to know about some isolated reported cases are some activists and NGOs. It needs to be understood that what is known about sex crimes against women, that which is publicly reported, is often much less than what is actually being perpetrated – especially rape.

Now about sex crimes. It doesn’t hurt to rehash what we know. When females get sexually violated or raped, they’re traumatized. They’re inflicted a trauma that often lasts a lifetime. Women often feel ‘dirty’ after they get raped, they try to ‘wash’ off that feeling of filth and disgust, but that’s the trauma – and the psychological breakdown. All over the world, in industrialized countries included, the majority of raped women don’t report being raped. Mostly not ever, but sometimes they keep it in for decades before they open up. Again, to no fault of their own, something like rape breaks down and shuts down the person inside. Something you think you naturally have control and autonomy over – your own body – gets violated and sexually abused and that completely causes you a mental breakdown.

Because if you have no autonomy over your own body, what do you have control over?

Women who have been raped or sexually assaulted can (often) become aggressive. It’s a ‘natural’ defense mechanism to regain control of one’s self after an incident of sexual crime. Like, ‘They’ll never catch me off-guard again!’

You were never off-guard – you were raped.

And that’s what many girls and young women go through – because fetching water in Africa isn’t grueling enough. And (the) men, simply don’t care! ‘As long as I can get p*ssy, why should I bother? She probably liked it anyway.’

Arrogance and chauvinism – alive and well in this world.

Anyway, I got a lot of this info from IPS News Agency. They’re a dope resource about gender inequality. If we can’t have public water supply across impoverished countries, at least we can help create wells where poor communities need them most. Head over to Water.org and sign up to make regular donations so hopefully in our lifetime, we can stop seeing incidents of this nature happening to people whose lives are already pretty bad.

Every little helps.

Stay safe.

• 

  In the middle of the wild, in the hot sun, fetching heavy containers of water – and they’re so young!

Related reading: Separated Unity

Legalized Kiddie Porn

I don’t know where to start. You could say this is a continuation of A Journey Into Child Porn but I didn’t even know it had a sequel… until recently.

In that article, I talked about how open child pornography is on the Internet. It’s not dark web stuff at all. What I didn’t realize is that it’s not just videos that are on search engines – it’s on social media, too!!!

Pinterest, the world’s most popular social bookmarking site is full of them. And the chronically disturbing thing about it is that it’s ‘curated’ by people who think it’s ‘exotic’ or ‘cultural’.

When I discovered this, I seriously didn’t want to write about it. I was like, ‘Eff that, I wrote A Journey already, I’m done!’

This evening when I was browsing through my Pinterest for the first time in a while, I realized the algorithm has now included those wonderfully sick pics in my feed as well. Because back then, I was opening the pics from the search engine, on my Pinterest app as was suggested. Now Pinterest thinks I’m a pedo. And according to them, it’s not even a big deal because it’s from people who post these grotesque pics as ‘exotic’, ‘tribal’, and ‘cultural’.

Nobody in their right thinking mind wants to see little 9 year old titties. There’s nothing sexy about pre-teens butt naked online. You cannot get aroused by a female kid who doesn’t know any better, being compelled to ‘smile’ into the camera by a goddamn kiddie-lover photographer. It doesn’t make it any better if the photographer is a woman either! There’s no ‘Oh, we’re female so it’s OK.’

If indigenous and tribal people want to live butt naked in the wilderness, that’s their prerogative, but it is not right to sexploit them in the name of ‘art’.

There’s nothing artistic about pedophilia.

I swear, all these people who post these pix should be called out and put on a sex offenders list regularly broadcasted on the world’s mainstream media for life!

But hey… I don’t rule the world.

Anyway,…

Here are the links I uncovered. I warn you, you have never seen images so graphic before so don’t tell me I didn’t warn you. Stuff like this sticks with you. You can’t unsee it. It stays in your psyche.

Anyway – I typed ‘naked african tribe girls‘ in Google Images. From the collage alone, you see all the minors who are ‘posing’ for the camera. So, I list a few of the links where even a blind man can see the girls in the pics are bloody minors.

