White Paper

Yesterday, while riding in a taxi to the Internet café where I’ve been doing a bit of work at a rate that no Zambian (in Zambia) could ever hope to make by dint of skill alone, I saw a graffito writ large in white on a cinderblock wall: White Paper Out, it read.

Now, in the local idiom, Bemba, the line between 'r' and 'l' is quite blurred. Read it as White Papel Out, and I think you'll see what the inspired young scrawler was driving at. I noted to my driver and the vehicle's other passenger that if one were to read into the spirit if not the letter of the graffito, one would be confronted by a racist slogan. But no! protested my copassenger. It was simply a matter of there being far too much white paper in Zambia, and the scrawler had seen fit to voice his sentiment against that glut of bleached pulp product. In Zambia, you see, we are very nice people, and there is no racism.

I write this post not in the way of complaint, but of humor, albeit somewhat...black humor.