Anyway – here are some links:

• Naked girls from african tribe
• Naked African Tribal Girls Sex (graphic porn site, with some minors nonetheless)
• Young Naked – African Pictures (extremely graphic child porn site. you be the judge)

It gets worse in the list so I don’t bother. Now, here are the social media links. I search on Google for ‘naked african tribe girls pinterest‘. What do I get? This:

• girls (Girls! LITERALLY girls! How can the poster who’s called Wylie Human (that’s rich), think exposing child nudity is normal so we just call it girls. FFS!!! You can’t tell me the people who look at these pictures are interested in culture and travel! They’re f*cking pedo perverts who jack off to little kids and get away with it because it’s on PINTEREST!!!)
• naked african little girls (At least here, the poster was honest about his child love: he admits they’re little girls!!!)
• African Beauty (nude teenage girl pics mixed with naked women pics. All legal!)

I know it’s not easy but by all means, scroll down the infinite pics of every link and see how much child porn is not just on search engines. Sometimes exclusive, sometimes mixed with ‘normal’ porn. Oh, and once you view these pics on Pinterest, the Pinterest algorithm will also start showing more of these pics in your normal feed henceforth because it now thinks you’re into child porn. But it’s OK, it’s on Pinterest!! So it’s legal…

Now, you can expand your search on Google even more with the following:

• naked asian tribe girls
• naked pacific islander tribe girls
• naked latin american tribe girls

The content exists, once again, on Pinterest aswell:

• r
• Papua Solomon Islands
• (Nudity warning) Southeast Asian people (wow, they’re actually warning us! I guess that makes posting child porn alright.)

Saying 25% of Google searches are porn related is an understatement. Porn really is the foundation of the worldwide web and child porn is very much woven into that fabric. People just don’t know it yet.

Here’s a site that fights sexual abuse and violence against tribe girls in India. Donate if you can.

Tribe girl and women empowerment centre

Here are resources that address violence on tribe girls:

• ELIMINATION AND RESPONSES TO VIOLENCE, EXPLOITATION AND ABUSE OF INDIGENOUS GIRLS, ADOLESCENTS AND YOUNG WOMEN
• India NGO CEDAW Shadow Report And status of Adivasi/Tribal Women in India
• Addressing the Epidemic of Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls
• National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center – Violence Against Native Women Is Not Traditional
• Ending Violence Against Native Women
• Breaking the Silence on Violence against Indigenous Girls, Adolescents and Young Women
• VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS DOES NOT KNOW A TRIBE OR RELIGION

Stay safe.

Prostitution as Tradition

Happy new year. I just saw a report on Al Jazeera about a community in India where the people are so poor, they prostitute their females for economic necessity. Parents pimp their daughters into the sex trade so that they can have food to eat for their entire families. In fact, when daughters are born, the parents are happy because they know once the girls reach 10 years of age, they’ll become sex workers. Yes, at 10 years.

You can sleep with a 10 year old virgin for as low as 5000 Rupees or about $70, in some cases. Generally, however, the younger the sex worker, the more you pay. Young virgins are the most expensive and are literally auctioned to depraved men. The older a sex worker gets, the less it costs to sleep with her. The young girls can cost 30,000 to 40,000 Rupees. When a man ‘wins’ the auction, he celebrates by eating chicken and drinking beer. A girl’s psychology is going to get shattered and she’ll effectively be raped. It’s going to be a good night.

The mothers who pimp their daughters aren’t too happy about their kids’ fate. As females themselves, they wish their kids had a better future and wouldn’t have to engage in the traumatizing act. But their families are piss-poor and they’re simply tapping into a demand that at least gives them something.

This community is apparently near some really long highway where loads of truckers pass regularly and when these drivers get horny, they pitstop near the community and sleep with a girl. Among these truckers are pedophiles who have slept with 14 year old girls. These men are on the road half a year, away from their families so they feel justified to pay for (underage) sex. Jerking off to porn won’t do. There is a high prevalence of AIDS among the sex workers and the truckers alike. It’s so bad that the truckers even wear two condoms just not to get infected. Wearing more than one condom is actually dangerous as it may slide off or break entirely, leaving the guy at a higher risk of contracting sex diseases or HIV.

There are some people within this community, however, who are tackling this problem from the root and are re-orientating mothers about pimping their daughters, and teaching female children to shun the sex trade and seek education and become professionals instead. May this great initiative work.

It’s heartbreaking to know things like this happen and very little is done about it. We live in a world where women are just not given as much value as men. They’re seen as ultimately inferior humans who cannot be given the same privileges as men. I don’t care how many feminist Western women will attack me because they feel insulted in their ego. You don’t live in the world. You live in a suburb of the megacity called Earth. In your offices you contend with the glass ceiling. Even in your revered Hollywood, women don’t earn as much as men. So stick to your Starbucks cafe and flex to your following on Instagram.

My heart goes out to these sex workers, these young, traumatized, abused girls. I refuse to call them prostitutes because they never chose to go into this deplorable trade. Whenever their bodies are being used by men, they feel helpless, alone and abandoned in this world. And nobody is out to help them. It’s sad. It’s really sad!

And all people like me can do is write about it and hope to raise awareness about it. Because that’s the kind of world we live in.

Blessings to all victims of gender inequality, especially to (young) girl sex workers and their older counterparts. May God watch over you and protect you the most!

Amen.

For further research, check Al Jazeera

Would you?

The World Economic Forum Addresses Gender Inequality

Here is a great article from the World Economic Forum that talks about women being the catalyst in the eradication of poverty, mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa. It addresses the incredible progress they make, despite living in repressive & hostile environments. Have a read, it’s really awesome.

How Empowering Women Can Help End Poverty In Africa

Female Exploitation

Women are our mothers, wives, sisters, aunties, grandmothers and carers. They keep families together because they love freely from their heart. Children need women in order to grow up properly, otherwise the children won’t experience nurturing love and will grow cold and apathetic.

Women aren’t perfect but nor are men. Women care deeply and support not just their families but the communities they live in. A woman’s love is deep and doting. Women are the most affectionate people on the planet. Without them, we will never know what true love is. Girls are our future carers – the keystones of the buildings of societies that accommodate us all.

Women are far less violent than men. Women make a house a home. They support their loved ones with whatever they have, no matter how small. As a result, women empower their families and communities. The eradication of poverty, which is a global menace, cannot be attained without the empowerment of women.

Girls often perform better than boys in school. They’re more eager to learn and put it to good use. It is our role as men to protect women and girls from harm, no matter how terrible. Females unleash their potential when they’re in a protected environment that nurtures their needs and wants.

Simply put, to make a female happy, you have to just care for her and she’ll never take you out of her heart. For centuries though, women have been maligned in societies. Instead of raising them up from birth, they are suppressed socio-economically, at the malaise of their entire families.

Many men think women are just sex objects to be used whenever. Women can do virtually anything men can. More than half of the world’s labour is carried out by women, yet they only earn less than a third of the world’s revenue. That is slavery orchestrated by men!

A lot of men have been and continue to be evil to women. They’re hypocrites: they put women down but don’t want the same to happen to their mothers. A woman’s heart is the purest place to be in. Women are always the highest casualties in any conflict around the world. They’re raped, sexually assaulted, beaten, maimed, belittled and even killed. Females are used as a leeway to let out all forms of frustration experienced by men. Therefore, they’re insulted & raped regularly.

Women need men to help them. A male is not a man if he does not acknowledge a woman as his fellow human being. Females were made with males, by God, not as slaves to them. Women are the backbone of any society and therefore truly rule the world, because they unite people.

Females are the world’s most precious resource for the advancement and sustainability of the world’s ecosystem in general. Show love to females and fight for their rights and well-being. They more than deserve it!

Girl Education Stands With Malala Yusafzai!

Source: CNBC Pakistan

Today, Malala Yusafzai, a 14 year old teenager, was shot twice for courageously promoting GIRL EDUCATION, in a region where females are still deemed non-deserving, 2nd class humans, by an armed group that denounces education & employment for females.

As you’re reading this, she’s in the hospital, fighting for her life.

Someone forgot to tell the clowns with AKs, educating a girl means educating a community, which eradicates poverty and creates prosperity. Oh, I forgot… most of them aren’t educated anyway! X(

Out of respect, I’m not posting a graphic image, but you should read these articles AND visit Plan’s link.

‘I can’t count 1, 2, 3 but I can cock a gun easily.’

 

 

Profile: Malala Yusafzai – Central & South Asia – Al Jazeera English

Teenage rights activist shot in Pakistan – Central & South Asia – Al Jazeera English

Malala Yusafzai – Wikipedia

Girl Education must become MANDATORY! Sign Plan UK’s global petition to be sent to the UN chief!

Malala Yusafzai is fighting with her life to stay alive; fighting with her life to receive GIRL EDUCATION. She’s not even 18 years old & is making HUGE sacrifices towards simply getting an education. DON’T be a passive, spectator – ADD YOUR VOICE IN THE FIGHT TO MAKE GIRL EDUCATION A REALITY WORLDWIDE!

Female Exploitation Part 2: ‘Separated Unity’

“… I don’t know the reason but I always feel persecuted, whenever a person disturbs my area, I feel like it’s an attack on me. I learnt that word yesterday: I overheard my father pronouncing it from the dictionary, he spoke out the meaning… persecution.”

(She pauses )

” Here, there are many birds, but they only come out in the morning. Once it’s hot, they rest in the shade. My mother says they’re like people, they’re lazy!”

(She pauses)

“In school, my teacher knows how to use her GSM like a computer: Sometimes she sends letters & then my other teacher’s phone rings!” 

(She pauses)

“One day, I’m going to have a big house that I will have a big celebration in, with all my family. I’ve seen it before: Sometimes, I stop in the town centre & watch the TV. It has satellite & all the people sit on the ground & watch the TV. You can watch films, the men like to argue whenever football is on the TV. But I can’t stay when they show other women, they have a time when you can see fashion but I must return to fetch water because my mother is sick. “

(She pauses)

“I don’t know anywhere, this is my home. We have some farms around us but everywhere is bush. Sometimes snakes come to visit us but the neighbor’s sons kill them, because our house are together.”

(She pauses)

“Snake meat is good, they can sell it for very expensive. In the city, they like to eat python.”

(She pauses)

“My brother is after me, then I have 2 sisters. They’re very young, so I must take care of them a lot. My brother helps to clean the house. He can boil water & cook some food from the stove. But we only use that when my father is around. The kerosene is expensive, so we use the firewood that the traders sell us. They pass by every two weeks.”

(She pauses)

“It doesn’t matter if I don’t go to school a lot, my mother says I have to be a woman so that they will find a man for marriage & provide for the family. We sleep together in one room, I’m waiting to make it better. They don’t know because I don’t tell them but one day when I’m going to get money, I’m going to build a new house for them & we will have smooth floor & windows & iron door. They will think I’m rich because it’s going to have a generator set & a ceiling fan & radio. My brother & sisters will have a big bed & radio. My mother will have her own TV, a new one, so she can watch all the fashion inside her bed.”

(She pauses)

“My father came back yesterday but he has returned in the afternoon. He works at the coast in the town, he collects rubbish & sells. Whenever he comes back he always brings something along. We’ have collected a wall clock, a teddy bear, a little table, even pots to cook. Yesterday, he brought some books with the dictionary. Daddy was a postman, the post closed down & sacked him. When the war broke out, we lost everything. I was little, my brother was inside my mother’s stomach when we ran away with my father, into the bushes. We were hiding from the militia. I still remember there were other families with us, all of us were crying. When anyone would hear something, we would all be quiet. Then when it go again, we would cry again. We lived in the bush for 9 months, my brother was born there. All the families supported my mother & they prayed for my brother. They always said he was special, that he is a blessing to us. One of the men told me to watch after him because my brother will become our guardian.”

(She smiles)

“After the war, we did not return, everywhere was burnt down & it was not safe so we returned to the coast. They formed a community there & this our home. My sisters were born here, they are twins. Some girls here have been taken far away, to the city. They are going to sell their body to buy food. Their mothers here are upset but they are feeding their children. One of them, I know, is from my class. She is 13, the rest are 15, maybe 17.”

(She pauses)

“I haven’t eat since yesterday. I always get headache & my stomach hurts. When we were hiding in the bush, we would eat big pig & everyone would eat together. There was plenty food because there was no money, many animals & bush. We had a fire in the night and slept because the animals were afraid of fire. I can’t give my body to a man & collect money for it. I am special. I wouldn’t know how much to tell him to pay. My father is abused sometimes because he smells bad, when he returns from work, but they don’t know he used to work in an office. He was a postman & he can read & write. He has finished school! Many who abuse him don’t work, they just sit around all day & look at people everyday. My mother tells me to stay away from them… I don’t like them!”

(She pauses)

“Money is bad: People kill each other for money. People steal & do bad things, all because of money. But I want money! So that I can have a lot, to buy my father an office again & a car. He will wear nice clothes & smell good all the time. And then I want to marry a gentleman. He will take care of me & treat me nice. I want many children & my brother & sisters will know them very well. And when they have their children, they will all play & grow up together.”

(She smiles)

“I dream one dream & it always return many nights: That I will be a queen of town & a very important lady. I will be on TV & not the one sitting on the ground. I will wear a long, royal dress & many jewels. I will provide work for all women & all the girls will be given many good meals every day, so they will not be hungry anymore. And they won’t have to sell their body for bad price. Because they’re special, too. I will make a school for them, where they are taught to do anything they want & when they leave, they will become everything they want. I will make peace everywhere so that there will be no more war & nobody will have to live inside the bush. And they won’t have to sell snake for money or kill big pig to eat. My mother will have a doctor visit her & treat her at home & she will become well & play with us. I won’t be walking early in the morning before school to fetch water from the next town, again. I won’t be carrying heavy jerrycans for 2 hours every day to my house, so that we can eat, drink, cook & bath. I will buy a water pump, like they have in where I take water.”

(She pauses)

She looks out into the bright, empty, dried-shrub-covered landscape, marked by a few Baobab trees, amid the scorching heat. In her hands, she’s holding a little branch: She had been peeling at it ever since. She’s clothed in rags: Her blouse is so dirty it’s brown & her shorts are, in several places, patched up – her father’s work. Resting against the wall of her home, she sits on the ground outside, in the shade; listening to the eagles vocalizing & watching as they glide through the sky, hardly flapping their wings for minutes. She looks at the poster on a wall, opposite her. It’s a news article, tattered, with the bold headline ‘SUPERSTAR: AFRICAN POP PRINCESS ON WORLD TOUR; PROMOTES OWN RURAL POVERTY ALLEVIATION SCHEME’. It’s got a large image of a smiling adolescent girl in large sunglasses & designer clothes, holding a naked child & surrounded by local villagers cheering her. That must be what it’s like when you’ve arrived! Next to the young girl is her jerrycan, ready for refilling from the next hour’s walk.

She looks deep at the image, gradually returning to her reality. Her stomach is still churning & her headache’s worse.

“I know you understand what I mean.” she says, still looking at the poster, in a heart-breaking tone. As she looks back out again, into the open, blazing-hot, barren wilderness, she mumbles quietly to herself:

“We are the same!”

The above writing is a work of fiction, based on real issues, to paint a picture of the combination of sociocultural & economic conditions that breed abject poverty & create the ecosystems necessary to torment & exploit rural girls, in the 21st century. Any resemblance of the characters to any people living or dead, is purely coincidental. The writing is composed in subtle forms of African vernacular English.